How long does a translation take?

Often, amongst the thousands of things to be done to prepare an event or the thousands of documents to be provided for a job abroad, people don’t account for the time it takes for documents to be translated.

Result: that trade fair prepared down to the tiniest detail, that technical manual for new machinery are accompanied by translations done … at night, or by some automatic programme that provides instant translations. Needless to say, the consequences could be extremely unpleasant.

To obtain a quality result, translation requires a reasonable amount of time for it to be correctly understood, for research into the terminology and a good rendering in the target language, and a reasonable amount of time is needed at least for a minimal check, which becomes all the more necessary when the translator has been allowed very little time. A reasonable amount of time depends, obviously, on the volume of text to be translated, but also on its complexity: an advertising campaign may be made up of short sentences and highly effective titles, but how much work went into it? It is always necessary to consider the time it took to draw up the source texts: it is unlikely that a translator will manage to deliver in two hours the translation of a document that took a week to write.

Don’t be caught unprepared for your next major event.