Translating in the workplace: The difference between native-speakers and linguists

Turning your bilingual employees into translators? You may want to think twice.

We live in a global world and translation is our daily bread. It is a well-known fact that if people cannot understand what you sell, they will not buy it. If you do not translate product literature, marketing documents or web content, your customers will be hard to find. And if you will not support your product in the target language, your customers will not return.

Many companies first think about hiring bilingual employees and using their language skills and cultural awareness to bridge the gap between the original and target audiences. This is a wonderful idea. Such employees will have a lot to contribute and may provide priceless services to both their employer and customers who do not speak English.

However, it is unlikely that bilingual employees are trained translators and, contrary to popular belief, being bilingual is truly not enough when it comes to professional translation. Here are a few examples of areas where bilingual employees usually lag behind translators:

1. Ability to write correctly. Many bilingual people grow up speaking their mother tongue around the dinner table, but not necessarily writing it.
2. Grammar influenced by the original. Without formal education in terms of comparative grammar between the two working languages, bilinguals will not readily recognize syntax structures that need to be correctly conveyed in the target language. The result is a translation that closely follows the original (English) structures, such as word order.
3. Lack of terminological knowledge. Because of using their language primarily on a conversational level, there is a lack of terminological depth and the translated text will include many anglicisms.
4. Lack of motivation to focus on the translation. Bilingual employees are rarely hired as translators. They have their own workload in their own area of expertise and frequently feel that if they are asked to translate “on top of everything else”, they are going above and beyond, frequently without proper compensation.
5. Inconsistency. Without the use of translation technology, translations will be inconsistent in terms of both terminology and style and will look sloppy.  Professional translation vendors offer Translation Memory, the ability to create style guides and other tools to help your business maintain the consistency of its brand.

Even though some bilingual people are good writers with deep understanding of both working languages, the value of formal education and experience cannot be underestimated.

What Can You Do?

If it is important to you that you have control over your company’s messages in all languages it uses, here are a few suggestions:

1. Find a professional translation vendor. One who services all languages you need, provides technological solutions that help control consistency, leverage already translated content for translation savings and one who has rigorous quality control processes in place.
2. Engage your bilingual employees in authoring. Because of their multicultural insight, they might be invaluable in helping create content for target audiences (such as blogs or FAQs) directly in the target language, rather than translating.
3. Engage your bilingual employees in the translation review process. Your translation vendor will be grateful for having inside knowledge of your company and its processes as well as a contact person to call in case any clarification is needed. Check with us for a guide on how to review translated content effectively.