by Michael Bastin | 14 Feb, 2020 | Business Tips, Translation
As more and more businesses expand into international markets, the need for translation has increased.
It can be tempting for companies to rely on bilingual employees or translation software for this work, but is that enough?
Is it worth spending money on a professional translation service?
The dangers of doing it alone
As with any professional translation service, qualified translators guarantee a quality product.
Although translation software has come a long way, it still fails to produce nuanced texts which take context into consideration.
And, while your bilingual employee might have no problems communicating with international business partners in their native language, without experience and training they will struggle to produce accurate translations that are fit for service.
Not to mention, it will take them much longer than a professional.
Relying on these subpar measures will lead to translations containing errors, leaving your customers with a negative impression of your company.
Bad translations tell people that you are unprofessional and may lead them to question your company’s abilities in other areas.
This could result in loss of business and, in the worst cases of mistranslation, legal action being taken against you.
The value of spending money on a professional translation service
Now that we’ve touched upon the issue of poor-quality amateur translation, let’s take a look at how and why professional translators are able to produce such high standards of work.
Like experts in most fields, it comes down to training and experience.
Professional translators, like those working for BeTranslated, have gone through many years of education in order to become experts in translation, as well as working hard to be skillful linguists in their language combinations.
In addition to this, professional translators usually have experience and training in their specialisms. For example, financial translators may have studied economics or travel and tourism translators may have worked in the travel industry.
This education is continuous throughout their career; translators must stay on top of changes in both the translation industry and the industry of the specialism, as well as continually working on their linguistic skills.
This effort leads to highly skilled professionals whose work cannot be compared to that of amateurs or machines.
It’s also worth noting that when you hire translators through an agency such as BeTranslated, you can rest assured that all their translators are of a certain standard and that they exclusively translate into their native language.
Investing in translation means investing in your business success
If your company’s motto has been “let’s try to do it ourselves instead of hiring a professional” in relation to translation, we hope that the information provided in this article is making you question your stance. Your attempts to save money by skimping on translation could prove costly in the long run.
Instead of asking yourself if you should outsource to a professional translation service, you should start asking, “What is the best translation service for my business?”
Finding the right translator for you, who is skilled and knowledgeable in your industry, could make or break your international expansion.
At BeTranslated we work with talented translators with language combinations such as English to Dutch and Spanish to French.
If you are in search of a reliable translation service, look no further. For more information or a free, no-obligation quote, contact us today.
by Michael Bastin | 14 Feb, 2020 | Languages, Business Tips, Multilingual
Employing multilingual people or staff with a knowledge of foreign languages is crucial for companies that are working at an international level.
Having a good knowledge of English, for example, is a significant advantage in the workplace as in many locations around the globe English is considered a lingua franca when working with overseas clients.
With that said, the ability to master additional languages could be just the thing that gives your business the competitive edge.
This is particularly important when doing business in regions where knowledge of English is not a given.
Consider hiring staff that are proficient in languages that are relevant to your sector, whether that’s Spanish, French, Chinese, Korean or any other language.
The benefits of speaking your clients’ native language
Your client will view your dedication to having invested the time to learn their language as a long-term commitment.
Furthermore, this will reward you with long-standing relationships and loyalty from your customers. It’s also worth noting that having an understanding of the language used in your new market will enable you to acquire far better insights into the local character, customs, and beliefs.
This is invaluable knowledge when it comes to marketing and providing the best service to your clients.
Multilingual employees help foster strong relationships with clients
Employing multilingual people can bring great benefits to your company. These employees will enable your business to seamlessly connect with foreign customers and other local organisations.
The ability to provide your services in multiple languages gives clients a strong impression of your company; it will build greater trust and appreciation for your services, resulting in strong relationships with your clients.
These relationships can be translated into significant profits, meaning hiring multilingual employees is a sensible financial decision.
What if your team isn’t multilingual?
Not all companies have the luxury of employing multilingual people, which can put them at a disadvantage. But never fear!
By hiring a professional translation service, your company can gain many of the benefits of multilingual employees, and more besides.
Translators can be used for a wide variety of communicative tasks, from informal communications between companies to legal contracts and marketing campaigns.
Contracting professional translators guarantees that any content you produce in the target language is of the highest quality.
BeTranslated’s vast network of expert translators could be just the thing your company needs to facilitate its international expansion.
Get in touch today for more information or a free, no-obligation quote.
by Michael Bastin | 14 Feb, 2020 | Culture, Expat Life, Lifestyle
We all love a holiday and getting to enjoy the many wonderful new delicacies we can experience while abroad.
Whether it’s tucking into a delicious paella or tasty empanada when in Spain; sweating over a hot curry in India; or sampling noodles by the bowlful in South East Asia.
