There is no questioning the fact that Japan is an economic force. Every year, transactions worth trillions of dollars are conducted between companies in Japan and their clients around the world. To sustain the steady (and coherent) flow of communication, thousands of companies and entrepreneurs rely heavily on Japanese translation services. If you wish to expand you business to the Japanese market or you have a document that you wish to have translated to (or from Japanese) choosing a reliable translation agency will help you accomplish this.
The most important factor that you will need to pay attention to when choosing a translation agency is the quality of the Japanese translation service. Everything else is secondary. There are several details that will help you in ensuring this. One of these is to carefully consider the qualifications of the translators that will be working on your document. Different agencies hire their translators on varying standards. Find out what these are. Your focus should be on translators who have had some native experience with the language. Choosing a translator whose mother tongue is Japanese will go a long way in ensuring the fluency of the final result.
You should also pay attention to the experience of the translator. How long have they worked as translators and in what other capacities have they served outside the lingual field? The first will ensure that they are familiar with the rules behind Japanese translation while the latter will give them an edge if you require technical translation in a related field. For instance, a translator who served in some capacity within the legal field will be able to handle legalJapanese translations more efficiently.
Although certifications are not mandatory, they certainly help. Most professional translators are part of one association or another. Translators who are part of Japanese or international lingual organizations can usually be relied on to provide at least average results.
More often than not, the eventual quality of a Japanese translation is determined by the editing and formatting techniques used by a translator. Larger agencies typically assign the task of translation to a set of translators and then have the converted document proofread by a second group. This helps greatly in weeding out the mistakes or errors that might have occurred during a translation. Other agencies enlist the services of advanced translation programs to ensure that the final translation is consistent in its use of terms.
All of these are details that you will need to verify when searching for a potential translator. You can find this out by contacting the agency that you wish to work with and scheduling an interview. Most translators will however volunteer some of this information on their websites.
There is no fixed rule on what the cost of a translation service will be. Translating a Japanese document might cost anywhere from a few dollars to thousands. The eventual price is usually determined by the Japanese translation agency that you approach, the volume of work require and the field which it falls under.
