What Does Your Growing Business Need to Know About Financial Translation?

The high-quality financial translation may be the key to unlocking your business’s full potential, enabling you to connect with customers across the globe. So, what’s involved in translating your business information into other languages? And where can you find a suitably experienced translation company? Read on to find out.

Understanding Financial Translation

Let’s start with a quick definition. What is financial translation? financial translation helps brands and organisations achieve their global objectives. This is achieved through the conversion of financial documents from one language to another.

Who uses financial translation? Accountancy, banking and insurance firms make heavy use of financial translation in order to provide cross-border services. Companies selling a wide range of goods and services also turn to financial translation services when they are exploring international mergers, looking to grow their global operations, outsourcing manufacturing and more.

Key Financial Translation Tips for Businesses

If you need your business information translated into one or more foreign languages, it’s time to call in some financial translation expertise. The following tips will help you to go about it the right way.

Avoid machine translation

Did you put time and energy into creating your business information in your native language? Then don’t waste that effort by using machine translation to create a poorly worded version of it in other languages. Use a translation company that provides human translators to ensure your business information gets the attention it deserves.

Use specialist financial translators

Financial translation is a specialised form of translation, so avoid general translators in favour of those who have significant financial experience and expertise. Linguists who are experienced at providing financial translation services will have an in-depth understanding of the particular requirements of this type of work. They will also likely hold financial qualifications in addition to language ones.

Choose native speakers of the target language

If you’re looking for translators, always opt for native speakers of the target language (that’s the language that you’re translating into), instead of the source language (that of your original document). This will help ensure that you end up with the best possible quality translation.

Provide a detailed brief

You may be familiar with every detail of your business information and its purpose, but your translation company won’t be. By providing a detailed brief that covers things like specialist industry terminology, target audience and so forth, you can ensure that your translators are in the best possible position to meet your financial translation needs. 

Undertake significant due diligence

Translation companies can vary considerably. As such, it’s worth writing out a shortlist including each translation company and its main selling points. Consider not just price but quality, timescales and customer service. The right combination of these will ensure that your business information is always translated in a timely fashion and is never below par.

As part of your due diligence, be sure to look for reviews not just of the translation company you’re considering using, but specifically of its financial translation service. These will help provide insights into how well the company handles the kind of translation that you need. Look out for reviews that customers have shared in the past few weeks and months to ensure that your intelligence is current.

Business Information and Financial Translation – What’s in Store in 2021?

At the time the COVID-19 pandemic struck, the UK’s economy was in good shape. Total employment across the country’s private sector businesses had risen 1% from the start of 2019 to the start of 2020, from 27.5 million to 27.7 million. Small and medium enterprises accounted for 61% of that total.

Then along came the pandemic. Suddenly, businesses had to deal with temporary closures, furloughs, remote working, social distancing requirements, changes in customer behaviour and, in many cases, staff shortages. Plenty of companies had to adapt their way of operating or pivot entirely to providing new services.

2021 is not only delivering more of the same, but has Brexit thrown into the mix as well. For businesses that sell their goods overseas, this adds a further layer of complication to their operations.

Clearly, to survive in the context of 2021 and beyond, businesses need to be as flexible and as resilient as possible. They will need to explore not just all options for growth but, in some cases, all options for continued survival.

Thankfully, financial translation can help with both. Companies can use it to reach out to wider audiences overseas and to set up contracts with new suppliers, distributors, manufacturers… whatever the company needs in order to remain competitive and remain afloat.

In some instances, keeping a business going will mean pursuing merger opportunities. For companies that operate internationally, there’s every chance that those merger opportunities might be with organisations that speak another language. Having a team of qualified, experienced financial translators on hand can make a huge difference to how well such discussions progress.

Heard enough? If you plan to grow your business through financial translation, use the tips above to ensure you have access to the right expertise.