Nine tips that can save you money on legal translations

So, you already know protecting your organization and its brand through the professional translation of legal documents is the way to go. Here are some tips to make your investment even more profitable:

1. Request quotes and prepare your projects in advance (surcharges of between 30 and 50% can be applied to rush jobs).
2. Send your documents in editable formats. If you can’t copy and paste the text into another application, chances are we can’t either. This allows us to avoid additional steps (and their costs), detect repetitions in the texts and not charge you for them, and run more precise and faster quality controls. For example: if you send us an update of a contract for translation in editable format, we’ll only consider the changes made, not the full text.
3. Request discounts for repeat text. At Ant we offer them automatically whenever possible (we have software that compares versions to offer you savings).
4. Evaluate with your translation project manager which documents (and parts) need translation, and the most appropriate order to avoid duplicating work and achieve maximum quality. The best way to save money is to avoid unnecessary translations.
5. Send the final documents, a small modification can be costly: changing a comma implies that the project manager will have to analyze the changes and that a translator and a proofreader will have to adjust, at a minimum, the entire sentence.
6. When you write documents, keep in mind that they will be translated, if you can reuse parts of the text, you may also be able to reuse their translations.
7. Develop a long-term relationship and maintain good communication with your translation agency/language service provider (LSP).
8. Agree on a communication protocol with your translation project manager and designate someone in your organization who’ll be responsible for answering queries and approving or rejecting suggested changes (due to the attention they pay to texts, translators often detect inaccuracies and ambiguities that can be adjusted to improve the original documents).
9. Choose a vendor who’s up to the task. Investing a little more initially is usually more profitable than running damage control later on. What is the cost of an unfavorable ruling, getting caught up in an unnecessary legal battle, or losing a patent? What are the benefits of being protected by a contract that truly represents the interested parties and increases trust between you and your customers/vendors?