Just like using a shotgun to kill a mosquito or using a blowtorch to light birthday candles, using a translation company for simple, straightforward projects can amount to unnecessary overkill. If you’re looking to save time and money and your project is not very complex, you may not need the bandwidth of a translation company.
When you hire a translation company, what you’re really paying for is project management –which involves taking care of all the steps you don’t have time for or you don’t really want to bother with, and synchronizing them so that in the end you receive your translations when you need them, at a price that is reasonable but justifies the involvement of a coordinating entity. Those steps might involve not just translation and proofreading but converting files to editable formats, graphic design, creating translation memories and terminology databases, and others.
When you Don’t Need a Translation Company
You don’t need a translation company if you have:
- A very small straightforward file, like a form or a birth certificate, or a small number of nontechnical documents like invoices or bank statements.
- Access to freelance translators, particularly if you live in a city where a certain foreign language is common (for example, Spanish in Miami or Mandarin Chinese in Los Angeles)
Even if you have more documents and they’re more complex than just invoices or birth certificates, you may still find that a freelance translator is a good option. It all depends on how much work they can handle at any given time. Build a pool of reliable, competent freelance translators in the languages you need most often; you can do it by asking your peers, going to consulate websites, advertising on Craigslist, or even looking on sites like Fiverr or Upwork. But be very careful with these last two options: you won’t know the real credentials of the person or what safeguards they have in place to ensure confidentiality. Also, be aware that anyone can upload a document to Google Translate, DeepL or any of the free machine translation engines, which will translate the entire document in seconds, and then charge you a fee without even looking at the text.
When you Do Need a Translation Company
You do need a translation company if you have:
- Multiple documents that need translation into multiple languages.
- A large number of documents to be translated into a single language –which could be dozens, hundreds or even thousands.
- Scanned-image documents that need to be converted into editable files before they can be translated.
- A document that needs translation from or into an unusual language, or a language that you can’t easily find a freelancer for.
- A need for a particular expertise. This is often the case when it comes to patent translation.
When you have litigation involving a foreign company and the case is tried in U.S. federal court, foreign documents like tax returns, email chains, contracts, audit reports and others will be unearthed during the discovery process to be introduced as evidence. Translation of these documents involves a supply chain and several steps that must be managed. This is the time when a company will be most helpful.
Of course, if you don’t want to bother with translation at all, whether the task is small or large, you can still rely on a translation company. But whatever you do, choose the option that works for you.
