Tuesday, March 18, 2008

Translation services are still needed in this day and age

Over the years how people do business in the world has changed. We now can deal with anyone any place in the world. Some times people forget that English is not the only language people do business in. When you deal with people all over the world eventually you are going to need the services of a translator no matter what language you use. It used to be that you had to have someone on staff to do the translations for you or you had to send your documents to someone and wait for them to translate them and then send them back to you. Often if you had more then one language to be translated you would have to deal with different translators. So if you needed an Arabic translation, a Farsi translation (Persian) and a Hindi translation they would all have to go to different people. This was very time consuming. If someone is waiting for an order, confirmation or wants to do business with us we don’t want to be waiting a long time to get back to them. It is important to respond as soon as possible.

At one point we were looking at importing some handcrafted belly dance belts as well as some of the costumes from a company in India to sell at festivals. The costs were quite reasonable and the company we were looking at had an English website. It was still kind of daunting for us to think about importing. When you are dealing with another country and a different language you want to make sure that there is no confusions about anything. As we live in Canada we have experience with language issues and confusion just by going to a different province. When you deal internationally you never know whom you will end up dealing with and what their written language is. It is always best to be prepared. These days you can find companies that will translate multiple languages for you, and even better you can send your items by email, fax or as a computer file. This saves a lot of time. The sooner you can get a translation, the sooner you can make a decision, fill an order, make a sale, or fix a problem. As everyone knows, time is money, even when dealing with people across the world. Business is business no matter what language it is done in.

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