What is a pre-translation assessment?
Now, more than ever, translation is important if you’re looking to expand your clientele, create long-lasting partnerships and secure a prosperous future.
However, along with the benefits of translation, you may also face the problems that come with it. Issues that can crop up during the translation process are frequently related to ambiguity, highly specific cultural content, or errors in the source text.
It is important to remember that, although the text may be clear to you, or its original writer, it may cause some confusion and misunderstanding for someone else – hence the need to make sure that your text is crystal clear for the language specialists working on it.
This is where we come in. To smooth the whole process, we can send you pre-translation assessment (also called pre-translation analysis), that is, a comprehensive report flagging up any potential issues that language specialists might have with the source document before translation gets underway.
We will also add helpful comments such as whether the images are appropriate, any colours that should be avoided or even subjects that cannot be translated as to do so would be illegal (see below).
In short, our report will arm you with vital knowledge to help prevent issues at an early stage, potentially saving time and money.
For further information, please do not hesitate to contact us.
Can a translation be illegal?
In a translation for a large self-help portal, a client wanted to encourage women to have abortions in the event of accidentally falling pregnant.
While this procedure was common practice in the client’s own country, it is illegal in Brazil. This document could not, therefore, be translated, since this recommendation had the potential to put women at serious risk of prosecution.
A pre-translation assessment would help clients be aware of all sorts of issues related to the translation itself as well as the content of their documents.