• Menu
  • Skip to right header navigation
  • Skip to primary navigation
  • Skip to main content
  • Skip to primary sidebar
  • Skip to footer

Sos Italian – Learn Italian online

Online Italian lessons, Italian culture, Italian translation

  • About
    • Awards
  • Choose me
    • Online Italian Lessons
    • English > Italian Translations
    • Proofreading of Italian Texts
  • Resources
    • Teaching aids
    • Teaching and Learning
    • Translation
  • About
    • Awards
  • Choose me
    • Online Italian Lessons
    • English > Italian Translations
    • Proofreading of Italian Texts
  • Resources
    • Teaching aids
    • Teaching and Learning
    • Translation
  • Home
  • My Blog
  • Learn Italian
    • Test your Italian
    • Exercises
  • Italian books
    • Grammar books
  • Online Italian courses
  • Contacts
  • Subscribe
  • Home
  • My Blog
  • Learn Italian
    • Test your Italian
    • Exercises
  • Italian books
    • Grammar books
  • Online Italian courses
  • Contacts
  • Subscribe

Six mistakes to avoid when hiring a translator

Last Modified: May 10, 2016

Six mistakes to avoid when hiring a translator

It’s not uncommon to hear people complaining about the quality of the translation services they received. Some of them had really bad experiences because translators took money and disappeared, or they didn’t meet deadlines or they delivered a low quality translation and then didn’t answer to emails or phone calls.

Luckily, some of these situations can be avoided by taking some precautions. If you’re interested, have a look at how to choose a good translator.

If, instead, you’ve already chosen your translator, in this article I explain the six mistakes to avoid if you want to increase your chances of getting a good translation experience.

1. Rely on machine translation

One of the first mistakes to avoid when hiring a translator, is relying on machine translation. Sometimes, people decide to use machine translation and then ask translators to check and polish their outputs. Usually, they believe they can save money with this procedure. In reality, the opposite usually happens. Indeed, the outputs of machine translation are good only if you want to grab the general meaning of a text, but they’re actually far from being reliable for serious translations –have a look at this article. So, if you’ll give translators a machine translated text, they will be most probably obliged to start a new translation from scratch.

2. Not giving all the details about the job you want to be done

To allow translators to do a good job you should specify at least the type of document – medical, juridical, literary, etc – you want to get translated, the intended audience, the purpose of your document, any other request you may have – i.e. output format.

3. Impose very short deadlines

Obviously, this is not a rule, however I strongly suggest you have at least enough time to check the translation and to cope with possible unexpected events like your internet connection goes down, you need to contact again translators to make some changes, you need to get the translation proofread, etc.

4. Send illegible texts or texts full of mistakes

If you want your texs to be translated, translators obviously need to understand what the text exactly says. So, if you’re sending a scanned copy, check it to be sure it reads well. Instead, if you’re sending a .doc form be sure it was proofread.

5. Deliver the material to be translated and then disappear

This is a behavior to avoid at all costs. Indeed, even if you’ve hired a very good translator, as I told you before, unexpected events may always happen. In fact, it’s possible that translators need to contact you to clarify some doubts, or to discuss some translation choices. So, to allow them to do the best job they can, and to meet deadlines, be sure to be reachable and to answer emails promptly.

6. Not considering images

Finally one of the most common mistakes to avoid when hiring a translator is underestimating the importance of images. This applies for people who want to translate, for example, comics or game apps. Remember to provide both texts and context – in this case, images. Indeed, a single word can have several different meanings in a language. So, if you don’t allow translators to see also images, they can make the wrong choice and, consequently, the translated text won’t make any sense.

What do you think? Are there other mistakes to avoid when hiring a translator?


Credits

Original image by condesign

Related Posts:

  • How to choose a good Italian translator for your book
    How to choose a good Italian translator for your book
  • The truth about book translation - Are indie authors' concerns justified?
    The truth about book translation - Are indie authors'…
  • Why making mistakes is good
    Why making mistakes is good

Category: TranslationTag: mistakes to avoid, Translation

Previous Post: « Italian cities – Mantua
Next Post: Ten common Italian idioms Ten Italian idioms»

Reader Interactions

Leave a Reply Cancel reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

7 + 17 =

Primary Sidebar

Italian grammar: beginner to advanced

Newsletter

Join my newsletter and get a piece of Italy delivered right into your inbox!

Learn Italian with my online courses

Sos Italian - Online Italian classes

Categories

  • Culture
  • English-Italian texts
  • Grammar
  • Italian food and drinks
  • Italian Language Certifications
  • Learn Italian
  • Learning
  • Teaching
  • Translation
  • Travel
  • Uncategorized

Advertising

Archives

  • Popular

Footer

Terms and Conditions

© Copyright En

Privacy Policy

Termini e Condizioni

© Copyright It

P. Iva: 02736390028

Copyright © 2023

We are using cookies to give you the best experience on our website.

You can find out more about which cookies we are using or switch them off in settings.

Privacy Overview

This website uses cookies so that we can provide you with the best user experience possible. Cookie information is stored in your browser and performs functions such as recognising you when you return to our website and helping our team to understand which sections of the website you find most interesting and useful.

Strictly Necessary Cookies

Strictly Necessary Cookies should be enabled at all times so that we can save your preferences for cookie settings.

If you disable this cookie, we will not be able to save your preferences. This means that every time you visit this website you will need to enable or disable cookies again.

3rd Party Cookies

This website uses Google Analytics to collect anonymous information such as the number of visitors to the site, and the most popular pages.

This website uses Pixel Facebook to better measure, optimize, and retarget our marketing campaigns.

This website uses AdSense to enable an analysis of the use of the website and to allow third party vendors, including Google, to use cookies to serve ads based on a user’s prior visits to this website or other websites.

Keeping these cookies enabled helps us improve our website.

Please enable Strictly Necessary Cookies first so that we can save your preferences!

Cookie Policy

More information about our Privacy and Cookie Policy

Powered by  GDPR Cookie Compliance