For most companies, bilingual executives are a great asset, since they can conduct business in more than one language. However, there is one task that you should never ask them to do and that is to do your translations for business purposes, such as translating your company information, business contracts, brochures, sales letters, newsletters, websites, or even advertisements.
Here are 5 reasons why your bilingual senior executives shouldn’t be doing translations!
1 – They have better things to do than translation tasks.
Without a doubt, your employees are highly qualified professionals, otherwise they would not be part of your team. However, if they are bilingual, all too often they are asked to carry out translation tasks for their own department and, even worse, for other departments.
Undoubtedly, the fact that they are bilingual is one of their assets and you should make the most of it, but their experience is in another field, be it sales, marketing, accounting, project management, advertising, human resources, research or any other. assigned functions.
Let me ask you a question: “Would you ask your CFO to take over hiring HR just because they are good with people?” Well this is the same with bilingual staff unless they are actually experienced, trained or qualified as translators; let them shine in their area of expertise while you use their language skills to your advantage in other circumstances, such as doing negotiations, presentations, leading projects abroad, etc.
2 – They are not professional translators
It may sound obvious but I will repeat it: they are not professional translators. There’s a reason why you need a minimum of 3 years of study and a couple of years of experience to be qualified to translate accurately. It takes even longer to become an expert in a specific field, such as medical, IT or legal translations.
Professional translators also use specific tools and a translation memory (similar to a glossary or dictionary but with their own input) to ensure consistency in the use of your company’s jargon and ensure that all your material exhibits one writing style. consistent. Translators are up to date with the latest language changes, such as new additions to official dictionaries or grammatical changes published by language authorities.
Often, professional translators can also format your documents after translation (also called DTP, or desktop publishing) so they’re ready for end use, whether it’s for printing, for your PowerPoint presentation, or uploading to your website.
3 – It is not because you master a foreign language that you can accurately translate into that language.
You may be fluent or even near-native in a language other than your native language, but that doesn’t mean you’ll know how to accurately translate words and expressions in that language, even if you fully understand their meanings and usages. . Your employee may have become fluent in a couple of languages, but informally and without constantly referring to their own language.
For example, they may have learned meaning in that language by looking at the definitions and meanings of words rather than their translations. And this does not make them capable of translating these languages into their mother tongue at the level of a professional translator who has been trained and is continually dissecting and revising the meaning and the various possible translations of any given word.
4 – Native speakers are able to convey the subtleties of a language.
Translating is also conveying subtleties of words and thoughts, adapting the text to perfectly match the source document and, most importantly, adapting it to its cultural and technical environment. Professional translators always translate into their native language and are in a way the guardians of their language; they spend their time studying, researching, and keeping up with its evolution.
As you know, there are many variations in the English language depending on whether you are from the US, UK or any other English speaking country, and the same goes for Spanish (US, Canada, Switzerland, Belgium, etc.). .), Portuguese (Brazil, Portugal). Professional translators can partner with other linguists from around the world, as proofreaders, to ensure that translations have the right feel and sound for the desired country or region.
5 – Your bilingual staff to save time will surely be tempted to use free online translation tools.
Let me ask you another question: “Would you use a free online recruiting tool instead of your dedicated HR team to screen and hire new staff without interviewing them?”
Machine translation and free translation tools serve their purposes, but they must be used wisely, otherwise you are bound to make some translation mistakes. Like this:
Russian prisoners at Lincoln Prison in England were given a brochure informing them of the prison facilities, including an “execution yard”. They were almost certainly relieved to learn that “execution yard” was actually an English-to-Russian mistranslation of “exercise yard.”
A human translator would have picked it up right away!
You wouldn’t want your company to be in the news because of a bad translation, would you? Translation errors can result in the loss of a contract with a foreign supplier, or worse, the loss of a customer!
These 5 points highlight some of the reasons why you should not ask your bilingual staff to translate your communication pieces or any other official documents. But most importantly, consider the risks you incur by asking your bilingual staff to perform a task for which they are not necessarily qualified instead of using professional translators. You may appreciate that in the end this is counterproductive and you are putting your company’s reputation and growth at risk for the sake of pseudo cost savings. So be sure to always hire professional translators to take care of your language needs and make the most of your bilingual staff in your business operations.