When a company is founded, the last thing on the minds of the founders is the possible need for professional translation services in their future. Everything in those first few months, even years, is about getting established and proving the business plan. Then everything swirls around the need to build an increasingly broad customer base and expanding from the original location and scope into larger or more numerous venues and/or ability to produce or provide services. However, most successful companies find themselves dealing with foreign and multi-lingual business partners sooner or later. Sometimes this unexpected challenge occurs very early in the process while for other companies, it can be many years before they gain a foreign business partner or important client. This means that while translation services are vital to complete mutual business transactions, it is also impractical to plan for an in-house translator when they will only be needed for a few transactions each year. For this reason, translation agencies thrive on providing translation services to many companies on an as-needed basis.

The sheer amount of foreign trade and business in and out of the US is astounding, and while few single companies need their own salaried translators, there is more than enough demand to keep many translation services alive by serving a handful to thousands of companies at a time, translating contracts, messages, and consulting branding campaigns designed for new audiences in distant countries. If you haven’t needed a translation yet but think you might in the future, here are five of the most common reasons why your business can benefit from having a professional translation service on-hand.

1) Hosting an International Website

One of the quickest and easiest ways to expand your market is to host your website in an international fashion. This means not only ensuring its availability and regulation compliance for foreign companies, but translating your content as well. This may sound simple, and you may be tempted to use an automatic translation program to accomplish this feat, but computer translation is a quick way to find yourself a disregarded joke in the markets you were hoping to influence. Without intuitive translation from a professional who understands the new target cultures, you can easily make an “eat your fingers off” or “aroused chicken” mistake without being aware of it. Another important aspect is your SEO, something you’ve researched and integrated carefully into your home language but may lose all meaning and effect if not strategically translated into the new languages.

2) Investment from a Foreign Angel Investor

For most companies, reaching out to foreign markets and worrying about translation comes fairly late in the game, but this is not always the case. Sometimes a foreign investor decides to put their money into a young American company because they believe in the cause, business plan, new technology, or just because they see great potential in the founding team. While these adventurous investors often speak fluent English, this is not guaranteed and it is still good form to provide all paperwork and communications accurately translated into their native language. This ensures that every interaction is completely understood in the clearest terms for both parties and their involved associates in both respective countries.

Join us next time for the second half of this two-part article. For more information about professional translation services and finding the right translation for your business, contact us today!