Context is written or spoken words that come immediately before a passage or word to clarify its meaning. It would be easier for transcription services to offer audio transcription and any other type of transcription with a context. Context is essential in translation because translators will need to do comprehensive and arduous research to determine the meaning and intention of the author’s original content without it. It’s therefore easy for translators who offer translation services. For example, with the help of a context, the translation services English to Finnish will be able to do their job quite well without the struggle of researching the meaning of words in a content.
Additionally, free translations on the internet or machine are not recommended. This is because they deliver awkward translations that do not reflect the original meaning of some words. A word might have a lot of meaning, so these types of translations will not be able to bring out the correct meaning for a word. For this reason, human translation services are recommended.
So, why is context important in translating different foreign languages? Below are explained reasons;
It Helps Get the General Meaning of a Content
. It might be extremely challenging to get a text’s general meaning, especially when an author is unknown. If translators figured out the content themselves, it would take the longest time to complete. In addition, they would mistranslate things. This is because they would keep guessing the meaning of words in the content.
Therefore, without context, a translator cannot understand the meaning of the whole text. For example, we can have a text talking about the word bark. As we know, the word bark has different meanings and some of them are the exterior covering of a tree and the sound that a dog makes.
If the content has a context, it will help the translator get its general meaning, making it easy for them to understand and translate the whole content.
Ensures Readability and Comprehension
Readability means that the context will be decipherable and legible, while comprehension is the ability to understand it. Context is crucial in professional and business needs in marketing, website and app translations for it ensures readability and comprehension of the content. It also ensures that the professional tone of the developing text is respected.
It Helps You Connect with Your Target Audience
Context in translations not only aids in ensuring that a content is communicating its meaning but also allows you to easily connect with the target audience. How information will be received and interpreted by the target audience will be determined by the context of the particular content. If your content is about your company, you should ensure that it iseasy to read and understand for the target audience.
A context, therefore, results in the translator understanding the entire content and it will make them translate the content correctly.
When potential customers understand your content explaining your products, they will easily get lured to buy from your company.
Improves Specialization in Translators
There are two factors influencing the meaning of a situational context or text-linguistic context. Situational factors may include gestures, facial expressions, political and economic background or culture. Linguistic factors mean that any word in a text interacts with the other words in that text to bring out the general meaning. A linguistic context can either be remote or immediate. The immediate contexts are sentences or words that make evident the context throughout the whole text.
To be able to translate documents into different languages, the translator must have enough knowledge and skills to understand both factors in the context to phrase translations in the correct way. Ideologies may also serve as a factor to refer to a context. Therefore, people should consider language as a part of the culture and it should be understood well in its context.
It Helps Make Quality Translations
Quality translation is one of the most important factors that can lead to the success of your business. Poorly translated content will devalue your products and services and also your company’s reputation. On the other hand, high-quality translated content will enhance the attraction of your business as well as your products.
You should look for translators with enough experience to make you quality translations that many people will understand. Together with all varieties of contexts available, translators will do quality translations.
It Saves Translators Energy and Time
As we have seen above, translators can take so much time to research deeply the meaning of the words to be translated into different foreign languages if a context is absent. Also, they would waste so much energy and get so drained from researching various sources the meaning of certain words or texts.
But with the meaning clarified in the context, they don’t have to go through all these struggles because they already know what they need to know to do a translation