The world is full of mediocre translations, and there are several reasons for this:

The most obvious reason is that people abuse online translation services such as Google Translate. While these platforms can solve very basic communication needs among people who would otherwise not be able to understand each other, in many cases they produce tragically hilarious results, so they are not very advisable, with few exceptions.

The other reason is that many so-called professional translations are done by translators who lack the required experience or who are not native speakers of the target language. It is quite complicated, even for a native speaker, to achieve a natural-sounding translation that flows well without any mistakes, grammatical or otherwise. This is why it is always advisable for translations to be done by native speakers, who should at least be able to know when they are copying structures from the source text that don’t work in the target text, or can pick up on strange-sounding expressions that might seem perfectly reasonable to a non-native reader.

Translation agencies have the advantage that they can process large amounts of text of many different types and with multiple language combinations. However, these translations are mostly carried out by freelance translators who specialise in the various fields of translation.

It makes a lot of sense to hire a specialist translator directly:

– Know exactly who is working on your translation. Agencies distribute work among the translators they have available. Having worked with a number of agencies over many years, I can confirm that these translators often are not specialists in the field they are translating, and in some cases they are not even native speakers of the target language.

– Reduce expenses by cutting out the middleman. Translation agencies have many overheads (payroll, rent, etc.) which are included in the rates they charge their clients. Freelance translators, who generally work from a home office, can offer the same level of quality at a lower price.

– Deal directly with the translator. Working with an agency involves dealing with project managers who are often unable to address the client’s concerns regarding the translation, since they are simply managing resources, without much knowledge of the actual translation process. This means that your translation depends on a whole chain of people.

– Confidentiality. This is always a major concern, which is why we have NDAs. In any case, however, the fewer people have access to a file, the less likely it is to be leaked at some point along the way.