Translating and localizing corporate documents

Translating and localizing corporate documents

If you’re moving into a new market and would like to achieve success across cultures, your business will need to consider its translation needs. You may not only need to address marketing content, product packaging and labeling, eLearning materials, and customer service communication, but also administrative and general corporate documents. While translating corporate documents may not seem as nuanced as translating sales and marketing content, it still must be pinpoint-precise. Accurate translation of corporate documents helps ensure that you are able to enforce contracts, protect your company’s interests and assets, and conduct business legally and effectively in each new market.

Translating and localizing corporate documents requires great expertise in the subject matter as well as familiarity with local requirements. It is essential to engage a team that fully understands both the source and the target languages and that is well-versed in the nuances of legal and corporate terms in both locations. This helps ensure that words or phrases that are “terms of art” in the local legal or regulatory lexicon are not confused or misinterpreted. Mistakes or confusion in translating these essential documents can be devastating to your business expansion and business as a whole.

What kind of corporate documents will your business initially need to translate?

Initially, when you expand your business into a new market you must address a number of practical considerations, like obtaining and developing land or space, registering your corporate entity to legally do business, and making financial arrangements to spend and receive money. As you are setting up your business in a new market, you’ll need to translate legal documents like

• leases or real property purchase agreements
• trademark application and registration documents
• intellectual property issues like non-competition and trade secret agreements
• site surveys
• technical reports, and
• local administrative and government licensing and paperwork.

Translation will likely be necessary before your corporate management and legal teams can review, evaluate, and approve these documents. Making sure that your team has accurate and complete translations is essential to ensuring your expansion stays compliant with all local requirements and meets all deadlines.

Ongoing business requires ongoing document translation

Once you begin doing business in your new market, you will have other documents that require translation. Ensuring that these day-to-day business documents are quickly and accurately translated can be a key part of your success. These essential documents can include

• bids, offer letters, and contracts
• invoices, bills, and account statements
• goods consignment notes
• customs declarations and shipping documents.

As an ongoing part of conducting business in foreign markets, you will also have administrative paperwork to maintain. This can include

• documents for and from local tax authorities
• foreign bank account statements
• balance sheets, auditor’s reports, and quarterly or annual reports
• license renewals and certificates
• quarantine, hygiene, and safety documents.

Making sure that you stay current on these administrative and everyday business translation projects can help you make sure that each office or location is staying compliant, maintaining appropriate levels of productivity, and contributing to your business’ overall success. Poor, late, or sloppy translation can obscure problems, allowing you to overlook them until they are significant enough to seriously impact your business negatively.

Legal and judicial translation needs

Using the court system in a foreign jurisdiction can be a huge headache, but sometimes your business has no choice. Whether you are faced with defending your organization’s actions, responding to a lawsuit, or enforcing your rights and contracts, navigating through foreign legal documents and correspondence requires the utmost precision in translation. Court-related legal documents can include

• court summonses, warrants, and charging documents
• contracts
• laws, statutes, and ordinances
• powers of attorney
• texts of judicial opinions and case law
• judgments, reclamations, and claims.

It is absolutely essential that your translation team be skilled and knowledgeable in the legal system of your business’ expanded locations. Mistranslations can be devastating to your business’ operations and profitability. Make sure you enlist a translation team that understands your organization’s needs and industry, and that will be your partner through your business’ expansion, every step of the way.

At Acclaro, we use a human touch to help you open new markets, seamlessly handle translation of your corporate, administrative, and legal documents, and gain a competitive edge in over 100 languages worldwide. When you’re ready to put your global strategy into action, contact us to learn how we can help you succeed across cultures.