24.11.2011
English to Swiss translation is more and more popular nowadays. There are several traditional areas as far as Swiss translation industry is concerned such as banking and finance, pharmaceutics, precision mechanics and tourism. Switzerland is very much a country focused on the countries beyond its borders and is therefore a major consumer of translations, in addition to its “internal“ needs in terms of official translations in the national languages (German, French, Italian and Romansch).
A Swiss company wishing to have its documents translated (into a national language or otherwise) without letting the different communities down has to therefore entrust the task to a local agency that will ensure the consistent nature of all the documents. Indeed, who else but a Swiss translator or a foreigner residing in the country for many years could fully reflect all the nuances of the federal administrative system, Swiss law and local customs and practices? In order to translate a document in a foreign language into Swiss French or Swiss German, here again a Swiss translator will be essential the final proofreading of the text.
For reasons that are not difficult to understand, it is tempting to turn to foreign translators, above all when the Swiss Franc is strong. This is logical but is likely to cost twice as much in the end: a poor translation (or one that is not tailored to the Swiss audience) cannot be used and therefore the translation has to be done again. This “delocalization“ phenomenon has impacted on the rates charged by translators and Swiss agencies which have dropped significantly in recent years, except for a number of specialised industries such as finance and the pharmaceutical industry, where the lack of competition enables service providers to charge higher rates.
Many Swiss companies prefer to go to a translation agency (if they have many documents to be translated) or a freelance translator rather than employ an in-house team. In this case, a free test may be undertaken by the agency or the translator to see whether the quality meets the customer’s requirements. Businesses prefer to use agencies for multilingual orders, in order to avoid hiring an employee per language, but also to help out in-house translators when specific knowledge is required for a particular project.
Please contact us if you wish to find out more about our translation services in Switzerland.
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