Six degrees of translation – How to find a specialist translator

You’ve created the innovative product. You’ve assembled your dream sales team. You’ve had a website built and eye-catching marketing materials written. Now you want to reach out beyond the borders of your own country and share what your product can bring to professionals and markets abroad. But is there something holding you back? Could it be how you approach translation?

If you have had materials translated in the past and found that they didn't quite hit the mark, then read on. While there may be many reasons for this, one might be that the translator chosen was not truly familiar with your field. And I'm here to share a secret with you – a translator can be more than just someone who understands two languages. A translator can also be a specialist in a particular area and already equipped with knowledge that will mean they can hit the ground running when engaging with your organisation.

In fact, I'm confident that your ideal specialist translator is out there. A linguist who, first and foremost, works in the language pair you need (i.e. translates out of the language of your country, into the language of country you want to target). But, equally importantly, a linguist that understands your specific sector – someone who will be able to find the right terms to communicate the value of your product and your brand in a way that resonates with your target audience.

Translators can offer so much more than an ability to take words in and reproduce them in another language. Each one has followed a unique path and has a different background and experience, leading to different interests and specialisms. These can be broad fields, such as legal, medical and sustainability, but often within these vast sectors you will find linguists sitting in their own little niches – be it mechanical engineering patents, patient facing materials in clinical trials, or wind energy. But how do you find the right professional for you and your business?

Translation agencies

An easy first step to contact a large translation company and ask them to find you a linguist. They will certainly be able to help you, and they will assure you that the latest software is being used so that you get the most economical solution in the fastest timeframe. Now, let’s dig into what happens next. The translation agency will search amongst the freelancers on their system to find someone to outsource the project to. In an ideal world, they will look for a translator whose experience and expertise matches your project. Let’s say you need the user manual for your medical device translated. The agency may look carefully for a translator who has previous experience of translating user manuals in the medical field – or they might send the request out to 5, 10 or 30 translators who have medical listed among one of multiple areas they work in and wait to see who replies first. The project is assigned to the translator who happens to be looking at their inbox right then and responds the quickest.

Do you think this would result in your ideal outcome? Perhaps you would be lucky and the translated materials would be fit for purpose. Now, a few weeks later you need product packaging translated. There is no guarantee that the same translator, the one who has to some extent become familiar with your product, will be available. One option when you get a good result is to tell the agency that this person is your preferred translator. However, it’s unlikely that you will be able to build up a relationship with them directly and build a mutually beneficial and lasting partnership. A large translation agency offers the convenience of taking on the search for you, among the translators they already have registered, at the possible expense of in-depth knowledge and close communication with the translator.

Professional associations

Another approach would be to start by looking for a professional association of translators or linguists either in your own country, or in the country where you want to sell. In the UK, the two major organisations are the Institute of Translation and Interpreting (ITI) and the Institute of Linguists (IOL). There are many more around the world. These associations will generally have a directory of linguists that you can search through, and you can build a shortlist of professional translators to approach. The advantages of seeking your linguist through this route is that you can be confident that they are qualified and committed to their profession, and that they will have standards of business that they adhere to. Membership of a professional organisation also signals a commitment to carrying out continuing professional development (CPD), so you can be sure that the person you choose is staying on top of developments in their specialist field and keeping their language skills polished.

Some associations, such as ITI, also have smaller networks for linguists working in specific fields (remember those ultra-specialist niches I mentioned?). They may have their own websites and directories, and membership of a network like this is an indication, before you even make contact, that a linguist is truly committed and dedicated to a particular field. One example is the ITI Medical Network, which has a searchable directory of highly knowledgeable and skilled professionals here.

Six degrees of separation – mining your own network

“I read somewhere that everybody on this planet is separated by only six other people. Six degrees of separation. Between us and everybody else on this planet. The president of the United States. A gondolier in Venice. Fill in the names. I find that A) tremendously comforting that we're so close and B) like Chinese water torture that we're so close. Because you have to find the right six people to make the connection.”

