1. The US doesn’t have government-certified translators. Some countries do (such as Germany), but we don’t. Most translation companies have their own version of a certification that *some* courts will accept, but not all. There are a couple states who have state-certified interpreters (like CA), but many don’t have those either. If some entity you’re dealing with wants a certified translation, best to try to figure out exactly what they want before contacting a translation company. In a pinch, you can go to the ATA (American Translator’s Association), who have their own certification process (essentially the translator took an exam to prove they can translate a particular language), many courts and other country’s governments will accept an ATA-certified translation (but do ask if they need a translator’s affidavit, since those are an extra thing and need to be notarized on the translator’s end). Their website is atanet (dot) org
2. Feasible timelines for translation can vary a lot, depending on many factors, including how rare the language is, what type of document it is (dense legal language takes longer than a marketing brief), what other projects a translator already has on their plate, etc. At my various jobs I’ve had clients ask me if two weeks is feasible for a 20-page document, while others might send me that same document and tell me they need it in less than 8 hours. A good rule of thumb is that one translator can translate between 2000-4000 words a day (depending on their personal speed, type of document, etc). Some can do more, but that’s a good basic number you can use. So if your document is a one page birth certificate, you can probably get it back in 1-2 business days, but plan for 2-3 just in case. If it’s really short they might be able to do it same day, but that depends on if they have other stuff on their plate. If you know you need to have something translated by a certain date, send it to the translator as soon as you possibly can, don’t wait until 2-3 days before. But if you have a 6,000 word document and your deadline is in two weeks, you’re probably gonna be fine.
3. There are pros and cons to using a translation company versus an individual translator. Now, if you go to the ATA to find a certified person you can generally trust they have some idea of what they’re doing, but they also tend to be more expensive. Any given company you find online may or may not do good quality work, so do check reviews and try to get recommendations from people if you can.
Also, some things to know about companies:
A. If they say they have “thousands of translators at their disposal”, that means they use contractors. That isn’t a red flag, because literally every translation company uses contractors, almost no language company keeps staff translators because it’s just not feasible. But it does mean that you’re not going to be speaking directly to the translator, ever. You’ll be dealing with a project manager (like me) who acts as the middle man between the client and the contracted translator. It also means that almost every company can translate almost any language. They keep databases of contractors for just about every possible language (unless they’re a company that’s more specialized, like some companies focus on Middle Eastern or Asian languages, since they can be harder for US-based companies to source).
B. The biggest upside to using a translation company is that the project manager’s job is to make sure you get a good quality translation to your specifications. If a contractor delivers a poor quality translation, they’ll send it back and demand it get fixed. They’re trained to do QA and ensure you’re happy with your translation. They’re also trained in customer service (which individual translators may or may not be good at) and they’ll make sure to give you confirmation of your deadline and keep you in the loop if anything goes wrong.
C. The biggest downside to using a translation company is that you will pay more. An individual translator may charge you $0.08/word, where the translation company is going to charge at least double that, because that’s how they make their money. That can soar much higher depending on the rarity of the language, how fast you need it, and even what contractors are available for the project (translators don’t have uniform prices across the industry, far from it). If money isn’t a concern, then obviously that’s fine, but it’s worth noting.
D. If you find a company online and can’t find much in the way of customer reviews, check them out on GlassDoor. Companies with terrible employee reviews can generally be guaranteed to do shoddy work. I know, I’ve worked for a couple.
4. The old adage of “you can have it fast, cheap, or good, pick two” applies with translation. If you want it fast and cheap, you might as well use Google translate (which is terrible for any professional translation purposes). Don’t get me started on the various machine translation options out there, and know that any company that touts machine translation as their main thing, you shouldn’t use, because even if you request that they use a human on your project, there’s no guarantee. Many companies are taking to using a machine to translate and having a human proofread what it spits out, but the translator proofreading gets paid much less for those and has very little incentive to carefully make sure the translation is good. Machine translation is much like genAI at the moment, in that a lot of people think it can do stuff it just can’t. It’s fine for if you want to plug something in to get the general idea for personal reasons (like if you want to read an article in an Italian newspaper or something), but never for professional translations.
5. If you’re bilingual and want to get into the translation industry, my advice is: don’t. Move overseas and get a job as a waitress or something instead. The pay will probably be better anyway. Unless you know a really rare language, then absolutely, get into it and charge out the nose.