5 Reasons for Low-Quality Translation and How to Avoid them

1. Insufficient experience translator of translator
2. Lack of translator’s knowledge about the subject matter of translation project
3. The translator’s carelessness and lack of passion for translation
4. Usage of machine translation
5. Low cost of translation

How to avoid low-quality translation?

• Coherence and consistency
• Unity of style
• Translator honesty
• Linguistic competence of translator
• References and sources

5 Reasons for Low-Quality Translation and How to Avoid them

There is no doubt that getting a high-quality translation at a good price and high speed at the same time has become the main concern of companies seeking professional translation, whether this translation is the translation of scientific books or translation of official and legal papers. In these cases, we search for a Translation Office Dubai or a specialized translation office of the country in which you reside. However, these companies face many problems in obtaining this goal due to low quality of translation that they may receive due to the following reasons

• Insufficient experience translator of translator

The choice of the competent translation company is one of the most important factors that affect the quality of translation, so you have to be fully careful in choosing the office or company that will do the translation, and to ensure the efficiency of the translation process, you should choose offices specialized in the subject matter of translation because of their vast experience and expertise in this field in their own location, for example. If you live in Egypt, you will choose a specialized translation offices in Egypt. If you live in Dubai, you should resort to a Translation Company in Dubai and so on…

Here are some points to keep in mind when choosing your translator

1. He should have not less than 3-year experience in the field of translation.
2. The target language must be the mother tongue of the translator to ensure the effectiveness and naturalness of translated text.

• Lack of translator’s knowledge about the subject matter of translation project

Due to the translator’s weak social, cultural or grammatical background of the subject matter of translated project, the translated text may be considered by the professionals as unnatural and unaccepted to be used for the purpose thereof, as not consistent with the common terminology and used styles they are accustomed to.

• The translator’s carelessness and lack of passion for translation

The translator may be highly qualified but not serious, but translator’s competence is not sufficient at all and seriousness and commitment to deadline is must more important than competence or translation skills. Translation is one of the areas in which a person must have the desire to work and to develop his skills so that he can master translation art, and therefore if the translator does not have the sufficientpassion for translation, it will be a waste of time and money and you will not get any satisfactory result, so please avoid unserious amateurs. 

• Use of machine translation

In order to facilitate work and save time and effort, some translators may resort to machine translation software such as (Google Translate, U dictionary) In most cases, translation from such software is inaccurate and fullof many grammatical,semantic, and linguistic errors, which is definitely unaccepted, even after quick review of such machine translation, it will not be like the human translation in terms of meaning, naturalness and consistency.

• Low cost of translation

Obtaining a high-quality translation usually requires a high price in return because it requires the time and effort of the translator, i.e. “value for money”, but due to high competition in translation market, many companies may accept poor translation to save money, but there are some companies having long experience translation management who managed to get the balance between high-quality Certified Translation Dubai and affordable cost, and you can choose one of such companies to avoid poor translation due to low cost.

How to address the causes of low translation quality?

To avoid low-quality translation, we should mention here the translation quality standards by which any translator or translation company should abide to maintain the best quality for translating documents, websites or any type of text, and then the client can verifythe translator adherence to these points well so that he puts them in mind throughout the translation and revision process.

1- Coherence and Consistency

The coherence and consistency of sentences is a professional process that depends mainly on the meaning. For example, you can consider any text you read after translation like a story. If you find its events sequential and built according to the events, you read a good text, but if you find otherwise, there is an error in the consistency and interconnectedness of the text, which violates the general meaning of the sentence.

2- Unity of style

The translator must stick to a unified style in the wholetranslation project, taking into account the type of article and its writing style, and thus follow the same style throughout the translation process, regardless the project volume or deadline.

3- Translator honesty

The translator must be honest in conveying the text without change, addition or deletion, and the translator does not have to insert his personal point of view in the translated text.

4- Linguistic competence of translator

The translator must master the rules of the language into which he is translating. Each language has its own character, sense and spelling and grammatical rules that the translator must abide by.

5- References and sources

The translator should resort to the references and sources available online to prove the highest quality of translation, and mention them so that it is easy for scholars to refer to them to verify certain information.

In the end, no one can deny the significance of translation in facilitating the communication of peoples in different cultures and languages, and in helping to learn about the history of ancient civilizations by translating and benefiting from the books of those civilizations at the present time. Translation is not an easy and simple matter, but a very complex process that needs study and talent. With increasing modernization and increase of inventions and discoveries in various countries of the world, it has become important to learn translation to get to know the cultures of the peoples and to benefit from their inventions and innovations that help us to have a better, easier and faster life.