Does it really need to be translated?

Rather than blindly translate documents in full – hundreds of pages – decide with your client (or sales team) which information is actually required. You can generally axe padding, including self-congratulatory prose and lists of all the in- house departments that have worked to make the product a success. Your foreign clients/partners do not know and do not care. Such passages can even be counterproductive, making your company appear self-centred and arrogant.

In 1999, a financial institution in France trimmed a 500-page user manual down to 230 pages with the help of an expert translator, who identified redundancies and sections that did not apply to foreign clients – before starting the translation proper.

A firm of patent lawyers in California regularly calls in a specialist translator to scan Japanese patent documents and give a quick oral summary; together lawyers and translator then determine which documents need to be fully translated.

Translate only relevant sections of existing documents, or produce shorter documents in your own language and have these translated.

Think international from the start

Avoid culture-bound clichés. References to your national sport may well fall flat. Ditto literary/cultural metaphors. Tread carefully with references to parts of the human body, viewed differently by different cultures.

For written documents, don’t box yourself in by linking your pitch to visuals that may not carry the same meaning outside your native country – forcing translators to resort to cumbersome wordplay and workarounds

In January 1998 PM Tony Blair told a group of Japanese businessmen that his government intended to go “the full monty” in putting the UK economy on a sound footing. Blank faces: the film had not yet been released in Japan.

(Decades earlier, Field Marshal Montgomery had flummoxed BBC foreign- language services with a cricket metaphor: “we’ll hit them for six!” he told his troops on the eve of the battle of El Alamein).

How much will it cost?

The added value that a translator offers (project management, quality control, file conversions, standardised presentation of multilingual projects, etc.) also has a price-tag, but can save you hours of work.

Style, pronounceability, word choice, phrasing and sentence length – all will vary, depending on where your text will appear and what you want it to achieve. An experienced translator will probably ask you for this information; make sure you know yourself.

In 1999, French utility Electricité de France spent over £100,000 on ad space for a full-page ode to its expertise in a range of premium press vehicles. A clumsy English text was sharply at odds with the international image the company sought to project [*EdF offers competitive energetic solutions*]. The translation provider, who had received no brief (and hadn’t asked), had churned out what it assumed was an in-house memo.

Cost of translation: under £60.

Be sure to tell your translator what your text is for, so that s/he can prepare a foreign-language version with maximum impact for that particular audience and vector.

For many companies faced with foreign-language texts, the first stop is the language department of a local school or university. While this may – sometimes

– work for inbound translation (i.e., when you want to find out what the other guys are up to), it is extremely risky for promotional texts.

Teaching a foreign language is a demanding activity that requires a special set of skills. These are rarely the same as those needed to produce a smooth, stylish translation. The risks are even greater if you opt for student translators, which may seem like a nice, inexpensive option.

Q: Would you approve of medical students performing minor operations to pay their way through medical school? (Would you describe your brochure/letter/annual report/speech as “minor”?) Would you have your company’s financial statements prepared by business students to save money?

An inquisitive translator is good news

No one reads your texts more carefully than your translator. Along the way, he or she is likely to identify fuzzy bits – sections where clarification is needed. This is good news for you, since it will allow you to improve your original.

A European video-games specialist notes that management did not really understand their own stock-options policy until an English translation was commissioned: the translator asked many questions and delivered a version far clearer than the original.

“We try to wait for our texts to come back from the translators before going to press with the original French,” says the chief economist of a major bank in Paris. “The reason is simple: our translators track our subjects closely. Their critical eye helps us identify weak spots in the original.”

Ideally, translators strip down your sentences entirely before creating new ones in the target language. Good translators ask questions along the way.

The more technical your subject, the more important it is that your translators know it inside out

If you supply basic information to five native speakers of any language and ask them each to write up a 100-word product description, you will get five texts, some clearer and more readable than others. People familiar with the subject are likely to produce a better text. The same applies to translators.

You will get best results from developing an on-going relationship with a translator or team of translators. The longer you work with them and the better they understand your business philosophy, strategy and products, the more effective their texts will be.

Whenever possible, know your translators – not just the project managers, but the translators themselves, the people who actually produce your texts. And make sure they know you.

Talk to your translators. They should be at home with the subjects they translate; if not, it’s time to change suppliers. Translators should not be learning the subject at your expense, unless you have expressly agreed to this

Bilingualism on its own is not a guarantee of written fluency or skill in translation

Technical terms pose few translation problems

Incorrect use of technical terms often means that a translator is in over his/her head.

One solution is to use in-house subject-matter specialists to provide vocabulary and background materials up front, and to vet final copy