Pretty much every day we get asked if we can do a – quick translation – sometimes that means just a few words that are needed in a hurry and that’s fine, but sometimes just a few words means we should be anything but quick.
Occasionally when we are asked to translate just a few words it means that we are in fact translating an advertising strapline, or even a brand name. In this instance we would expect this to be more than just translation, more of a transliteration involving some degree of creativity in addition to translation skill.
If ever there was a case for taking our time, its when trying to distill everything about a brand into just a few words, and trying to take that message into a new culture at the same time. This is especially true for translation into Chinese where the individual phonetic characters also have meanings in their own right so the choice of phonetic characters around a brand or strapline is critically important.
Of course nine times out of ten its not a brand name and all that’s needed really is a quick translation of a few words, and we have no problem in turning these around, whether its a quick translation of an email from Russia, or a dispatch note from Indonesia, we can and do pull out all the stops!
We have some clients who only ever need quick translation of short text, and for them we have established a process which avoids multiple minimum charges by amalgamating a number of quick translation projects into a single monthly invoice, saving the client time and money in processing lots of tiny costs.