However, despite the new and delicious culinary delights on offer, there’s always a selection of typical British foods expats miss, especially after relocating long-term to a different country.
These products that we long for are often the first things we head for when on a visit home. Perhaps we’ll pay over the odds when we discover them in international supermarkets.
Some of us even beg our families to ship supplies of our favourite goodies. While our specific cravings may vary, there are certain British foods we all love.
What are the classic home favourites?
Here’s a list of the foods most commonly missed by Brits abroad. If you’re visiting a British friend in their new home, why not take something from this list as a little bit of Britain?
Proper British tea
Nothing beats a good old cup of British tea; it’s our answer to everything!
Biscuits
Something we love, especially to accompany our tea. From chocolate digestives to custard creams, we all love a good biscuit dunked in tea.
Heinz baked beans
As the saying goes, ‘beans, beans, good for the heart, the more you eat, the more you fart’! There’s nothing quite like beans on toast to conjure images of home.
HP sauce/Heinz tomato ketchup
Both these sauces have a unique blend of spices that no other brand can replicate. They are great condiments to accompany many traditional English meals.
Cadbury’s chocolate
While the UK is not famous for its chocolate, there’s something about Cadbury’s that no other chocolatier can quite match.
Crisps
Although many countries have their own crisp brands, nowhere that I have visited can contend with our variety and choice of flavours.
Marmite
Love it or hate it, this salty, savoury spread is one of the British foods expats miss from home. It’s best served with butter on hot toast and a nice cup of tea. There’s just nothing else like it!
The best English breakfast
Sausage, eggs, mushrooms, beans, toast, tomatoes, hash browns, and black pudding is also what we commonly refer to as a fry-up.
Although it’s not something most people eat every day, it’s known as a great hangover cure, and sometimes it’s the only thing that will hit the spot.
Fish and chips
Our big, fat potato chips and fried, battered white fish are something special.
We buy them wrapped up in newspaper, traditionally from speciality restaurants by the sea.
Interestingly, it is eaten with different condiments or side dishes depending on where you are in the country.
Sunday roast
This is a traditional Sunday meal and consists of roast meat (such as beef, chicken, or lamb) Yorkshire puddings, roast potatoes, and greens (vegetables) with gravy.
This is the average English family’s go-to Sunday lunch and is served in pubs throughout the country.
The English bits we can live without
Whilst our favourite English foods have us longing for the green grass of home, there are some things Brits really don’t miss when living overseas.
Chief among them is the weather! Britain is famed for its gloomy grey skies, cold temperatures, and rain.
Many expats claim that one of their main motivations for moving abroad was to escape the British weather and get a bit of sun in their lives.
If you have immigrated to another country, you may be looking for a professional translation service to assist you with the translation of business documentation or other projects, and BeTranslated’s expert translators are here to help.
Contact us today for more information or a free, no-obligation quote.
by Michael Bastin | 13 Feb, 2020 | Education, Adventures in Globalization & Localization, Multilingual
Monolingual Britain and the Case for Professional Translation Services 🇬🇧
British businesses carry a quiet handicap into every international deal: most of the people running them speak only one language. English opens doors across the world, so it feels efficient to lean on it — until an HMRC letter arrives in French, a Spanish distributor proposes contract amendments, or a German buyer asks for product documentation in their own language. That is the moment English stops being enough.
Britain’s monolingual habit — and what it costs UK businesses
The UK is, statistically, one of the least multilingual countries in Europe. British Council research puts the proportion of adults who speak only English at roughly two-thirds of the population, and the same research found that a sizeable minority wish they had made the effort to learn a second one.
A British Council survey of 3,000 UK adults found that roughly one in four regret never having learnt another language fluently, and nearly a quarter believe adding a second language matters more than ever for life and work in Britain.
Source: British Council press release, 2023
That gap is not just a cultural footnote. A study commissioned by the former UK Trade & Investment department (Foreman-Peck and Wang, 2014) concluded that weak language capability holds the UK back from trade it would otherwise win. The All-Party Parliamentary Group (APPG) for Modern Languages has repeated the finding consistently in its reporting to Parliament.
Research cited by the APPG for Modern Languages estimates the UK loses around 3.5% of GDP every year in lost trade, largely because of weak second-language capability across business and government.
Source: APPG for Modern Languages / Foreman-Peck & Wang (UKTI, 2014), via New Statesman Spotlight
For an exporter in Manchester, a law firm in the City of London, or an e-commerce brand shipping from Birmingham, that is not an abstract figure. It is the quote you did not win, the distributor who chose a German competitor, and the Companies House filing your overseas partner could not read.
