Wednesday, March 21, 2012

Translation notes: don't do it in-house

Last month, a German company I had not yet done business with contacted me, saying they already had an English translation of their sales brochure, but they were not happy with the quality. I had a look at it and assumed it had been done in-house, or at least by someone German.

One of the most egregious mistakes was (and I don't mind listing it since you cannot find the firm in Google with this sentence): "Finally this investment is amortised". What they meant was "in the end, this investment pays for itself," but the confusion about what "finally" means produces quite the opposite meaning – an exasperated "we finally got our money back."

1 comment:

  1. Therefore, it's best to let a professional translator or a known translation company to do any translation job.

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