Three Myths About The Translation Business

There are countless languages in the world, most of which have many thousands and some even billions of monolingual or bilingual speakers. The laws of statistics would seem to dictate, therefore, that any attempt to place up a translation business is futile, if only because the number of potential competitors is overwhelming. However, once you have begun your translation business you will realise that serious competition – i.e., from rivals with business acumen and the nerve to seek information from translation myths – is in fact comparatively scarce.

Native speakers are generally held to be indisputable authorities on translation issues. This leads us to the first yarn about the translation business: the native speaker is infallible. When you originate up your gain translation business you will soon search for that most customers, especially the more knowledgeable ones, will ask that the translation be done by a native speaker, on the assumption that a native speaker is automatically a first-rate writer. Not so. While there may be over a billion native speakers of English worldwide, only a share of them can be relied upon to enjoy the judgement it takes to choose whether a translation is linguistically sound in a given business context. We should not automatically purchase that a native speaker is a genuine writer in his occupy language, and even less that he is a great translator. For one thing, translation requires thorough insight into the source language as well as the target language. When you hire translators for your business, you should never forget that while a first-rate translator is usually a native speaker of the target language, not all native speakers are top-notch translators.

The second chronicle about the translation business has to do with client priorities, and the assumption that more than anything else, clients want quality. People can be excused for taking this account seriously. Anyone in his honest mind would put a question to that the client’s main wretchedness when bright a professional translation agency is to pick up a high-quality translation. Not so. Studies have shown that most clients are in fact more eager in run than in quality. This is not to say that your client will be delighted to regain any trash as long as he gets it fast; the point is that quality standards in a business context are different from those in an academic context, and may be overshadowed by practical concerns. University students are trained to execute linguistic perfection, to design translations formulated in impeccable grammar and a superbly neutral style. Yet the fruits of such training may not be quite to the business client’s taste. In fact, there are probably as many tastes as there are clients. A lawyer will question you first and foremost to gain unambiguous clauses and utilize appropriate legalese; a machine builder requires technical insight and authentic technical jargon; and the publisher of a general interest magazine needs articles that are simply a safe read. What all clients tend to have in well-liked, however, is a reverence for deadlines. After all, when a foreign client has arrived to trace a contract, there should be something to sign; when a magazine has been advertised to appear, it should be available when the market expects it. In a business environment, many different parties may be fervent in the production of a single document, which means that delays will win quick and may have grave financial consequences. So, starters should be aware that ‘quality’ equals adaptability to the client’s register and jargon, and that short deadlines are as likely to attract business as quality assurance procedures.

And if you manage to attract business, you will obtain that the translation industry can be quite friendly, even for business starters. The third epic we would like to impart is that translation is essentially an ad hoc business with very gross margins. Not so. Various successful ventures in unusual years, for example in the Netherlands and in Eastern Europe, have belied the mature image of the translator slaving away from dawn till dusk in an underheated attic and tranquil barely managing to design ends meet. It is moral that the translation process is extremely labour intensive, and despite all the computerisation efforts, the signs are that it will essentially remain a manual affair for many years to approach. Nevertheless, if you are apt of providing high-quality translations, geared to your client’s requirements and within the station deadlines, you will glean that you will be taken seriously as a partner and rewarded by very decent bottom line profits.