At Dixon Associates, we have been providing many legal interpreters over the last 12 months. Interpretation jobs have ranged from clients attending court to clients working from home, and assisting with consultations, to interpreting essential medical appointments for patients. We have also continued language interpretation for the Wolves football team, which is always enjoyable!
As far as translations are concerned, as you can imagine, some of the work we have done in the past year have been Covid-related such as PPE instructions, social distancing regulations, medical trials, work signs and contracts. However, we have also been busy with legal translations, translating powers of attorney, contracts, wills and medical records for insurance claims, all essential for progressing with sales, purchases or claims.
Some clients have had their operating and maintenance manuals translated into their target markets, ready for export, getting ahead of the game, and all of their paperwork in order.
Website translations are more important than ever before
We have also seen an increase in website translations. Clients are realising now, more than ever, how powerful and important their website is to sell their company’s services and products abroad. We cannot recommend translating your website enough. Those of our clients who have had their websites translated into their target sales markets have seen a significant increase in their sales to these countries. Even if it is just a landing page, or summary page, the facts speak for themselves:
- Users are 5 times more likely to purchase from a site with information in their own language.
- 72% of consumers say they spend all or most of their time on websites in their native language.
- 56% of consumers say the ability to obtain information in their own language is more important than price.
Matched funding is available with the European Regional Development Fund – please do contact us on 01902 312988 for further information, as we have helped to successfully secure funding for several clients for internationalisation of their website.
Automated translation tools are no match for skilled interpreter
We have (unfortunately) also seen an increase in proofreading assignments and re-translations!
In a bid to save costs, we have seen that some businesses are turning to Google Translate (who can’t resist a freebie!) and then realise that a machine cannot understand nuances or contextualise and so end up getting their text re-translated.
For all its ability to produce an instant response, which is fine to get the gist of a foreign email for example, it is not an effective communicator, so caution should be used with this tool.
The most common languages we translate
In the last 12 months we have seen an increase across the board in the number of languages we translate for our clients. The top languages we are currently translating are:
No. 1 – Spanish with a lot of translations in the legal and medical field, closely followed by,
No. 2 and 3 – French, Spanish, Czech, Polish and German, more specifically technical texts then
No. 4 and 5 – Italian and Russian, most definitely for commercial use and for the foodstuffs industry.
So the “traditional” languages we have always translated still appear to be popular, which is a great sign for businesses and importers and exporters.
Are you looking for a translation specialist?
We look forward to working with you and continuing to do what we have always done, translate and interpret, using qualified and experienced linguists. Whatever the next 12 months may bring, you can rest assured that we are here to support you every step of the way.
Please do give us a call on 01902 312988 or email us at info@dixon-associates.co.uk for a quotation or simply for some advice.
