by Michael Bastin | 14 Nov, 2023 | Business, Communication
In a global business world, the financial sector is increasingly turning towards premium financial translation, so that international stakeholders remain up to speed with their investment’s performance.
Developing a close relationship with a specialist translator is crucial for those in the financial industry, and especially for businesses operating in English and French-speaking countries.
Firstly, as a technical field, the finance sector has a lot of its own specific terminology and complex ideas which specialists understand easily, but can seem very daunting to outsiders.
In addition, cultural and regulatory idiosyncrasies play a big role and should be kept in mind when translating from English to French.
Financial translations that aren’t carried out by professionals, might allow the reader to get the gist of your message, but they will not precisely convey its originally intended meaning.
Poor communication can have a negative effect on your future viability, risking loss of trust from stakeholders, and meaning your potential failure to meet your client’s expectations.
Industry knowledge is key in financial translation
As you review your yearly balance sheet, you may wonder who else might be able to distinguish between accruals and realised profits or understand why prepayments are classified as liabilities.
Most people would agree that translating a document which seems completely unfamiliar is incredibly daunting, and there is potential for it to go very wrong.
In financial translation circles, an anecdote recently caught my attention, an accountancy firm which had decided to delegate their balance sheet translation to an unspecialised translator, was surprised to notice that “stock” had been wrongly translated into “shares” in French, as opposed to “inventories”.
A mistake like this, which can damage a company’s reputation, could have been easily avoided if the translator had undertaken rigorous training, whether academic or professional, in the financial sector.
A professional French-to-English translator must also be aware of the guidelines regarding formatting, numbering, and terms in both countries.
Most English-speaking countries follow the rules given by GAAP or IFRS, whereas most French-speaking countries adhere to the Plan de Comptabilité General (ICG).
The reason this matters is that certain English technical concepts have no French counterpart, such as EBITDA (earnings before interest, taxes, depreciation and amortisation).
Consequently, a professional translator must undertake a contextual analysis, in order to find the French equivalent; in this case, it could be BAIIA or EBT.
Also, from an editorial perspective, certain financial documents, such as investor reports, tend to obey different modes of expression, as they cater to readerships with different expectations of the document.
To address all the above risks, ideally, you should rely on a professional translator who has had experience working and/or studying in both a French and an English-speaking country.
Some of the financial documents a financial translator might handle
- Key investor information documents (KIID)
- Investment fund reports
- Investor reports
- Balance sheets
- Income statements
- Financial reporting guidelines
- Bank documents
- Information memorandums
- Investigation papers
- Risk management and asset management documents
- Audit reports
One thing that these documents have in common is that they carry considerable weight in terms of the amount of information they contain and the business stakes they involve.
It is crucial to treat the translation of these documents with great caution because of the potential repercussions.
Low-quality French translations often result in an increase in the total costs of your operations, as you inevitably need to call upon a professional to clear up any mistakes.
Additionally, severe delays may occur if your financial presentations (or memos) fail to accurately convey the terms and conditions of your projects.
Finally, your company may suffer loss of reputation in French-speaking countries or incur lawsuits from your proposals being rejected by the local regulatory bodies.
It is important for your translation partner to measure these risks appropriately.
Often, specialist translators handle these challenges with the tools they use, which are able to manage terminology accuracy, and will include post-translation checks and proofreading in their services.
Finding the perfect agency and building a long-term relationship
Building a long-term relationship with your financial translator ensures that your firm’s idiosyncrasies are well known, therefore limiting the possibility of your identity as a business being misrepresented.
The longer you work alongside a translation provider, the higher the quality of your French documents will ultimately become.
To determine whether your partner is suitable, consider their degree of financial specialisation, shown by the qualifications or experience of the financial sector translators.
Also, make sure that your provider has a robust terminological base and can adapt to your preferences if need be.
Finally, make sure that communication between your firm and your provider is clear and honest to avoid costly mistakes and ensure your stakeholders ultimately remain perfectly informed; this will only benefit your business in the long run.
BeTranslated is a professional translation agency that specialises in financial and corporate texts. Looking for advice or a quote?
Get in touch today to find out more!
by Caridad Batista | 31 Oct, 2023 | Communication, Localisation, Marketing
A press release is a short document, whose goal it is to inform and keep journalists, and the public updated about your business’ events and innovations.
Whether it is regarding the launch of a company, or the release of a new product, press releases allow you to establish an effective line of communication with the public.
This is where press release translation services are necessary.
A press release translation into multiple languages, gives your document the opportunity to get noticed globally.
Let’s say that your company wants to step onto the international scene, this will help to grab everyone’s attention.
