ValdereValdere
TranslationsTranslation of financial & economic texts ― French to English

Tips for getting the best value in your translations

All translation buyers would be well served by reading the SFT’s A Guide to buying translations, from which I have developed many of my translation guidelines.

A quick reading will only take a few minutes, but will go a long to helping you understand the translation process itself.

Quality

In all my translations, accuracy and quality are paramount. While the market is saturated with word-for-word translations, my experience is that translation buyers require well-written English translations, which also contain the same vocabulary used by English-speaking financial analysts and fund managers.

Meeting deadlines

My nearly 25 years in financial publishing (15 in translation) have taught me the importance of setting realistic deadlines before accepting an order. While I always try to meet my clients’ time needs, I prefer stating upfront what I consider to be a realistic time schedule so that clients can decide early on whether they want to award me their translation order.

Two-way communications

A little time spent with a translator to resolve linguistic questions can go a long way to fine-tuning the message to your target audience.
Quality English-language communications require client input. This is why I ask clients to indicate their linguistic preferences: British vs American English, choice of glossaries, feedback on translations, etc. Moreover, it does not require much time for the writer of the French text to respond to a simple question or two, which can make all the difference in the quality of their translations.
Remember, these translations are often used by market players in their verbal communications with the English-speaking world.

Confidentiality

The documents clients send to me are for my eyes only. Unless otherwise stipulated by the client, I keep all information provided in these texts confidential. Please see information in “Contact” for the transmission of coded information.

Subcontracting translations

Unless otherwise expressly requested by clients, I personally translate all documents submitted to me. Sometimes, however, the volume and/or complexity of a translation project require the expertise of several translators.
I have developed a network of highly qualified translators and proofreaders in my 15 years of professional activity in France.
Upon client request, I can call on this time-tested resource to manage large-scale and/or complex translation projects.

French to English

While perfectly at ease in both his source and target languages, a professional translator always translates toward his native language. As an American, I am obviously better acquainted with US English, but in the financial field, I have years of experience producing texts for the UK market. It is up to the client to specify his linguistic preference at the time he places the order.