Your company has decided to go ahead with a collaborative venture with an established German firm, and you are charged with the onerous task of getting the paperwork in order right from the word go. You are perhaps a bit nonplussed as to how to go about finding a reliable service provider who will do a good job of providing English translations of the German documents sent by your overseas counterpart. Identifying a translation service provider can be both extraordinarily simple as well as complicated, for the simple reason that it is not easy to judge the quality of the final product delivered to you unless you happen to be a linguist yourself. You may at best be able to hazard a guess as to how well the task has been performed.

One of the common misconceptions that many people have about translation services is that there always exists a word-for-word or phrase-for-phrase equivalent between any two given languages, and that translation is merely a mechanical process. If this were to be true, machine translations can suit your requirement and can be had for the asking at the click of your mouse! In actual fact, any language is a self-contained system in itself that has evolved over time in a unique manner. There can be no parallel in the way any two languages may have evolved over time.

Andreas Udbye, Executive Director of the World Trade Center Tacoma, on a trip to China a few years ago with Sam Reed (Secretary of State from Washington) came across a banner that read: "Welcome the Ordinary Sam Reed." It's real intent was to say:  "Welcome the Honorable Sam Reed."

Differences exist in the grammatical structure and etymologies of any pair of languages, and idiomatic phrases are unique to a language. Also, in any given language, most words have more than one meaning, with usage depending on the context. Thus providing translation services is by no means an exact science so one does not often come across any consistent one-to-one correlations between phrases of different languages. So any attempt at literal translation of texts would be a meaningless exercise and fall far short of the mark, especially when the issue at hand is of a serious nature and you want every nuance of the original text captured in the most authentic manner possible.

Another common misconception is that anyone who speaks fluently in two languages will be a good fit for undertaking translation services work. In one instance, even a professor of French teaching college-level students where the medium of instruction was English, found herself at a loss when confronted with a technical document in French. Knowledge of a language per se does not equip an individual to get fully conversant with the different terminologies and forms of expression used in a business or specialized industry context.

Translation service agencies are now getting wind of this problem, and are making it a point to have on their rolls, translation experts who have expertise in different fields such as medicine, pharmacy, engineering industries, finance, agriculture, and so on. Linguists who have subject matter expertise should be the preferred choice when it comes to translations of contractual documents, scientific treatises and other important documents.

About the Author:
Armando Riquier is a freelance writer and expert translator collaborating with Tectrad, a group of professional service agencies specialized in the translation of corporate business, legal or financial matters, as well as site localizations. Get a quote on translation services today.