Offshore Translation provides translation, localisation, interpreting, desktop publishing and language consultancy services. We offer the following services.

Translation

Offshore Translation specialises in the management of multilingual projects.

Our major areas of specialisation

Legal translation

Who better than a lawyer to translate your legal documents?
Legal translation occupies a status apart in the world of translation.
The demands of quality and style and the importance of the subject matter leave no room for amateurism or approximation. If your contracts and other legal documents are drafted by lawyers, it is essential that they are translated by a team of legal translators. Offshore Translation guarantees that translation and proofreading will be carried out by a legal professional, whether they be a corporate lawyer, a barrister or a professor of law.

Financial translation

Because every word counts, we find the translation that counts.
Your financial documents need to be translated by professionals who are abreast of the latest developments in the financial markets and familiar with new banking products and the most sophisticated accounting solutions. Our experts operate in the world's major financial centres and offer their services to the sector on a daily basis.

Technical translation

The vocabulary of a specialist is indispensable. As with financial and legal translation, technical translation requires not only linguistic skills but also an in-depth knowledge of the given field. An insufficient grasp of the accepted expressions and the technical terminology specific to a given sector generally leads to a confusing experience for the reader.

Interpreting

Our clients and partners operate, as do so many others, at an international level.
We can place professional interpreters at your disposal in Paris, London, Zurich, Berlin and even in Dubai and Hong Kong to assist you during your trips abroad or at meetings and salons which you are organising locally.

We undertake to provide you with the best available interpreter in your field of activity and we guarantee the confidentiality of all collaborations.

Benchmark practices for a quality translation

1 - No document is processed by automated translation software.

Technology cannot take the place of a professional translator. In certain cases, it can improve the quality and the consistency of his/her translations. This is the case with software which enables qualified translators to archive their translations, to create glossaries, to ensure consistency between texts translated by different translators and to devote more time to ensuring the quality of their work. These CAT tools (Computer-assisted Translation) incorporate translation memory technology and technologies for the management of terminology databases and for checking consistency. They are very different to automatic translation software, which uses completely different technology to produce disappointing translations which are clearly not of an acceptable quality.

2 - Translations are undertaken by professional translators with a skill-base associated with your sector (technical, legal, accounting or financial)

a - The recipient of the translated document is not another translator but a working professional who frequently has extensive experience in the field in question.

In order to translate a trust deed, an annual report or a reference document, speaking a language perfectly or being a generalist professional translator is not sufficient. In order to furnish the correct formulations, the technical precision and the specific terminology needed, the expertise of translators who have worked in the professional sector in question is essential. Above and beyond their skill as a translator, these specialists can only produce a document which is pertinent and satisfying for the end-user if they themselves understand and have direct experience in the given field. A translator of legal texts needs to have been involved in the drafting of deeds, of contracts and of fund prospectus disclosures, for example. A financial translator needs to have been involved in setting up equity transactions, in authoring financial analyses and in drafting financial and accounting statements. This knowledge base needs not only to be acquired but also to be kept up-to-date, because the techniques and themes are often new or as yet uncommon in the target language.

b - Knowledge of the sector, of developments in the sector and of its reference documents

Simply knowing the terminology of the field in question is not sufficient and can lead to incongruities in the translation. The concepts, techniques and practices need to be properly understood in order to avoid mistranslations, errors of interpretation or clumsy language stemming from an insufficient grasp of the formulations and expressions used by professionals in the course of their work.

Mastering a particular field involves regularly updating one's knowledge base and remaining well-informed about the reference documentation which is pertinent to that sector. An example taken from the accounting and financial sector will illustrate the scale of the task facing conscientious and exacting professional translators. In order to translate the annex of a company's financial statement which respects IFRS norms, the translators must be familiar not only with accounting procedures and standards but also with the IFRS international norms. Bear in mind that accounting experts and auditors also attend seminars in order to assimilate these new international norms.

3 - Regional and cultural differences are taken into account in the translation.

a - Identify and allow scope for the particularities of the target language

Differences in style and terminology exist between certain Anglophone countries (the USA, the UK, Australia and New Zealand). Regional linguistic variants have an importance for the reader of the translated document which is often underestimated, and concepts can vary from one country to another. Therefore only a translator who is a native of the region in question is capable of rendering all the particularities and nuances of the document while also taking into account cultural sensibilities, whether it is in German (Switzerland, Germany, Austria), French (Switzerland, France, Luxembourg, Canada, Belgium), Arabic (North Africa, the Middle East), or Chinese (simplified or traditional Chinese, Mandarin or another regional language of China).

b - Ensuring typography is consistent with the rules of the language

Typographic rules and punctuation vary depending on the region of the world and sometimes even within the same language.
Respecting these rules shows that a company is serious about its communications and about its image and that it is able to adapt itself to the language of its clients. Examples include the space which precedes, or does not precede, a colon or a semicolon, the separators for numbers such as commas, the points used to denote thousands or decimals and the way of writing dates.

4 - Incorporating appropriate timeframes into the publication schedule

Translation requires time and should feature as an integral part of the publication schedule. It consists of a number of indispensable stages, including a familiarising of the translator with the content of the translation and with the company's business activities, the particularities of publication in the target language, the use of source files, the translation itself, technical research, proofreading and quality control.
Being well organised saves time and money, because questions regarding the source text can be dealt with at an early stage and proofreading teams can be assembled in good time etc.