Translating a press kit can be a very powerful and crucial marketing strategy, and it can allow your company to be very well understood by your target audience.
Why do you need press release translation services?
It might be that you would like to publish a press release as soon as possible, but do you think that it will connect with a multilingual audience if your publications are only available in one language?
If your press releases are only available in English, it is possible that you could miss the opportunity to reach out to a much wider audience.
By translating them into other languages, you can reach out to journalists, the media, and audiences that you would not have reached out to otherwise.
If you provide the information in other languages, you demonstrate that you are invested in clear and effective communication.
Of course, the first step is to find the right translation agency to help you launch your press kits into the global market.
Press release translations are a crucial marketing strategy
Undoubtedly, translating your press releases into various languages is a fundamental element of a comprehensive and impactful marketing strategy.
It goes beyond simply reaching a wider audience; it’s about ensuring that your core message, the information you want to convey, resonates with individuals from diverse linguistic backgrounds.
As you begin to put together your press releases, it’s important to bear in mind the quintessential nature of a well-crafted press release, which should effectively address the five fundamental questions:
Who
This question pertains to the individuals or entities involved in the subject matter of your press release. It’s about identifying the key players, whether they are organizations, individuals, or groups, allowing your audience to understand the context and relevance of the news.
What
This is the crux of the matter. What is the news? What are the developments or events you are announcing? This question delves into the heart of the matter, revealing the substance of your message.
When
The timing of your news is crucial. It helps your audience understand the relevance and urgency of the information. Is it a recent development, an upcoming event, or a historical retrospective? Answering the “when” question provides context and immediacy.
Where
This question concerns the location or scope of your news. It’s about geography, be it a specific place, a global perspective, or even a virtual space.
Defining the “where” helps your audience place the news in a specific context.
Why
The “why” question delves into the motivations, reasons, and significance behind the news. It’s your opportunity to explain the purpose and the impact of the subject matter.
Why is this news important, and why should your audience care?
By addressing these five fundamental questions in your translated press releases, you ensure that your message resonates comprehensively and effectively with your target audience, regardless of their language and cultural background.
This not only expands your reach, but also strengthens your ability to connect with diverse markets across Europe, Asia, and America, ultimately contributing to the success of your global marketing endeavours.
Furthermore, translating your English documents into neighbouring languages, such as French, German, or Italian, can help expand your market reach across close borders.
A press release’s quality
Only an experienced translation agency will be able to offer you optimal exposure of your press releases in multiple languages.
You can trust in BeTranslated’s professional translators to provide you with a high-quality translation in a very short time, and at a competitive rate.
Furthermore, we ensure that your company grows globally and leaves your target audience with a positive and respectable image of your brand.
When writing up a press release about your company online, it is important that it is informative, and follows the quality standards required by many media platforms.
Our translation agency is responsible for guaranteeing loyalty to the original document, as well as the quality of the final product.
Being loyal is not the same as being literal.
The precision and the thoroughness of our translators’ work lie precisely with your know-how, which allows them to establish this distinction, and therefore adapt a text to a cultural setting, which is inevitably different to that of the original language.
We ensure that our translations are precise and remain loyal to the original message.
Simultaneously, we carry out a localisation process, which allows us to adapt the translation to the very heart of the culture of the chosen country.
Time factor of press release translation
Everyone will tell you that the time taken with press release translation is a determining factor. Editors worldwide demand that the presented information is relevant, but above all, handed in on time for publication.
For this reason, quality isn’t our only priority.
At BeTranslated, we are very strict with deadlines, and our professional translators are used to working under tight time constraints.
We will work together to ensure that our team completes your press release translations, returning them to you within the agreed timeframe.
This way, you will be able to broadcast synced press releases internationally.
Trust BeTranslated for your multilingual press release translation services
Our extensive experience and unwavering commitment to quality make us an ideal ally for any of your projects.
Our proficiency spans across various sectors, aligning perfectly with our aim to cater for a wide range of industries.
Don’t hesitate to get in touch with us to find out more about our services.
Get a free, no-obligation quote today!
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by Michael Bastin | 10 Oct, 2022 | Communication, Audio Blog, Good to Know
The biggest improvement in the movie industry has been breaking the language barrier: we were no longer limited by foreign languages in films, meaning that we could watch almost anything we wanted to.
This made people appreciate film-making more than ever because each country and culture added something unique to the table.
French, American and Chinese films took the world by storm, and with that, movie dubbing and subbing became a must for a movie to gain an audience.
Dubbing is the process where the original script sound is replaced with words from a different language. It is a common practice in animated movies, for example, as well as in news and documentaries.
