Misinterpretation and translation errors can wreak havoc on businesses.
In today’s world of fast-paced international business, many organizations are faced with the question of whether or not they should retain a professional document translation services company to translate documentation from one or more languages into others. It is, indeed, a necessity, for any successful entity to be able to rely on a professional document translation services provider, especially when it comes to legal instruments, since this is the only way to ensure accuracy and quality. Misinterpretation and translation errors can wreak havoc on businesses and are costly on more than just the monetary level.
A group of well-known pharmacies, for instance, only recently reached a settlement in a civil lawsuit brought against them for providing inadequate translations on their labels, and media outlets reporting on the case foresee that translation is becoming the new civil rights issue of the future. Jody Byrne, in her article about document translation errors in JoST (The Journal of Specialized Translation) reminds of a case back in the 1990s, when the Commodity News Service reported of rumours that a Japanese Bank was planning to take over Continental Illinois. This report happened to be mistranslated into Japanese, stating the take-over as a fact, and the effects were disastrous. The bank’s depositors and creditors all sought to withdraw their money, and with looming bankruptcy as a result, the US Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation together with the Federal Reserve Board and the Comptroller of the Currency ended up pouring some $2 billion in additional funding to guarantee deposits and reassure investors. According to Byrne, even the (French into English) translation of an institutional document like the Warsaw Convention is an ongoing source of legal argument and “has featured prominently” in numerous cases in the English-speaking world. While most legal documents tend to apply in their original version only, it is crucial to multinational contract negotiations that every detail is spelled out clearly and accurately for all parties—and thus in all languages—before anything is signed.
The list of examples endless, of course, but what they show us is that translating documents of any kind requires professional translators and professional document translation services. Nothing can be left to chance, be it in legal, technical, financial or medical translation, and today’s organizations thus need a professional document translation services provider they can trust. At ASTA-USA Translation Services, Inc. we know that professional document translations are vital to your business, and we have the resources necessary to deliver accurate, high-quality translations of your mission-critical documents, cost-effective and fast.
For professional translation services companies like ASTA-USA Translation Services, Inc. and its legal document translation division, Legal Translation Solutions, performing the three steps of translation, editing, and proofing for every single document translation assignment sets a rigorous quality assurance standard that is topped off with a final review and certification.