2 factors are decisive: a selective university education and, above all, years of experience translating specialized documents in various international structures.

Adaptability forges the good translator, who often has a background other than that of a linguist: he or she has been a lawyer, chartered accountant, auditor or marketing manager, translating in-house for the company’s own needs.

The translation agency selects freelance translators through quality tests and has teams of internal or external proofreaders (experienced translators themselves) who systematically review and validate all translations.

The translations are thus double checked: by the translator himself and by a proofreader.

It is a team effort that ensures the quality of the translations.

Artificial Intelligence has evolved considerably and allows for approximate translations, it is mostly limited to an efficient translation aid (post-editing), it allows for quick translation and provides a raw translation at first but without the control and validation of an experienced translator, it can represent the danger of choosing the wrong terms and prove disastrous.

We must also question the validation process of the terminology banks that made this tool possible.

AI must be mastered, especially in the current context of global exchanges in which many documents have a loose syntax, being written by people who often do not write in their own native language.

Global constraints require us to work more and more quickly outside of time zones. Express translations can meet these expectations, but they will be limited to working documents or drafts; they will be proofread twice, but the second proofreading will be done more succinctly. They will need to be revised if they are to be published.

A sworn (or “sworn” or “certified”) translation is a translation performed by a sworn translator at the Court of Appeal.

He or she has made an oath to the Court that the translations he or she will make will conform to the original source text.

Translation is a team effort, questioning is sometimes necessary to avoid any approximation.

Some documents have been written in a hurry following successive phases of corrections or modifications before arriving at the final document and errors may persist as well as the syntax which may have lost meaning due to the many changes and corrections required.

It is important to exchange information in order to start with a perfectly finalized and understood text and thus deliver a faithful and quality translation.

In no way a school word-for-word! Delivering a good translation is an exercise in modesty, it is always possible to discuss a term, to improve a meaning, to develop it. It is a school of virtue following years of experience and confrontation with the difficulties of translation. The translator’s brilliance is to faithfully convey in another language (in this case his or her own mother tongue) the spirit and meaning of the original writer’s words, even if it means departing slightly from the source text.

The consecutive interpreter is alone and suitable for a meeting with few participants. He or she listens to and then orally transcribes what each participant has said as the mission progresses. The speaker speaks and the interpreter translates to the other participants. The simultaneous interpreter intervenes as a duo (2 interpreters taking turns every 20 minutes). As this type of mission is demanding and just-in-time, the relay of interpreters allows for the continuous maintenance of the interpretation. Interpreters work in interpreting booths if the location is equipped with one or they are equipped with headsets (provided by the interpreter or by the translation agency, which can rent headsets and install booths if necessary). The interpreter translates directly and simultaneously without pause into the headsets that each participant is equipped with.

Bio-translation is almost an ethical and moral choice, it means opting for human work and trusting in the years of experience and work done by the translators in order to always deliver a quality translation with a rigorous writing and a style that will have evolved over time due to a permanent confrontation with many texts. This long experience leads to expertise and avoids a standard translation that looks like all the others, i.e. a mechanical translation carried out by software whose quality criteria and validation of terminological choices remain uncertain. Bio-translation is a choice of human beings above all and avoids “uberizing” the new generations. On the contrary, it is to train them, to accompany them with the knowledge of the elders and with decent remunerations.

First of all, it is a translation that is faithful to the original meaning of a document but which, thanks to the knowledge and culture of the translator, is integrated into a cultural, social and geographical system in order to adapt to the expectations of a market or to make the message perfectly understood by the population concerned.