So says the central character in the 1990 play By John Guare, Six Degrees of Separation. How far the world has progressed in terms of connectedness over the past 40 years! Shouldn’t it follow, then, that you must only be a couple of steps away from your ideal translator?

But “you have to find the right … people to make the connection”.

You can ask for recommendations from contacts in your industry, especially if you know they have had success selling abroad. Alternatively, you could scour through your contact list on Linked In or another social network. Maybe you will find a linguist in your network, but they don’t have the right background or language combination – feel free to go ahead and ask them for a recommendation. Linguists tend to know a lot of their colleagues and will be likely happy to help you find someone – or at least bring you one degree closer to that ideal connection.

Jae Marple, a sports and tourism translator, explains how this can work "Having done some work directly for another client who got in touch again several weeks ago, I was prepared to give up some of my evening to jump on a quick call about their latest marketing translation/localisation request, despite knowing from the outset that I wouldn’t be able to handle it myself. I explained that I wasn’t the right person for the job due to one of the two language pairs required being in the wrong direction (English into French) and the other being beyond my expertise entirely (English into Italian). I then offered to find two colleagues with extensive experience in marketing translation/localisation, spending the next two hours liaising between them and the client until I found an arrangement that worked for all the parties involved."

It may feel like searching for an expert translator will be a huge amount of effort and perhaps you don’t feel you have time. But ask yourself – just how critical is your communication with your customers? How critical is your reputation? How critical is it that people understand how to use your product or service correctly, to gain all its benefits? Is it worth compromising on, or is it worth investing the time to find a partner you can trust to deliver translated materials that will send the right message?

What about AI or machine translation?

Aside from the usual concerns about risk, specifically in terms of data confidentiality and security, when you are looking for translation of highly specialised materials some serious questions need to be asked. Will an AI tool (or LLM, large language model) know the right terms that you use in your industry? Will the written output make sense, with one idea following on logically from the next? Is a tool of this kind able to produce writing that engages and motivates your target audience? Remember that AI does not have any genuine intelligence (the I might be better understood as "imitation") and it can't understand context in the same way a human can. Mistakes are only too likely, and you can only be sure of avoiding errors if the output is checked by a human. This process could well be more time-consuming and expensive than having human guidance from the start.

A recent example I saw in my work was describing the discussions at an upcoming conference, to include "thématiques d'intérêt et sujets d'actualité". This had been rendered by a LLM as "topics of interest and topical topics". This translation is technically correct, word for word, but it is hardly engaging. A sentence like this found in a document aiming to attract international attendance at a conference could impact the credibility of an organisation, and it is unlikely to resonate with potential attendees.

There may be other cases when you simply need to get an informative message out to international staff, without it being crucial to sales or reputation. This could be the opportunity to try out these tools and see if the result is worth the perceived time and money saved. If successful, you could take a hybrid approach and save the high-value documents for your human translator to handle.

Making the choice – what matters to you?

What do you need to achieve with your translated materials? This is the question you need to ask yourself to choose the best way forward with choosing a translator, and to decide whether you need to go the extra mile to look for one that specialises in your field.

If you need a suite of documents translated into multiple languages, a translation agency could well serve you best as they will have numerous translators working in different subject areas and language pairs in their database. On the other hand, maybe you only need translation into one or a handful of languages but the documents for translation are highly specialised, whether the topic is medieval buildings, brain surgery or nuclear technology. Here, it may be feasible to work directly with one carefully selected translator, or a team with one of the translators acting as a project manager. A search through a professional organisation could be the starting point, and worth the time investment to get it right and achieve the outcome you want.

It may be that you have only occasional, less critical communications for translation, and your budget is tight. In these cases, as long as the material isn’t confidential, you could see what kind of results you get from online tools – you already know their names. You could also send this kind of work to a translation agency, who will no doubt offer you a quick turnaround.

When it comes to documents that your brand reputation depends on, or that are crucial for your product or service to be understood and used correctly, this is the moment to choose a specialist translator. It may take time and effort to find the right person, but a translator who is prepared to invest the time to get to know your organisation and your product or service they can ultimately add value and help you to achieve the results you are seeking.