Why school French rarely translates into business fluency
Most British pupils encounter a second language — usually French, Spanish, or German — at secondary school. The trouble is that language study is only compulsory to age 14, and A-level entries in modern foreign languages have been falling for more than a decade. GCSE classes give pupils a foothold, not fluency.
Even disciplined adult learners rarely reach the level needed to draft a commercial contract, negotiate a cross-border supply agreement, or prepare a Home Office immigration bundle. Language apps, evening classes, and private tutors will help you travel and socialise. They will not prepare you to be legally and commercially accountable in a second language.
When Google Translate and bilingual colleagues fall short
For internal email or a quick message to a holiday rental, machine translation is fine. For anything that carries legal, financial, or reputational weight, it is not.
Consider where UK businesses routinely need professional language support: contracts bound by English law but signed with EU, Middle Eastern, or Asian counterparties; HMRC correspondence and tax filings for overseas operations; Home Office documents for Skilled Worker visas and Right to Work checks; patient information leaflets and consent forms for the NHS; Companies House filings and due-diligence packs for M&A; product manuals that must comply with UK and EU safety regulations.
In each of these, an error in translation is not an inconvenience — it is a liability. Which is why any serious UK business eventually arrives at the same question: who handles this properly?
What professional translation services actually cover
A capable language partner does far more than swap text word-for-word. BeTranslated’s professional translation services for UK businesses are built around the situations that actually come up in British commercial life.
Legal translation UK. Commercial contracts, shareholder agreements, court filings, witness statements, and regulatory correspondence for UK courts and tribunals — handled by translators with a legal background rather than generalists.
Certified and sworn translation UK. Official translations for the Home Office, UK visa applications, marriage and birth certificates, academic qualifications, and apostille/legalisation for use abroad. The UK does not operate a sworn-translator register in the way Spain or France does, so certification here is provided through a qualified translator’s formal statement of truth.
Website localisation UK. Adapting your site for British buyers — British spelling, pricing in pounds, UK legal notices, and culturally appropriate references — or for the overseas markets you want to enter. Localisation is not translation with a thesaurus; it is rebuilding the site so a reader in Paris, Madrid, or Amsterdam feels it was written for them.
UK SEO translation services. On-page and off-page SEO for multilingual websites: keyword research in each target language, meta tags, structured data, hreflang, and localised content that ranks in Google’s regional indexes.
Technical and medical translation. Product manuals, NHS patient-facing documentation, clinical trial paperwork, and engineering specifications, delivered by subject-matter specialists.
Interpreting. Remote and on-site interpreters for UK business meetings, arbitration, medical appointments, and conferences — covering the languages actually in demand across British cities, including London, Manchester, and Edinburgh.
The commercial upside is not theoretical.
The APPG’s National Recovery Programme for Languages reports that UK SMEs deploying language skills achieve export-to-turnover ratios around 43% higher than their monolingual competitors.
Source: APPG for Modern Languages, 2019, via British Council Voices
Learn languages where you can — hire professionals when it matters
None of this argues against personal language learning. A director who can open a meeting in French or close it in German builds trust in ways no translation ever will, and the appetite is there: the British Council’s data shows 18–24-year-olds are the keenest group, with more than a third saying they have always wanted to learn another language.
But running a UK business in 2026 means dealing with contracts, regulators, and customers in more languages than any one person can master. You do not translate your own audit. You do not write your own tax opinion. You should not translate your own commercial documents either. When the stakes are high, bring in specialists. Request a free quote from our UK team and keep practising the languages you already have.
FAQs: Professional translation services in the UK
Do I need a sworn translator in the UK?
Unlike Spain, France, or Germany, the UK does not operate a sworn-translator register. For most official purposes — UK visas, Home Office applications, academic recognition — you need a certified translation, produced by a qualified translator and accompanied by a signed statement of truth confirming accuracy. For documents going abroad, you may also need notarisation or apostille through the Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office.
How much do professional translation services cost in the UK?
UK pricing is typically quoted per word, per page, or per project. Rates depend on language pair, subject-matter complexity (a financial contract costs more than marketing copy), certification requirements, and turnaround. Expect a premium for urgent, legal, or medical work. BeTranslated provides a free, fixed quote before any work begins, with no hidden fees.
Which documents usually require certified translation for UK visas and Home Office applications?
Typically: birth, marriage, and death certificates; academic transcripts and diplomas; police certificates; divorce decrees; bank statements; and sponsorship letters for Skilled Worker or family visa applications. The Home Office requires certified translations for any supporting document that is not in English or Welsh.
What is the difference between translation and website localisation for a UK audience?
