Nearly every business needs certified translation services, some more than others. This is especially true if your company has offices in different countries, or if your business is exporting products or services to other countries. If you are doing business in Canada, you will need to maintain translated documents in both French Canadian and English.
In fact, due to the increased globalization of the world economy the translation and localization industry is one of the fastest growing market segments (at least until COVID-19 came to visit). According to language industry research firm Slator, the industry grew to a USD 24.2bn market in 2024.
Fortunately for consumers, the last decade has seen the emergence of a new translation industry segment: professional online document translation services. This segment has proven to be very useful to individuals and businesses who need to get documents translated quickly. So, if you have a document or a set of documents that you need to translate, you can get an online price quote in seconds. Once you have selected the winning proposal, you can finalize the order online and pay by credit card. And since this is all done online, you can order online translation services from any location and at any time of the day or night. Translated documents are delivered quickly, often within hours of your order.
Who needs online document translation services? Here are some of the most typical examples:
Immigration documents: many people are looking to relocate to other countries. This can be for various reasons such as University studies, work relocation, political motives or the desire to seek out a better life. Depending on the country you are moving to, you may need to submit translations of various documents like birth certificates, school transcripts, marriage documents, driver’s licenses, police reports and more. These translations must be done officially and accompanied with a translation certificate or signed translator affidavit.
Medical reports: people that have the unfortunate experience of being hospitalized in a foreign country or have a medical diagnosis from a doctor in another country will need to translate medical documents. This can be hospital reports, lab reports, blood tests, imaging results (like MRI or CAT scans) and doctor evaluations. Medical tourism is another driver for the demand of medical report translations.
Legal documents: anyone who conducts business in other countries may need to translate real estate contracts, employment contracts, divorce documents, litigation documents and more.
Material Safety Data Sheets: (MSDS or SDS): any company that exports or imports chemical products are required to provide translated SDS to the local authorities.
Informed Consent: pharmaceutical companies that are developing a new drug are required to translate informed consent forms in the language of each participant in the clinical trial.
Technical Manuals: many countries require that a technical product manual, be it installation instructions, operating instructions or safety information, be available in the local language.
Medical Device Manuals: this is especially true for medical devices, where incorrect use can have potentially life-threatening consequences. The manuals must be translated to the local language.
Business Plans, Financial reports: companies that are looking for international financing or that applying for a foreign bank credit may need to submit translated financial documents.
Marketing documents: product catalogues, sales brochures, marcom documents, conference booth materials. Anything that you need to sell a product or service abroad may need to be translated to other languages.
Product packages, labels: retail products like cosmetics, toys, food products and many more will need to have the product boxes or packages in the local language.
These and other types of documents will benefit from the quick and no-hassle nature of ordering online. To sum it all up, here are the 5 reasons your business will benefit from online translation services:
Speed: Translations are delivered quickly, sometimes within hours of the order.
Price: Online translation services are usually priced much lower than translation services that you will get from a physical agency.
Anonymity: Did you ever call a agency to get a quote and then spend days dodging a pesky sales person? This will not happen with an online translation company.
Availability: Need to order your translation at 2AM? On a weekend? No problem, the online store is open 24/7 and they deliver around the clock. You won’t get this with full-service translation agencies.
Easy and continuous access: Did you ever spend hours looking for a document that got lost somewhere? That won’t happen to documents that you translate with an online translation agency, since all translations are kept in the cloud where you can access them for years to come.
David Grunwald is the Managing Director of GTS Translation, a leading online document translation services company.