TextBook Translation Services

Translation of Literary and Historical Texts

While our translation services are demanded much more often for businesses, companies, legal translations and other black-and-white documents, we do still translate literary and historical texts when a client needs them.  Sometimes they are academic in nature, and need professional historical translators and/or literary translation experts (who have additional translation skills and talents) and sometimes it is a simple paragraph or two from a textbook.  After all, literary and historical translations are among the professional translation services that were first needed by anyone communicating across languages and cultures.

Professional translations did not begin with letters, emails, or even legal business translations.  Translation of texts began with literature and historical documents, with the Bible being the first book to be translated completely.  Then it went on to be what were considered other very important documents of the time.  In that sense, historical and literary translation services have not changed. 

Expertise in Historical and Literary Translations

Some of the many challenges of a literary or historical document translation fall under a few aspects: maintaining the original author's voice and style while still keeping a natural sounding translation and conveying creative concepts or language.  It takes extreme skill, experience and patience to translate historical and literary texts, and should never be done by a novice. 

The most recent historical translation we provided a client was a French to English translation of a historical textbook.  The translation itself was over 10,000 words, and was delivered in two days - which is no small task for something like a historical textbook translation.  The translation was then proofread by a separate French translator, and returned to the client.  While we aren't permitted to disclose specifics, suffice it to say that it was a challenging translation, as with any literary or historical text translation.  But, as always, we finished the job with flying colors, and our client was very pleased.