Translation converts the meaning of your text. Localisation adapts the whole experience — spelling (colour vs color), currency, dates, units, imagery, cultural references, legal notices, and SEO. A US site localised for the UK might change “shipping” to “delivery”, “$” to “£”, and “zip code” to “postcode”, among dozens of other adjustments. Done well, localisation also covers multilingual SEO so you rank on google.co.uk and other local Google domains.
How long does a UK legal or business translation take?
A short contract or certificate is usually ready within 24–48 hours. A full set of M&A due-diligence documents, a multilingual website, or a technical manual will take longer and is scoped on a project basis. BeTranslated confirms the deadline in writing when the quote is accepted, and delivers through a single UK project manager so you always have one point of contact.
by Michael Bastin | 13 Feb, 2020 | Startup Business, Business Tips, Outsourcing
Start-ups, small developing businesses, are continually on the rise and are producing fresh crops of young entrepreneurs.
Thanks to the growth of remote working and the ease of low-cost travel, small businesses are able to cross borders and trade internationally in order to achieve success.
Every business owner’s main aim is to increase their turnover. With a start-up business, there are many recommended ways to go about this.
In this article, we will go through the main components you should focus your resources on.
How to make a start-up business competitive
In our fast-paced modern world, the business market changes rapidly and, as an entrepreneur, it’s crucial that you stay in tune with relevant new trends.
Keeping on top of new tools and methods of reaching your customers admittedly involves a time investment, but the financial return can be significant.
The advent of social media has enabled entrepreneurs to develop business models that are unique to this generation.
Harnessing the possibilities offered by different social media platforms could be key to your company’s success.
The international nature of the internet also allows businesses, with a little help from professional translation services, to connect with global audiences, thus expanding their earning potential.
This can be particularly beneficial to companies offering niche products or services that may struggle to find a sustainable market locally.
Do you know the value of outsourcing?
As small companies grow they inevitably need support in certain areas as the business can become too big for just one person, or even a small team, to manage alone.
One solution to this issue, of course, is to employ more staff, which can be a significant financial commitment. However, there are other, more manageable, ways to outsource work.
Recognising the areas where you need help is the first step.
There will be some tasks that you won’t feel comfortable delegating, but others, perhaps which aren’t your area of expertise, could benefit immensely with some outside support.
Instead of hiring a new member of staff, you can contract external companies or freelancers to work on specific one-off projects or on a regular basis.
Evaluate your strengths and weaknesses
As individuals, we all have strengths and weaknesses, and the same goes for our employees.
Recognising where your start-up business needs a little help allows you to contract the best companies or freelancers for your specific situation.
If you are planning on expanding into the global marketplace, however, there are a few areas we would urge small businesses to focus on.
Three of these that we recommend you focus on are finding a reliable shipping company, a high-quality marketing agency, and, of course, a professional translation service.
Three easy, viable steps
Let’s take a closer look at how you can use these outsourced resources to help your venture flourish. Following this basic strategy can lead to some outstanding results for any start-up business that’s ready to break into the global marketplace and experience major growth.
Expand your network through translation
As your business expands into international markets, it’s inevitable that some translation and/or localisation of your content will be needed. As well as correspondence between you and any overseas clients, you will need to consider translating marketing material, websites and social media, and, potentially, legal or shipping documents.
It is vital that this work is performed by professional translators who are specialists in the relevant field, as well as experts in the language and culture of the corresponding countries.
Poor translations can lead to serious errors such as giving a bad image of your company or even causing legal issues. Find a translation agency you can trust, build up a solid relationship with them, and you won’t regret it.
Reach new clients through strong marketing
Investing in marketing support can really make a difference when it comes to finding new clients. We encourage you to think digitally when it comes to marketing.
Consider using affiliate marketing and teaming up with bloggers and influencers whose brands align with your company’s ethos or target customer. This can be a relatively economical way of reaching large audiences through powerful platforms such as Twitter, Instagram, Facebook, YouTube, and Pinterest.
Ensure you can get the product to the customer effectively
For a long time, it was only big brands and large corporations that could afford to ship their products overseas at a reasonable price for the customer, but these days that’s all changed.
By outsourcing your logistics and shipping needs, you can send your products to even the remotest countries around the world with minimum hassle.
Outsourcing your shipping and fulfilment also allows you to avoid many of the complications associated with international customs. For UK-based services, check out Parcel Monkey and Parcelhub.
Get started with your start-up business
Whether you’re preparing to launch your first start-up or expanding an existing business into new global markets, you are now armed with some valuable insights into how to reach your fullest potential without burning out. What are you waiting for? Start-up success awaits!
When you’re ready to hire a professional translation service, BeTranslated and our highly skilled translators could be a perfect choice.
From European languages like German to international languages such as Korean, we have the right translator for you.
et in touch today for more information or a free, no-obligation quote.
