It is easy to hire a translator to interpret documentation and text, but every now and then you’ll need the best possible translation you can find: Someone who will be able to translate every nuance and subtly, because if they miss anything it could have massive repercussions on your professional life.

The business world is full of examples where a massive company has tried to implement an advertising campaign in a new foreign territory without completely thinking their slogan through. As such, there are a number of advertising faux pas where certain corporate giants have ended up looking rather foolish, when their ads’ meaning gets lost in translation.

China, it seems, has caused some of the biggest problems for advertising campaigns when it comes to translation. For KFC, their catchphrase ‘Finger Lickin’ Good’ was poorly translated as ‘Eat Your Fingers Off" while Pepsi’s "Come Alive with the Pepsi Generation" slogan was mistranslated as "Pepsi Brings Your Ancestors Back from the Grave".

So was this complacency by these firms or did they simply not hire a good enough translator? Either way, it is a prime example of when you need to pay the money to get a job translated properly.

It is in the field of business when translation has to be perfect. Well, business and international relations, but we’ll focus on business for this article. Contracts that are drawn up between foreign companies have to be word-perfect and as such, high quality translation is demanded as the alternative could potentially lead to lawsuits or a breakdown of any lucrative deal.

This doesn’t just apply to contracts but also marketing leaflets, advertisements and company protocol. Any mistranslations could come back to legally haunt the company, and as such translations must be perfect to ensure otherwise. This is also relevant for technical manuals and other forms of written instructions that, unless the translation is fully accurate, could lead to problems in the future for any company.

Hiring a high quality translator in this instant, often means finding someone who not only has a firm grasp of both languages but also a background in the industry that they are translating so that the terminology and various industry phrases are not lost on them.

This would apply to any company or professional in the marketing, business, legal and technical industries. As with all things, accuracy is key so don’t risk your company looking foolish for the sake of saving a few pennies when it comes to translation.