Annual reports are much more than just financial communication. They also make a significant contribution to a company’s image. To ensure the best results in both aspects, a translation must always meet the highest standards.
They can be time-consuming and costly, but they also require a certain amount of creativity. After all, a good annual report documents a company’s highly regarded credentials. Therefore, you should only trust the best language service providers, if you are looking for a high-quality, professional translation of this crucial document. But how can you identify them? Here are ten questions you should ask your translation agency before you place the order:
1. Do you employ specialized professional translators?
Financial communication uses very specific terminology that is unique to each language. Translating accounting terms with ambiguous or unclear wording can lead to misunderstandings, which can potentially be very harmful. Annual reports are legally binding documents. They must provide stakeholders with unmistakable information about the company’s financial situation and strategic direction. Consequently, a flawless financial translation can only be provided by professionals who not only speak the target language but also understand financial terminology.
2. Are your translators native speakers?
Speaking of proficiency, it is a well-known fact that it is impossible to have a truly perfect command of any language. However, native speakers have a clear advantage here. Many people overestimate their own abilities, especially when it comes to translating into English. Native speakers with advanced translation training will always provide the best results.
3. Do you have references for translations of annual reports?
There are excellent translation agencies. With their longstanding experience, they stand out from agencies who are still getting heir feet wet. They all provide references on their websites – and it’s worth paying attention to them. When it comes to a document as important as the annual report, it is also a good idea to ask the reference clients about the quality of the collaboration.
4. Do you work with term bases for financial translations?
Good service providers offer their clients the option of creating a shared terminology database or integrating an existing one into their own customer-specific database. This ensures that certain mutually agreed terms and phrases are consistently translated in the same way. Besides the technical terminology of the financial reports themselves, this also applies to the narrative environment, the storytelling. The terminology database ensures that the corporate language is preserved to maintain a consistent corporate and brand image.
5. Do you use a translation memory for translations?
A translation memory is a translation database that tracks every step of the translation process. If individual terms or text passages are repeated, the system immediately makes the appropriate suggestion to the translator. This ensures that the finished version is consistent and that important formulations do not vary.
6. Do you translate with localization?
Localization goes above and beyond simple translation from the source language. It refers to adaptation of the text to the cultural norms and customs of the target market. Localization begins with obvious aspects such as dates and times, currencies, or customary measurement units. However, professional translators also consider whether individual text passages may be hard to understand due to the lacking cultural context. In other words, localization ensures that the translation also effectively conveys the message of the original text.
7. Do you offer professional transcreation?
Transcreation takes translation to the next level. It ensures that translated texts are not only comprehensible in the target language but also trigger the desired emotions. In addition to excellent proficiency of the language, transcreation is based on a profound understanding of the respective culture. What is considered beautiful, honorable, or pleasant there? What could be offensive or off-putting? Transcreators consider all these aspects and are trained to completely reformulate text passages. Transcreation is also the best way to translate an annual report, if you want the end result to present your company in the best light.
8. Do you also pay attention to the visual imagery in the annual report?
The visual presentation and imagery are key elements of the annual report. They enable the company to trigger and control emotions and associations literally at a glance. Professional translation service providers understand how important the visual presentation of documents is. Does the look of the report align with the culture of the target country, or could transcreation improve the final result here too? Translators are not art directors, but they can provide valuable information on where interventions are advisable.
9. Can I also commission post-editing?
With a topic as sensitive as financial communication, machine translation on its own is basically inconceivable. However, a combination of machine translation and human post-editing (MTPE) is an option for the storyline portion of a multilingual annual report, especially for smaller companies. AI-assisted software could efficiently handle the basic translation of the source text, as long as it is followed up by human post-editing. In the second phase, the professional translators verify the content and ensure that the translation is linguistically correct. With the help of a translation memory and customer-specific term bases, this phase also includes adaptation to the company’s specific tonality. Computer-assisted translation using MTPE is cheaper than pure human translation, and it still achieves good results.
10. Is the chemistry with the agency right?
Last but not least, you can choose the most highly acclaimed service provider, but if the chemistry isn’t right, the results won’t be either. So be sure to listen to your gut as early as possible!
