The Importance of Accurate Legal Translations for Businesses
Translation services have become increasingly more accessible with the growth of online translation tools, for example Google Translator. This is however tempered by the fact that these tools have been proven to be inaccurate for many of the language nuances that exist across the world, both in a technical aspect but also culturally.
When business seek to expand in to new territories, many of which will speak a different language, it is highly advisable to recruit professional legal translation services to cover the array of documentation that will be required for trading. Failure to accurately translate legal documents could prove extremely damaging to your business.
Here we look at what could happen to your business if your translations are inaccurate.
Reputational Damage
Inaccurate legal document translations could seriously harm your business reputation and therefore impact your opportunity to retain current customers or grow your business with new customers. Badly translated legal documents not only make your business seem unprofessional, but also could also be deemed offensive by your clients.
By maintaining a strong and professional reputation, your business will be in a better position to win new clients and retain the loyalty of your current customer base. Don’t let poor translation ruin your hard work to date.
Translation Impacts on your Brand
The way your brand is portrayed will have a huge impact on your success as a business. Inaccurate or poorly translated documents will send the wrong message to your target market and therefore damage your brand image. By having consistent, professional and, importantly, accurately translated messages, your business will portray a company your customers will trust and respect.
Internal Communication
Many businesses grow and expand in to new territories across the world. This creates the need to accurately translate the company’s processes, systems and policies to ensure there is a uniform approach to the operations across the company. Should an inaccurate translation of any of these documents become active, it can cause huge disruption for local management teams in conflict resolution or can cause inefficiency in the work and therefore cost the company additional profit.
It stands to reason that accurately translated internal documents will help the smooth running of the organisation across the world.
Financial Implications
If you are a global company trading in multiple regions, it will be likely that translations play an important role in the financial outlook for your company. Should the translations be inaccurate it can have a knock on effect on the planning, marketing and sales figures. This will naturally require additional invest to rectify and ultimately mean that the financial targets of the company are missed.
Legal Consequences
Ultimately, the translation of the legal documents poses one of the biggest challenges to cross border trade. The Legal translation will need to adhere to the language structure, cultural differences and most importantly the legal system of the final language. It is not possible to simply undertake a word for word translation as the interpretation of the law may differ from region to region, therefore the translator must be highly experienced in the law and the language to be proficient an accurate. Any mistake could be extremely damaging t your business and any future trade opportunities.
We would welcome the opportunity to work with you helping you to develop your legal translations and spread your products and services across the world.
Please call us on 0845 262 0153 or contact us via our online contact form. We look forward to working with you.