Congratulations! Your company has signed a commercial agreement with a prestigious international company. You’ve been chosen to organize a congress and every document you need have been approved; or everything is ready to proceed with the legal and administrative proceedings for you to export your products.

The problem? They need your documents in another language. So, you need an urgent translation and you need it now.

What should you do when needing an urgent translation? It may be simple, just contact a translation service provider and request to get the job done. However, with tighter deadlines come higher prices. In addition, you document might contain a lot of mistakes due to the short amount of time to revise it. And sometimes, you just can get at the time you want, because it has a lot of words and a short time to get them done.

Nevertheless, here are some tips in case the translation you need is a matter of life and death.

Consider the length of the document

Not all documents can be translated in a short time. It all depends on the amount of words the document has. Remember, one person can translate around 2.500 words per day.

So, you can’t expect that a translator get 10.000 words done in 24 hours. It’s an impossible task since this process not only consists on translating, but sometimes it involves scanning documents and convert into an editable source. During the process, the translator should take time to investigate unknown vocabulary and terms used on the document or subject. Finally, the material needs to be revised before delivery.

In conclusion, regarding to the amount of words, take into account that if you want a high quality work, it’s not advisable to request an urgent translation of 5.000 or 10.000 words in a day. So, the solution to this problem is to organize everything, so you don’t need to have documents translated in a small time frame.

If the translation is TRULY URGENT

If the urgency level is not up to you but to the company or agency that is asking you and the deadline is not negotiable, analyze your options.

The most important thing to do is to work with translators who are specialized in the subject and experienced in the field. That way, the translator will work faster without wasting a lot of time investigating. It’s also important to maintain an open communication to respond any doubt about the document.

If the amount of words can be done by one person, it’s ideal to request that only one professional works on the document for it to have a uniform writing style and terminology. If it’s really urgent or the amount of words is to much to deliver it in a short time, several translators will work on your document. However, if the service provider is good, during the editing the differences in the terminology will get corrected.

Finally, you need to keep in mind that:

The amount of time affects your investment, so the sooner you need that translation the more it will cost you.

When you request an urgent translation, you are paying a little extra for exclusivity, since the company or the translator will have to pause other clients’ work in order to deliver your work in time. In addition, the translator will have to work extra hours to finish the work. They might even giving up their lunch hours in order to finish the translation.

And last but not least,you must be aware of the risk you are dealing with.

Tight deadlines take a toll on the outcome of the final delivery, since you request an urgent job, there’s less time to make an exhaustive revision.

For these reasons, the best advice we can give you is to avoid requesting urgent jobs, and to plan your schedule and translation requests, so that the service provider translates the document in the best possible way and within a reasonable time frame.