Translation and Technology
The advent of the internet made worlds seemingly apart to become a close knit community. This new technology brought with it the development and creation of so many technologies over the last decades. It will not be uncommon to argument that of all technologies birthed by the advent of the internet that communication is one of if not the most important aspect or barrier that was broken. Developments in Perth, Australia can be accessed in seconds in Paris, group of business men in Tokyo can conference call with partners in San Francisco and the capacities are boundless. Indeed the world has become a global village. Businesses that were able to tap into this new way of communication could now reach a massive audience to showcase their business and market their products, thereby increasing and spending their portfolios.
Of course, with every advantage comes a disadvantage or to put it with decorum a hitch. And in this case, there was the language barrier. As the internet globalized the world in such a leap, the need to be able to communicate to people of different reaches in a language they could understand became an unprecedented need. The American needed to advertise to the Chinese man and they both speak different languages, but how? The French designer needs to showcase to the rest of the world, speaking mostly English, his new designs, how does he accomplish that feat? And so there were many other language conflicts. Surely some who were able to communicate in different languages were able to overcome this issue. For those who were not endowed with such abilities, the need to get translators became inevitable.
Someone might ask how a translator will help me overcome this issue. Translators have really become an underling driving force in the world globalization, making businesses, governments, agencies and individuals in achievement their goals. Be it spreading their businesses across borders, being heard and understood far and wide, decoding many documents et al, the translator is an indispensable tool to achieve such feats. Translators come in various trainings and categories, some are multilingual capable to speak and understand two languages while some are multilingual capable to speak and understand so many languages. No matter your niche and the language audience you want to get across to, there is a qualified and specialized translator to cater to that need. Even when it comes to application localization, today's translators are equal to the task.
Now where do you find such translators and how much do they bill for their services? Well there exists organizations where you can source such services and most times the billing is done according to the type of job and the length of document / book to be translated. Also the language pair matters. For languages which are not common, such as Chinese and other oriental languages where there are a few translators, the billing might be a bit high. For me, my best place to source for translators is Fiverr. Their jobs are all billed for $ 5 which is quite cheaper than sourcing those from big wigs with big names. And the jobs I have sourced there were improbably done. Most of the translations I have sourced were from English to French and vice versa.
Some people will rely on translating applications. No one does it better than a human. Even if one has to use translating applications, such a person must still have a good knowledge of the language he wants his writing translated to. This is because the applications are always full of errors which need to be corrected by a human translator. This tells us that these translating applications can just be an aid.
At the end of it all it is good to say getting a translator to get your job done is indispensable in getting a wide reach and expanding your business in this global village of ours.
I hope this article is informative enough. I will be glad to have inputs and suggestions too.
