Definitions

A translation company is a commercial undertaking providing translation services where translation activities form a complete professional process including not only translation itself but also support services.

A translation company:

• is registered in accordance with the laws of the Republic of Estonia as a legal entity whose main area of activity is the provision of translation services;

• operates on office premises which are open to the public during working hours and which provide working space for full-time employees;

• ensures the continuity of the working process irrespective of individual employees, with the majority of translations not being performed by the owner;

• uses professional equipment; and

• implements measures in its everyday activities and translation work to ensure the quality of the translations it provides.

The translation service is a translation process designed to meet the specific objectives of the client, resulting in an oral or written translation.

The written translation service comprises translation, proofreading or editing of the translated text by another individual and a review before being delivered.

Written translation can be broadly divided into two areas: literary translation and applied translation.

An applied translation is the information presented in the source language expressed in the target language. The translation services offered by translation companies primarily focus on applied translations with a broad range of topics (from business correspondence to professional texts of a highly specific nature) whose style of presentation and degree of accuracy depend on the purpose of use of the translated text as determined by the client.

Purpose of use of applied translations

• informative in nature;
• publication, including advertising texts;
• documents, including public documents, documents forming the basis of legally binding operations and transactions, patents; or
• other, which the translator must be aware of in order to carry out the translation.

An interpreter provides an oral translation.

A translator provides a written translation.

For the provision of translation services translation companies employ interpreters and translators whom they have checked and provided with additional training where necessary and whose work is constantly checked in terms of its quality.

The original text is the text submitted by the party ordering the translation service for translation into another language. Preferably this should be a text in the language it was originally written in, not a translation.

The translated text is the original text translated into the target language.

The source language is the language in which the original text is submitted.

The target language is the language into which the text is translated.

A pre-delivery review is a general check of the translated check designed to ensure that:

• the translated text being delivered to the client is in the desired format and has been prepared to the desired degree of completion; and

• the layout of the text is correct, all of the parts of the original text have been translated and the names/numbers in the text are correct.

Proofreading is a review of a translated text carried out by another individual in order to check that the text is linguistically correct and comprehensible.

Editing is checking to ensure that the translated text conforms to the original text.

1. Content editing checks that the ideas in the original text have been translated correctly, that nothing has been overlooked, that sentences are logical and that the use of terminology is consistent.

2. Professional editing checks that the terms used in the translated text are correct and appropriate in terms of the intended use of the translation.

Support services are the services offered by a translation company in addition to translation services which are designed to ensure the quality of the work: production of glossaries and translation memories; development of terminology; consultation on linguistic and professional matters; localisation; printing; writing onto data media; pre-publication text reviews; layout and design work; publishing; et al.

Localisation is the significant adaptation of a translated text taking into account the linguistic and cultural environment of the end users.