On the other hand, subbing is just the transcribed text placed at the bottom of the screen so that people can read what the characters are saying.
Both techniques seem easy to perform, but they’re more complicated than it looks.
Let’s find out more about how dubbing is done.
Scripting and timing
To get started with movie dubbing, a translator is needed to translate the original text into the new language.
This is the trickiest task because all languages have different sayings and meanings, so the text must be thoroughly checked before voice actors are involved.
The voice of the actors speaking that foreign language will be recorded and then audio-edited to the original film.
Besides being a translated version, it’s also an adaptation of the original, where tone and emotion are crucial factors.
Each language is different and voice actors must replicate those feelings relevant to their native country, which is not an easy task.
One of the biggest challenges of dubbing is timing.
First, a translator needs to be thoughtful about the sentence’s duration and not make it too long because the voice actor needs time to pronounce everything properly.
Plus, the words need to be fitted to the visuals that appear on the screen—work that takes hours to complete.
Casting and recording
The next challenge is finding the perfect person to fit the character and the movie’s vibe.
Voice actors should first mirror the tone and inflection used by the performer from the original film. You might notice these details even in the way voice actors speak in animated movies for children.
The emotion is still there, including the excitement, the singing, and the sadness.
Next is voice recording.
There are two styles: the out-loud reading of the script by actors while they watch the original footage.
This is the standard method, where there will be three beeps, with the performers saying their lines at the fourth beep.
But to get there, performers go through rigorous training.
For example, a British voice actor will study a variety of acting approaches, like Stanislavski’s system, Strasberg’s method, and Meisner’s technique.
Then there’s the alternative recording method, used primarily in France and Canada, where actors read the lines of dialogue at the bottom of the screen while the movie plays.
Editing
Getting to the most tedious work, editing, is converging the new dialogue tracks and recording with the original movie sound.
It all starts by dismantling the original voices from the main soundtrack and creating a “music and effects track” (M&E).
After the foreign dialogue is recorded, the editors will fit it in the right places of the M&E to blend with the sound.
The audio post-production is done in three distinct steps:
- Editing everything from the speech to the music and live action. This is when the audio takes are chosen and combined and the music is cut to fit as close as possible without affecting the sound quality.
- Mixing music, adding extra sound effects, and balancing natural speech. Editors will use audio equalisers, dynamic compressors and noise reduction features.
- Mastering the sound by levelling the video so that everything sounds equally good. Editors must consider the devices people are playing the sound from, and given that they’re mostly smartphones or laptops, they should master the sounds accordingly.
Why movie dubbing matters
Movie dubbing can be easily underestimated by people who watch subbed videos and movies.
That’s because if you are used to a certain type of voice and talking style, it may sound weird to hear other voices perform.
But subbing takes away the essence of the movie. Besides the fact that you need to pay attention to the text and the screen, it may be tiring to follow everything that is happening.
A study by the British Film Council in 2010 concluded that fans of mainstream cinema prefer dubbing, while people interested in foreign languages want to see a subbed film.
In the end, it’s a matter of taste, but watching a subbed video might alter your experience, which lowers the movie’s quality.
However, there’s a downside to dubbed movies too.
If you want to learn a foreign language, it’s more challenging to do so by watching dubbed movies than subtitled ones.
But dubbing can change the film by improving the sound effects and the dialogue, regardless of the conditions in which the audio was recorded.
Moreover, it can increase the reach of a film project since it can be released internationally, and people can view it in their native language.
Let’s take the example of Japanese animations called anime.
The language they’re recorded from the start is quite difficult, but as soon as voice actors started dubbing anime, their popularity rose immediately worldwide, and now everyone knows about Naruto, for example.
Given that the mouth’s movements don’t have to line up with the audio, voice actors are not that limited when it comes to performing.
Wrapping up
Dubbing and subbing movies and video animations are the most remarkable changes in the cinematography industry.
Although they seem easy to do, each process is followed by many challenging steps in order to achieve the perfect audio.
Plus, watching dubbed and subbed movies can help people learn new languages better, as they get to see how voice actors interpret and talk.
by Michael Bastin | 23 Apr, 2021 | Communication, Audio Blog, Technology
If you are looking to share your company video, YouTube advert or documentary with an audience that doesn’t speak English, hiring a professional dubbing service for your audiovisual content might be the solution you’re looking for.
Our translation agency works closely with many experienced figures throughout the dubbing industry who can give your content the boost it deserves.
Dubbing opens the door to potentially millions of viewers
Audiovisual translation is one of our specialities. You will know by now that, at BeTranslated, we set a great deal of store by subtitling English-language content into other languages.
