Among the most costly mistakes a corporation can make when contracting services for business translation is the avoidance of paying fair salaries for the work. This attempt may take the form of assigning the job to an employee that knows the language and wants the extra money, or using software programs. What is even more harmful is the use of free applications for important business translation projects. All such unwise approaches cause the down falls of utilizing a computer and/or unskilled translators and interpreters.

Inexperienced Translators

To precisely show the problems of not employing individuals trained for premier business translation, a real life occasion can be shared. A national medical insurance company in the United States made two of the above mentioned mistakes in response to the business translation needs of their Spanish speaking patrons. A bilingual employee and customer care representative was offered the project of translating disclaimers and desktop responses in English, into Spanish. The verbal and informal contract, presented no deadlines to be met. As a consequence, the company's beneficiaries who spoke Spanish continued waiting for service in their language. Looking to solve the problem, management decided to ask the team of bilingual employees to work on the project as a whole. This only turned out to be more frustrating due to the representation of different dialects and educational backgrounds of the team members. Disagreements over choice of vocabulary gave rise to a deterioration in relationships and, eventually, interfered with the project and the company's vow to serve their Spanish speaking customers. None of these blunders and hindrances would have taken place had the company perceived the need for professional assistance with their business translation needs.

Translations by Machine

Computers are great for swiftly accomplishing many difficult projects--business translation should not be one of them. Why not? Anyone who has read something translated by machine, can agree that it's unable to read natural language. Idioms are mainly responsible for this. Idioms are phrases whose meaning cannot be gathered from the literal translation of the words of which the phrase is composed. Natives of the English language, when verbally repeating the words of someone else, will frequently say, "and then she went...." using the verb 'to go' as though it were the verb 'to say'. Imagine the ludicrous translation that would result from a machine in this case; next, imagine the embarrassment companies would experience if they relied on software for business translation.

Analysis of the Need

Company directors should analyze every business translation project as it comes up. Generally speaking, it's unwise to receive services from a bilingual employee for a time consuming job. Time intensive projects could distract from his daily duties. Nevertheless, fairly small projects may be handled successfully by an employee, and carries the advantage of insider knowledge. Keep in mind, the worker should have the education needed to provide grammatically correct and accurate translations. Preferably, he should also speak the dialect of the customers.

Translations by robots should be rejected for important business translation demands. Machines were not created for this type of work.