April 2007 - Global View Newsletter
WEIGH THE RISKS: DISTRIBUTOR TRANSLATIONS
Overseas marketing, manufacturing, partnering and selling are booming. With many companies relying on overseas distributors to convert their materials into a multilingual form, several critical issues are arising in time, quality and liability.
When an organization chooses an overseas venture partner or contracts distributors for sales, they must take into account the goals and expectations of these partners. Although these individuals may be bi-lingual, it does not mean that they are translators. Additionally, venture partners and distributors do not always have the same standard requirements in time and qualifications as the organization. Because of this, it is important when allowing overseas partners to take charge of your public multilingual image and translation services, that the following items are considered.
Timing is not always of the essence for distributors. Their goal is to make sales and increase profits primarily for themselves. When given the task of document translation, they may or may not meet your timing requirements. In many countries, laws govern what items can and cannot be sold without the proper language documentation. Will the timing of the translation affect the ROI?
Additionally, distributors and overseas partners may not be as aware of the legal issues you as an organization face when distributing information in the form of instructions, ingredients, sales materials and so on. With this in mind, distributors often take the liberty in translation to alter the original text to help their sales efforts. These areas include such issues as guarantees, warnings and other critical information that holds an organization accountable. On many occasions, we’ve been approached by organizations in the middle of a legal battle because translated materials did not reflect the approved originals.
Another issue to look at is the accuracy of the information. The American Translator’s Association notes in their Guide to Buying Translations that “Bilingualism on it’s own is not a guarantee of accuracy in translation”. This is crucial for any organization that is relying on non-professionals to project the company’s image and represent the company in multinational business. Take for example usage manuals. If the information is not translated to appear original with poor language use, this is an immediate turn off to the buyer and has been shown in several studies to deter the buyer from future purchases. Additionally, if the instructions, information or detail is not accurate, depending on the product, serious consequences can occur in safety and health.
If you currently rely on distributors for translation and multilingual communication, it may serve your company to just check the accuracy of the work for liability and professionalism purposes. The protective cost will far outweigh the risks of fighting legal battles in the future because of negligence.
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