Subtitled video content on social media benefits from a considerably bigger audience than text-free video. The same goes for clips that are dubbed into the language of the target market.
Whether as an alternative to subtitles or in addition to them, dubbing audiovisual content is good publicity for you in your chosen language(s), whether it’s for your corporate video, your product advert or the classes on your YouTube channel.
In reality, using a professional dubbing service for your English-language video can put you in touch with literally millions of potential consumers.
Dubbing into French alone could allow you to reach not just France but Belgium, Switzerland, Senegal, Haiti, and Canada, among a great many others as well.
As you have put a lot of time and effort into producing a professional video, it makes sense to reach as big an audience as possible and more people will be able to understand it if it is accessible in one, or even two, other languages.
Latin America and China, for example, are major international markets – both home to a huge pool of buyers who will want to learn about your product in their own language.
Total professionalism with the best dubbing and voice-over actors
Our international network of linguists has grown and grown over the years to encompass a wide range of profiles, and many voice actors from a variety of backgrounds have swelled our ranks.
Consequently, we collaborate with voice actors offering voice-overs in Spanish, French, German and more besides, and with experience in adverts and TV channels.
Lip-syncing – matching lip movement to speech, as seen in many films and TV series – is one field that our voice actors excel in, giving you an unparalleled viewing experience.
Simple unsynchronised reading, as in a documentary with an off-screen narrator, is another option.
Our voice-over actors work with state-of-the-art recording equipment, therefore ensuring optimal sound quality and perfect delivery whatever the broadcast medium, from TV and Internet to cinema screen and auditorium.
Our translation agency guarantees professional dubbing artists in any language
Are you looking for an appealing French voice to explain the finer points of your company’s goals for 2024 and beyond?
Maybe your product will soon hit shelves in Italy and you know that only a video in the language of Dante has the ability to reach consumers in Rome, Naples and Florence?
Have you just launched your multilingual e-commerce website and want to offer a welcome video in Spanish or Chinese to be able to reach (much) more of the world?
Our translation agency is here to help. We offer the professional voice actors you need, the languages you’re looking for, and unrivalled actors.
BeTranslated has more than 20 years’ experience in professional translation, subtitling and voice-over.
There is nothing worse than the experience of dubbed audiovisual content done by an enthusiastic amateur with just an old microphone and an old version of GarageBand.
To really make an impact on your target market, professionalism is key.
Please do not hesitate to contact our team to get a quote within 48 hours and to find out more about our services.
by Michael Bastin | 13 Nov, 2020 | Communication, Business Tips
Why is that you ask? Well, because we have more in common than you think.
Translation agencies and communication agencies have the same aim: to simplify information exchange between a company and its target audience to initiate a business relationship.
Translation agencies address businesses that are looking to reach an international audience, while communication agencies speak to all types of organisations but especially those with international aspirations.
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by Michael Bastin | 24 Jul, 2020 | Communication, Financial translation, Human translation
In a country like the United Kingdom, where international trade is very important, it is vital to be able to communicate in multiple languages.
BeTranslated’s commercial translation services can help businesses with all aspects of multilingual communication.
Professional translations in all main European languages
Offering your content in several languages provides definite benefits when it comes to targeting new markets and communicating with your commercial partners and suppliers.
If you are looking for a service provider for your commercial translations in all the main European and Asian languages, BeTranslated is your partner of choice.
Our dedicated commercial translation project managers will work to meet your deadlines and within the budget you have set.
Commercial translation for all your business needs
Your website and all business documents must be available in the languages spoken in your target markets — period.
Obviously, translating your website into the language of your target market is an important first step.
Offering your content in German, Dutch and other languages will enable you to reach even more customers.
Using a translation agency to translate your professional and commercial documents or website content is an investment that will produce results in the short, medium and long term.
Translators with subject specific experience
BeTranslated is regularly entrusted with projects involving a wide variety of business documents.
On behalf of our discerning professional clients, our project managers and translators work on documents such as:
- contracts
- website contents and web pages
- internal and external communications, correspondence, press releases
- brochures and advertising materials
- tender documents
- regulations, statutes, human resources documents, training materials
- annual reports
- business and development plans
High-quality commercial translation
How many times have you shaken your head at poorly translated websites or marketing and sales documents?
Communication between international companies must be carried out by qualified translators with in-depth knowledge of the markets you are targeting.
It is up to you to conquer new markets and increase your revenue — and we give you the tools you need!
Put your trust in us while you concentrate on your core business.
Translation is our profession and our passion, and our professional translators are dedicated to helping you achieve your goals.
Contact us about commercial translation services, and we will take care of all your projects in Dutch, Spanish, French, German and more.
