Hiring a Technical Translation Company – What to Know
A technical translation company is a business offering specialist translation services to organisations in technical sectors.
It’s what we do at Andiamo – in fact, we’ve spent over 35 years supporting organisations in the engineering, manufacturing, automotive and medical sectors with technical translation services they can trust.
Unlike general, or more creative translation (transcreation), technical translation agencies work to ensure that highly technical, sector-specific terminology is accurately translated – which requires a higher level of translation skill, and sector experience.
What does a technical translation company do?
A technical translation company, like Andiamo, works to support the quality and accuracy of translated:
- User manuals
- Technical brochures
- Data and specification sheets
- Technical software/app content
- Technical training material (including elearning)
- Video transcriptions, subtitles, and closed captions
- Website and marketing translation
- PowerPoint presentations and internal documentation
Why your choice of partner matters
The importance of technical translation
For organisations in technical sectors, technical translation plays a critical role in:
- Maximising international sales
- Supporting your regulatory compliance
- Supporting your operational excellence
- Safeguarding the safety of users
- Providing important information and instructions to advise end users on the safe and efficient use of your products.
- Providing multilingual training for international/non-native speaking staff
- Developing your relationship with audiences in the international territories you trade with – supporting brand recognition, loyalty and positioning.
These are the benefits of working with an effective technical translation company who prioritise the quality and accuracy of technical content above all else. This is what we do at Andiamo!
The cost of choosing the wrong partner for technical translation
Hiring the wrong technical translation company can have enormous consequences for an organisation like yours.
- Vague or imprecise translations could lead to user injury or fatality.
- Poor quality translations could lead to misuse or confusion as to how to use your product.
- Inaccurate, misleading, and potentially harmful translation errors can be highly detrimental to your reputation, market positioning and global sales.
- Poor quality technical translations could lead to disappointing international marketing results, requiring retranslation. This is not only costly, but could delay sales in specific territories, causing your organisation to miss targets.
- Using an inexperienced technical translation company (just like using freelancers or certain AI models) could lead to breaching confidentiality agreements.
What to look for in a technical translation company
Experience
The critical focus of technical translation for any technical translation company worth their salt, is to ensure the accuracy of technical, sector-specific terminology in your chosen target languages.
This requires not just extensive technical translation experience but research experience to truly understand the products being translated as well as researching the company to establish preferred terminology, style etc.
At Andiamo, we work only with skilled, experienced, technical translators, who are not only experienced in translating for the technical sector, but for subsectors of different technical fields (for example mechanical engineering). We also only place your projects with translators who have experience in translating your particular kind of document/content.
Quality
Look for a provider who takes quality seriously.
Positive agency signals to look out for, are:
- Using only native-speaking translators.
- Using translators who specialise in technical translation for your sector.
- Transparency around human vs machine translation.
- A focus on machine translation post-editing (MTPE), rather than just MT alone.
- The use of CAT tools, and software like Translation Memory, to further help to support the consistency of translations and offer you cost-savings over time.
- Excellent customer service – with a dedicated point of contact.
- A company with externally audited ISO17100 and ISO9001 certifications
At Andiamo, we pride ourselves on being a technical translation company that does all this and more. We are ISO certified, use experienced, sector-specialist, mother tongue translators, and lean on MTPE for non-human, technical translation projects, utilising mother-tongue translators. Our translators and in-house linguists utilise TM and QA tools, and we provide every client with a dedicated project manager.
Industry standard pricing
Don’t be fooled by cheap. We believe notably cheaper rates are a big red flag.
Professional technical translation is not cheap – and industry standard pricing is a signal of trust, experience, authority, and quality.
If budget is critical, rather than seeking low-cost options, seek industry-standard priced machine translation services, with human post-editing, conducted by mother-tongue, sector-specialist translators (our approach to post-editing). This will provide a more reliable and robust translation than automated editing, and offers cost savings over a full human translation service, while providing quality you can trust.
Realistic turnaround times
Significantly quicker turnaround times are another red flag. When we see this, it screams “machine translation with no or limited human editing”.
Quality is worth the wait, and with a dedicated project manager, and good planning, timescales can be discussed and met.
While machine translation can help to speed up some technical translation projects, at Andiamo, we are staunchly transparent about the use of human vs MTPE (because we only use MT with human post-editing), and provide transparent quotes that reflect each service cost.
We also provide you with a dedicated point of contact who not only guides the timely completion of the project, but gets to know and understand your business, and ensures (where possible) that the same translators are used for your projects each time, so each can build up more knowledge of your organisation.
Our approach to technical translation
As an experienced, trusted technical translation company, we work with skilled, experienced, native-speaking, sector-specialist technical translators, working in over 140 languages.
Whatever corner of the technical sector you occupy, we offer technical translation services ready and optimised to solve your translation challenges.
Work with us to ensure:
- Translation accuracy, thanks to our sector specialist, mother-tongue translators.
- Translation consistency, by using translation memory software.
- Machine translation quality, via human post-editing (MTPE).
- Accurate and appropriate document typesetting for each audience and territory via our dedicated typesetting/DTP team.
- Lower service costs and timescales you can trust. Our commitment to accuracy saves you the cost of translation corrections, and helps to minimise delays.
- A connected, communicative service via a dedicated project manager to answer any query you may have and ensure your deadlines are met.
Why Andiamo?
Beyond our 35+ years of experience, and sector-specialist translators working in over 140 languages, we hold multiple ISO certifications (ISO 9001:2015, ISO 17100:2015, ISO 14001:2015, ISO 13485:2016). We are audited externally to maintain these standards and demonstrate our commitment to quality.
At Andiamo, we offer you the peace of mind that skilled, experienced, sector-specialist linguists are working to support your organisation, its international growth, and the experience of customers and users.
We provide you with a dedicated PM who works with you to meet your fast-paced operations and timeframes, and ensure the timely delivery of your translations.
You’ve found your new technical translation company. Contact our team today to discuss how we can support you, or send an enquiry on our technical translation page.
