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International companies need to translate financial statements quite often, from and into various languages. In order for the translation to be accurate, specialized translators need to be assigned to the task as it comes with its unique challenges.

Is it hard to translate financial statements?

Yes, when it comes to translating financial statements, many difficulties crop up, making the job quite hard and challenging to translate.

Following are the reasons that make the translation of financial statements hard:

Specialized Translation

Financial statements, compliance documents, price sheets, and corporate communication, each of these components are needed to be translated, and each type of document adds its own challenges. The original files may be delivered in various formats, like InDesign, Word, Excel or PDF, and each of these will be treated individually to be translated accurately.

Precise Terms

Translating precise finance terms, and doing so consistently, is the difficulty in this business. To be able to translate financial statements, the translator must have an in-depth knowledge of the particular phrases that are used, and not just in one language, but in two or more. To maintain consistency, it is also essential that these words are translated in the same way across various documents.

Not only must language be compatible across business papers, but it must also comply with the International Financial Reporting Standards published by the International Accounting Standards Board, and approved by the European Union. Translators must be up-to-date with IFRS changes, as all translated reports are lawfully required.

Glossaries and translation memories can be an excellent help in maintaining uniformity. This means that even if different translators are working on various documents for the same client – consistency will be supported and errors will be diminished, as appropriate terms are saved in one database.

Working with Numbers

It’s one thing guaranteeing terms are translated consistently, but when it comes to finance – numbers are equally, if not more important. You can’t randomly move, delete or add any numbers when it comes to translating financial reports, or the entire text could be presented incorrectly.

It’s also essential to think how dates, decimals, and currencies are handled in different nations, and to assure uniformity of language throughout the report.

Fixed Deadlines

In the financial business, statements need to be published as soon as the numbers are, and this can only suggest one thing for translation agencies – high amounts of work to be turned around quickly. Yearly statements and financial reports usually have fixed dates, so this can put pressure on translators to work hard to meet fixed deadlines.

Confidentiality

Finance businesses often deal with classified data, from both their clients and from their own business. If financial statements need to be translated before they are published, WAPA Translations handles this information secretly. All translators working on the projects have Service Level Agreements in place and have signed Non-Disclosure Agreements (NDA) to make sure data confidentiality is not breached.

The way documents are supervised should also be as reliable as possible. Rather than sending unencrypted emails containing delicate information to translators, a secure and trust-worthy Language Service Provider should have confident translation management systems in place to assure that documents can be uploaded and downloaded, but remain safe within the system.

It’s essential that financial clients work with trusted WAPA Translations, a language translation agency, who has expertise in translating financial documentations in any form.

Make sure you hire WAPA Translations who can translate financial statements while meeting your needs regarding cost, quality and time, but also concerning security.