In the popular United States based television show about a fictional President and his term, The West Wing, there is a plot line dedicated to the need for translator services and certified translations.
Basically, the President is meeting with a foreign dignitary who speaks a different language and there is no translator to be found. To make up for this deficit, the President’s aide finds three different people who all know different languages to speak to and translate one another’s words until the message finally reaches the dignitary in his own language.
With a translator service, and certified translations, this whole situation could have been avoided. Certified translations are typically used in situations such as translating medical files of patients from different countries to a new hospital, translating legal documents for international court cases, and, in what would be most useful in this example, translating government documents from one country’s language to another country’s language.
With a certified translation, the fictional President could have avoided the uncomfortable scenario with the foreign dignitary and instead could have wowed him with the politeness and considerate actions of providing documents in his own language.
The main difference between a certified translation and using some automated service such as Google translate is the large difference in quality and execution. An automated cut and paste translation service will mangle the words and phrases, and will not understand nuance or cultural idioms like a person will.
Furthermore, automated services only use certain dialects and some languages, and are not useful for less popular languages such as the language the foreign dignitary used.
Instead of risking the clearness of your text, use a certified translation service to help you transfer your meaning, colloquiums and all, to another language. A certified translation is translated by a native speaker, which means that the person doing the translating has grown up using that language and has been fully inundated in that language’s culture.
This person is a language and translation professional, and will ensure that your text is clear and holds its original meaning. To add to the promise of quality work, a certified translation will come with a seal and statement saying that the translator promises that the translation is accurate. This seal and promise of quality is why business people, medical professionals, and government officials all over the world used certified translation.
At the end of same The West Wing episode, the President finds out that the foreign dignitary knew English all along and was just going through the translation motions because he thought it would be polite. Neither person knew the other country’s customs or were confident on how to interact with one another that it caused a huge debacle.
With a certified translation, the President and the dignitary could have communicated clearly before the meeting and developed a plan for a more effective meeting. Don’t end up being a gag joke from The West Wing! Use certified translations whenever needed to get the best results.