Translation Company Versus Freelance Translator: Pros And Cons

Often, however, budget and quality are major considerations, and these two factors do not always go well with each other. Sometimes, too much emphasis on getting the cheapest service might leave you at the receiving end of a bad deal. Moreover, there are two options in hiring human translators: should you get the services of a translation company, or just hire a sole freelance translator?

Many people tend to get freelance translators for simple translation jobs, such as emails, correspondences, or uncomplicated website content. Usually, you already know someone who can do the translation, and it is easy to continue entrusting to this person the translation job. Why try somebody new, right? However, if you have important documents to be translated—what we call “mission critical” documents, such as business contracts, legal papers, and what have you—you might have to think twice first before entrusting the translation job to a single translator, no matter how well you have probably worked in the past and how friendly he or she is.

Generally, a language translation company can do important translation jobs better than any single freelance translator would. And for great reasons: a translation company (especially one with years of experience in the business and has had a roster of past clients it can name drop) is organized, and often maintains an extensive network of professional translators. Also, these translators will have specializations—if you need work on your engineering document, the translation company can assign to you someone with specific skills and experience in the engineering field. Specialization is very important because it assures you that only an expert will work on your documents—a translator with a “general” experience in language translation cannot beat that.

Moreover, a freelance translator, no matter how good he or she is, is only a single person. No one else will check or re-check the translated output for errors or inaccuracies. Compare that with how a translation company usually accomplishes a job: usually, upon every order, the company assigns a team of translators to work on your documents. This means there will be several pair of eyes that will scan and proofread and check your documents for any mistake. This kind of team work not only ensures a quick turn-around time for translation jobs, but also ensures that the output is of top-notch quality.

Finally, hiring freelance translators does not necessarily mean you will have to pay less than you would with a translation company. Sometimes, sole freelancers charge more. On the other hand, a translation company is able to charge way less than that of a freelancer on a per-page or per-number-of-words basis due to the economies of scale—with its organizational setup, a translation company can assure a high-quality output at the lowest expense possible. And all these things considered, along with the ease of getting a translation company’s services—you simply go to their website, click on a button, and instantly you get a price quote along with some translation advice—that makes getting the services of a translation company a smart decision.

By: clacandazo

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Charlene Lacandazo is a marketing executive for Rosetta Translation, a leading full-service translation company in London, UK. Rosetta Translation specialises in document translation, as well as interpreting services worldwide.