Creative translation solutions: Making the most of your translation budget

A US-based precious metals investment company was considering investing in a mine in West Africa. However, they were concerned that the mine’s environmental standards might not be acceptable to their largely American investors. The mine’s environmental documentation was easy enough to obtain, but filled hundreds of pages of text—in French. The investment company did not have any French-speaking staff, and were dismayed to learn that fully translating the documentation using a standard work flow would have exceeded not only their budget, but the time they had allotted for their due diligence.

After consulting with a local translation company, the investment company hired a translator to come to their offices for two days and review the environmental documentation with their Environmental Specialist. This allowed the translator to focus only on the topics of interest to the investment company and summarize the content of the documents. The Environmental Specialist was also able to help decode the complicated technical language in certain sections of the document, which would have required a highly specialized translator if it were for publication. In less than 15 hours of work, the investment company had all the information it needed to make its decision.

A US-based documentary film company wanted to make a short film about a breaking news event in France and its relationship to current events in the US. The cost of sending a film crew and interpreters overseas was prohibitive, but the company was determined to find a way to obtain some live interviews with Paris residents. After doing some online research, the company contacted a small documentary film studio in France, which had recently filmed just the type of interviews the American company was looking for. The American studio was able to purchase videotapes of these interviews at a fraction of the cost of sending a film crew to France.

However, the film company still had the language barrier to overcome, since the people in the videotapes spoke French, unlike the American producers. Usually, audio or video media is first transcribed into its original language, then translated into the target language. However the film company had no use for a French transcription, as the interview clips would be dubbed into English for a US audience. Through a cultural consulting company in their area, the filmmakers found two translators who were able to listen to the French interviews and translate them “on the fly” into English, eliminating the French transcription step. The film company then had an English script that could be immediately used to dub the French interviews for its film.

The traditional translation work flow—sending original documents to a translator or a translation company and having them translated, edited and proofread, then sometimes laid out for publication and proofread again—is still the best fit for many projects, especially those that are for publication or distribution. But when deadlines are tight, or when the project doesn’t require a publication-ready translation, you’ll find that your local translation provider may be able to provide you with creative translation solutions that save you both time and money.

About the Author

Written by Corinne McKay, CT; an ATA-certified French to English translator. McKay was elected to a three-year term on the ATA Board of Directors in 2012.