The services a translation company may offer vary greatly from client to client and from project to project. Every day, clients are renovating their global identity and hence their needs are constantly evolving. In addition, technical and industry advances generate new standards with which translation clients and translation service providers must strive to stay caught up with.
Assignments differ in size and difficulty: from a single birth certificate of less than 100 words, to legal documents that a law company needs for litigation, to an advertising brochure for a home appliance to be marketed to Spanish speakers in the U.S., to website localization for a multinational firm.
These projects will require tailored project plans and work flows. However, they will all include elements from the following services:
Translation and Editing- a source document is translated and edited into another language.
• Usually one translator and one editor work together as a team, with the translator finalizing the document after reviewing the editor’s tracked changes.
• Most translation agencies offer translation, editing and proofreading when quoting translation rates.
Translation Only – a source document is translated only.
• Clients may request this if they need to translate a document for informational purposes only; other customers may have in-house or in-country resources to edit or proofread the translation.
Editing Only – a source document has been translated, but needs to be edited. Another term used for this type of service is “Proofreading”.
• Customers request this service if they already have the translation, but need to have it verified.
• Reasons for needing editing only may include: the client used an in-house or in-country resource to translate, but needs to confirm the translation is accurate; the client had the translation on file, but wants to have the text verified.
Certified Translations – a Certificate of Accuracy provided for the translation. The customer may also require the translator or translation agency to notarize the Certificate.
• Clients require this if they are submitting the translation to a court of law, or if they are filing the translation with a governing agency or if the translation will be used for “official purposes”.
Back Translations – translate the translation back into the source language. This should be done as literal as possible so that the client is able to examine how the language was adapted for the target audience.
• Back translations are mainly required in advertising and medical translations. In advertising this step is often combined with a cultural review to make sure that the translated text will be effective. For medical translations, the objective of the back translation is generally to verify the translation’s accuracy.
Read the second part of this article, where we review other services a translation company may offer such as Proofreading, Desktop Publishing, and Glossary Creation.
