Spanish Technical Translation

Technical translation services for Spanish and other languages is a common category of service performed by translation companies. The word technical is generally applied when the source material is of a specialized nature and contains terms specific to a particular subject domain.

What’s Meant by ‘Spanish Technical Translation’

When clients contact us requesting “technical translation services,” (Spanish or some other language) often there’s a presumption that translation of their text based material will require a translator who works exclusively in the subject domain of the source material. So for example an engineering manual that deals with the technical details of an electronics product might be a source text for translation. For such a project should the translator also be an engineer? No not necessarily. Engineers are not often not linguists. And if the target audience for the text is a general audience (e.g., consumer electronics) then translators might be asked to smooth out technical lingo to produce a translation that conforms to the reading level of a general audience. In the process translators actually improve the quality of the text relative for the target language audience.

Language or Technical Skills More Important?

In many cases the language abilities outweigh the technical ones for the translator. A translator working on a project with more technical language must certainly be able to understand the source material in order to accurately translate it. Just as important they must be able to do research to determine correct translations of specialized terms. Researching possible translations might  uncover better translations than relying solely on one’s personal experience and knowledge of a subject.

Assigning the Optimally Suited Translator Resource

Professional translators of course gravitate to projects where the subject matter is of interest to them and within their areas of specialization. Assigning an optimally suited translator to a project is one of the main functions of a translation company that performs more technical translation services. Companies maintain a roster of translators with different specialization so that the best suited translator/proofreader team can be selected. Individual professional translators will also sometimes self-select (or deselect) project assignments that they’re not suited for.