See if you can identify yourself with any of these questions:

1. Q. Have you ever traveled to a foreign country and had a medical emergency and your documents were written in a different language?

– For your documents to be processed by the Insurance Agency, they need to be translated into a language that they understand.

2. Q. As a Human Resources Associate, do you have to provide daily services to employees that do not speak your language?

– Companies require their manuals to be translated into the language of their employees so that they understand the rules, regulation and benefits.

3. Q. Are you a French citizen in the midst of a divorce or an inheritance dispute in the U.S. and all of your documents are in French?

– Legal documents treat delicate matters and need to be translated word for word and into the official language of the government or legal institutions. 

Each translation project has its own specific needs and the job of the translation agency is to select the best professional translator that best meets those needs. However, to assure precision and quality, there are certain aspects that are germane to this field, sometimes unknown by the general public, that translation agencies are very aware of.

Localization, which accommodates a document to a specific market using local nuances, vocabulary, colors, currency, among other elements, is one example. Localization in the translation process is extremely important for marketing purposes.

Let’s take a look at this example:

Say you are a fruit and vegetable Puerto Rican-based company, and you want to put your oranges to compete with Florida’s. Your slogan is:

La china más jugosa del mundo

In most of the Spanish-speaking world, the word for orange is naranja, but in Puerto Rico is china. Without proper localization your slogan could end up being:

The juiciest Chinese woman in the world

instead of: “the juiciest orange in the world.” And there is a world of difference between the two!

So next time you have documents to be translated, don’t put it in the hands of someone who is not professionally instructed in the field, leaving it to chance. Make the right decision and use professional translation services to rest assured that the end result is as good as, or even better than, the original.