This ongoing series will provide succinct guidance to buyers of translation services.
USING A PROFESSIONAL
Translators are often under-appreciated. The time and dedication required to become a talented translator is incredible. On top of this, it takes constant updating of ones language abilities in order to stay on top of trends and changes. Professional translators often start out as experts in a specific field—and then move into translation in that area. In order to be good, they must be working INTO their native language—but they must also possess a near native capability in the languages from which they translate. In medical translation, your translators should be physicians, nurses, chemists, biologists—not translators with dictionaries. Simply being fluent in a language does not represent any of the skills needed to truly produce high quality, relevant and useful translations.