Without wishing to “big ourselves up” too much, we are regularly asked by clients to fix up a translation mess. This has usually come about as a result of clients seeking to obtain translation work from other translation companies at the lowest possible cost. In fact, this search for cheap translation work has been a noticeable difference between the Australian and UK markets since we opened in Europe in 2010.
Of course, in a global marketplace, translations can be completed very cheaply indeed. There is a ready supply of translators in South America who will translate a document from Spanish to English, for example. The problem is that English is not their mother tongue and they may never even have visited the UK so, while this may seem like a cheap solution, it may not be a very good idea to rely on such a translator when dealing with a contract, judgment or insurance policy.
However, cheap translations can have some pretty catastrophic results. As we have seen in recent months in the UK, translators are people. They are not an inanimate good. They have high-level skills, usually obtained through years of 
study and practice. They take one document in one language, immerse themselves in it for a number of days or weeks, step into the shoes of the author and the audience and then produce that document in their native language at the end of the process. This is a skill, an art and a science all rolled into one.
The recent example of the Ministry of Justice Framework Agreement has been a clear illustrator of the cost of not undertaking enough due diligence and / or agreeing to use the cheapest translation service available:
MPs take evidence on interpreting and translation services
Does this really represent a cost saving? My view (and probably now the view of the MoJ) is that it doesn’t.
This growing appetite in the UK for cheap translation services has led to another alarming trend in the translation market. Good translators are getting out. Most of the people we work with are real experts. It amazes me every time I read their work how good they really are. Given the choice of having their rates of pay hammered down by the free market’s search for low-cost translations, a few have opted to go back into legal practice, a few have chosen to retire and a few have changed career altogther. I don’t think this is a positive thing for the translation market and will only result in a downward spiral of quality. We have all seen the full circle in many other industries, including banking, so I am sure there will come a time when clients realise there is a need for lawyers to translate legal documents and insurance experts to translate insurance documents (you could extrapolate that in any number of industries including medicine). However, there will be some painful learning experiences for clients who see translation as a place where they can save costs by doing things cheaply.