Is It Ever Appropriate to Use Non-Native Language Translators?
“Quality is the most important thing.” “A translation must not sound like a translation – it should sound like an original text.” “We only ever allow translators to work into their native language.” It’s time to dig around some translation industry clichés. For many buyers of translation, the quotations at the top of the page will be very familiar – and in many ways the statements are absolutely right. You would be unhappy to receive a translation that was low quality, that sounded like a translation (and not an original), and had been written by a non-native speaker. Yes and no. Yes, you would be unhappy if high quality, polished translations by native speakers was what you required. But the assumption that high quality, polished native speaker translations is the only requirement is false, and a buyer of translation should be even more unhappy to have been sold an inappropriate service, especially when the service they were sold would have been considerably more expensive than the se
