Your objectives
Your company or organization has a need for texts and documents in English. You may need them to sell your products or services, or to ensure that technical products are installed, serviced and repaired properly. Or perhaps you’re an NGO, and you need to get your message across in a language that will be understood.
Your message may be addressed to English-speakers in the Anglosphere, or to speakers of other languages in countries where English is widely used as a lingua franca.
It might seem obvious that you need a translation. What you really need, though, is a solution: a solution to the particular task you face.
This solution may well take the form of a translation, so why not call it that? The reason is that you need more than just a “good translation”. A good translation is typically described as one that is faithful to the original and conveys its content, with all its nuances, whilst still reading well, rather than “like a translation”.
In the context of a B2B service however, other, more overriding criteria may apply – in particular, whether the translation satisfies its intended purpose. For example, does translated advertising material increase sales of your products and services? Does translated repair documentation enable a maintenance technician to repair your products properly and quickly, possibly under adverse conditions? Does a translated tender boost your company’s chances of winning a contract? Does an invitation to an event increase the number of visitors, or enable you to recruit allies?
In most of these cases, the reader is not interested in whether these texts were written directly as such, or translated from another language.
It’s not about the text. It’s about the result.
This is the starting-point for my services. Translation is a B2B service, the purpose of which is to support you in reaching your objectives.