Velhos Translations

The price depends on the difficulty degree and the time schedule of your assignment, but also on the language pair (the specific source and target languages involved).

Unless otherwise agreed, we deliver translations within a week from receipt of the source text. We can often respond to urgent requests for which the price is agreed separately, provided your time schedule requires working during evenings and weekends.

• Mail the source text to eeva-leena.alhos@iki.fi stating the target language, purpose and deadline of your translation. We will then quote a price and time frame for your assignment.
• Let us know if your assignment is not urgent and/or if you can plan your translation demands well ahead – you will get a better translation for less money.
• If you accept our offer, confirm this by return mail or ask for further clarification.
• Also let us know if our offer did not work for you. We may be able to adjust it and re-schedule the work.

Our pricing is based either on the word count in the source text or an hourly rate. If the file permits editing, our pricing is primarily based on the word count. Should the file require special measures or should the assignment involve localisation, transcreation or copywriting, we charge by the hour. When you send us the original  and confirm the purpose for which the target text is needed, we will give you a price offer and attach the pricelist to the return mail. A useful hint! Your translator will be delighted if you brief them on the purpose and target audience for your translation demand. This way you will also get a better translation.

Sometimes the translator wants to clarify the meaning of the source text so as to choose the best way to translate it in the given context. Even if the translator’s question seems irrelevant, they do not mean to disturb you, but to ensure the quality of the translation. The translator may even reveal discrepancies in the source text which require correcting. A good translation is the result of co-operation.

Transcreation is a creative writing process whereby the message is adapted from one language to another. The method is related to localisation and translation, but gives the writer more freedom to secure the desired influence on the target audience. It is best suited for multilingual advertising, image marketing in particular. It often fails due to disregard for the norms and conventions of the target language. Elements that sound strange to the recipient’s ears are best left out, or transformed into meanings that make sense to them.

For example, slogans should always be approached from the transcreation point of view. One of the biggest challenges of my career – a mission impossible even – was the request to translate the Finnish slogan ‘Puolimatka – perillä rakentamisesta’ into English and Russian. While Puolimatka was the company name which also means ‘halfway’ in Finnish (homonymy), the latter part of the slogan plays with the double meaning (polysemy) of the Finnish expression ‘olla perillä jostakin’: 1)  to have arrived (at a destination) and 2) to be well informed/aware; to have expertise in something. The direct translation would be something like ‘*Halfway – (but) already there when construction is concerned’. Since company names are not translated and such a translation would be awkward even so, there is no other way than to come up with a new slogan that will work in the receiving culture.

In addition, transcreation is a useful approach when the original text to be translated needs to be published to a different audience or occasion. When you define the communication task and send related materials, a multilingual communications specialist can write the text in the required language based on them. No separate source text will be necessary, which will save your time for something more important.

We can proofread your text and/or check the language, but we cannot guarantee its equivalence with the original text. Should the text have serious deficiencies, we can prepare a new translation of the text you require.