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Frequently Asked Questions About Translation Services

1. Guidelines for ordering translations
2. Guidelines for ordering interpreting
3. Guidelines for ordering brand name/logo analysis
4. Guidelines for ordering audio visual work
5. Other services 
6. FTP site instructions

Some sample linguistic analysis packets to consider

Guidelines for ordering translations

We provide language conversions for over 115 languages, including all of the most commonly used commercial languages and many of the more unusual ones. We can help with almost any language — if we don't already have a translator who can do it, we have extensive sources to identify a qualified translator who can.

When requesting a translation, it is important to specify the country or ethnic group you plan to use the document for. There are, for example, significant differences in the Spanish spoken in Mexico, Central America, South America, and Europe. There are also differences between Canadian and European French, as well Brazilian and Continental Portuguese.

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You probably don't need to be concerned with local dialects for document translations, but you will need to know if your intended audience is in mainland China or Taiwan, because there are two different writing systems for Chinese. One of these uses simplified characters (for mainland and Singapore); the other uses traditional characters (for Hong Kong, Taiwan, and overseas Chinese communities). For a U.S. Chinese audience, it is probably best to use traditional characters.

If you require an interpreter for spoken Chinese, however, you will need to know the area your audience is from. Cantonese is used in Southern China, Hong Kong, and by many Chinese people in the U.S. Mandarin is used in Northern China (Beijing), Taiwan, and Singapore.

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This varies with the language, the length and difficulty of the text, and the availability of particular translators. In general, it takes about 3 to 4 days to translate documents up to 3,000 words (around 7 to 8 pages) into any of the major commercial languages. Longer documents take proportionally more time to translate. If your work requires desktop publishing and camera-ready output, that work will take extra time. If your need is more urgent, however, we will do our best to accommodate your schedule with a rush delivery.

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For translations, our charges are based on the English word count. If your work also requires desktop publishing, these charges are based on the number of hours it takes to complete the work. To obtain an accurate cost estimate, we will need a copy of your original document.

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All our employees and contractors sign a confidential disclosure agreement before they can do any work. They understand that any document handled by our company is subject to this non-disclosure agreement and that they must maintain the confidentiality of all work received through us. For more than three decades we have been entrusted with confidential material on a daily basis, and there has never been an incident of misuse.

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Lawyers often ask that translations for court submission or personal documents such as diplomas, university transcripts, or birth and marriage certificates be certified. LSI has several notary publics on its staff who are authorized to certify that the work has been performed by a translator skilled in both the source and target languages. As part of this certification, we provide a short description of the translator's qualifications and background.

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Yes, we have close to 4,000 translators that we can call on for correct interpretation of the meaning of the source text rendered, subject, as well as translation expertise. Among these specialists are engineers, medical and legal professionals, scientists, scholars, and people trained in business, finance, banking, and the arts. At LSI your work will be translated and edited by professional translators who are also knowledgeable, or even specialists in the subject area.

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The translation software you may have seen advertised for $50 or $100 is not very useful, and we would definitely not recommend it. There are, however, some quite respectable programs that provide a gist translation, but these programs are much more expensive than the ones commonly advertised. At best they can be used only to get the gist of a text, which may be useful to determine whether human translation is warranted. Even with the very powerful translation programs, many of the specialized (and some of the unspecialized terms) are not translated, the word order is often wrong, and the language is at best stilted and sometimes comic.

The main use for these fairly sophisticated computer (or machine) translation programs is to provide a rapid basic translation for large volumes of text, which then needs editing by a professional translator/editor to obtain a decent, comprehensible version of a document. This process is known as machine translation with post-editing, and there are a few organizations that are able to do this work and provide a sound, professionally acceptable product. Our company provides approved post-editing services for several well-known firms and governmental organizations, and if your material would benefit from this type of highly specialized service, we will be happy to suggest it as an alternative to straight human translation. It is essential that every professional translation be reviewed by a native speaker of the target language to verify the translation's accuracy. Our post-editors can provide this, as well as basic revision editing for machine translations. For our human translation work, you can be assured that we use only highly skilled, native speakers on every assignment, and we will not recommend machine translation when that would be inappropriate for providing the kind of result appropriate to your needs.

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For additional information, call (877) 654-5006 or complete our Information Request Form by clicking here.