Languages and Cultural Background

Professional Translation Services – Languages and Cultural Background

By: L. Amado – 2/07/2010

The raw materials, so-to-speak, of the professional translator serving professional document translation services companies are languages. Languages are social creations and thus inseparable from their cultural context. In order to produce high quality, accurate document translations, professional translators need to have an in-depth understanding of source and target cultures.

The study of languages is fascinating and teaches us a great deal about the people who speak them. Languages are many things but, at the end of the day, their primary role is to provide us with a tool for communication. One of their main functions consists in facilitating the mutual understanding of people living in same region.

In some societies, this “utilitarian” role of language is particularly pronounced due to historic circumstances. This is the case of languages such as English in the United States or Spanish and Portuguese in Latin American countries. The fact that English has become the de facto official language of the United States can be considered a historical and geographical accident. The same is true of Latin American countries in relation to Spanish or Portuguese. Interestingly, the United States never actually declared English (or any other language, for that matter!) as its official language.

English did not evolve as a native language in what is now the United States as it did in England. It was “imported” by English settlers, as were many other European languages along with different communities of settlers such as the French, Spanish and Dutch. Of course it has since then developed in its own ways, which is why British and American English differ in vocabulary and even—to a certain extent—in grammar. The difference in European and Latin American Spanish and Portuguese is even greater, and translation projects in these languages need thus to be handled in accordance with their specific (European or Latin American) source or target markets.

It is interesting to note that the flood of Italian immigrants to Argentina that took place in the beginning and toward the end of the 19th century may have turned the country into an Italian-speaking nation. To this day, most Argentineans speak Spanish with a very distinct Italian rhythm.

In other countries, besides its obvious use as a tool for communication, the native language has traditionally a more complex role. In countries such as France and certain regions of Spain, for example, languages have always served as a defining element of the national culture. For the French and the Catalonian and Galician in Spain, the language shapes the culture just as much as the culture expresses itself in the language, and they take measures to protect this national treasure—the latest language protection law in France only dates back a little more than a decade. Professional translators working in these languages need to be particularly sensitive to subtleties of tone and expression. Finding the right vocabulary and phrasing are crucial.

Whichever their language pair(s) may be, professional translators serving professional document translation services companies such as Legal Translation Solutions, and its parent company, ASTA-USA Translation Services understand that it is impossible to assure high quality, accurate professional translations without taking into account and understanding the cultural background of both the source and target language(s).

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Professional Document Translation Services: A Necessity

In today’s world of fast-paced International Business, many organizations are faced with the question of whether or not they should retain a professional translation service to translate documentation from one or more languages into others. It is indeed critical for any successful entity to be able to rely on a professional document translation service provider, especially when it comes to legal instruments, since this is the only way to ensure accuracy and quality. Misinterpretation and translation errors can wreak havoc on businesses and are costly on more than just the monetary level.

A group of well-known pharmacies, for instance, only recently reached a settlement in a civil law suit brought against them for providing inadequate translations on their labels, and media outlets reporting on the case foresee that translation is becoming the new civil rights issue of the future. Jody Byrne, in her article about document translation errors in JoST (The Journal of Specialized Translation) reminds of a case back in the 1990s, when the Commodity News Service reported of rumors that a Japanese Bank was planning to take over Continental Illinois. This report happened to be mistranslated into Japanese, stating the take-over as a fact, and the effects were disastrous. The bank’s depositors and creditors all sought to withdraw their money, and with looming bankruptcy as a result, the US Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation together with the Federal Reserve Board and the Comptroller of the Currency ended up pouring some $2 billion in additional funding to guarantee deposits and reassure investors. According to Byrne, even the (French into English) translation of an institutional document like the Warsaw Convention is an ongoing source of legal argument and “has featured prominently” in numerous cases in the English-speaking world. While most legal documents tend to apply in their original version only, it is crucial to multinational contract negotiations that every detail is spelled out clearly and accurately for all parties—and thus in all languages—before anything is signed.

The list of examples endless, of course, but what they show us is that translating documents of any kind requires professional translators and professional document translation services. Nothing can be left to chance, be it in legal, technical, financial or medical translation, and today’s organizations thus need a professional translation services provider they can trust. At Legal Translation Solutions and our parent company, ASTA-USA Translation Services, we know that professional document translations are vital to your business, and we have the resources necessary to deliver accurate, high quality translations of your mission-critical documents, cost-effective and fast.