Using a Professional Freelancer:
Professional translators have the writing, research and presentation skills to produce translations that are fit for purpose. They are trained, their skills are tested and they continue to participate in professional development programs aimed at language professionals throughout their careers.
Many successful freelancers will specialise in a particular niche of the industry, such as legal, medical, engineering, scientific or technical translations, and most will translate exclusively from other languages into their native language, although there are still many who can translate in both directions. Some linguists come to the profession through studying and working in a specialised area combined with a multicultural background, so a relevant degree can also be a good indication of ability if you require a specialist in a certain niche.
Certification alone denotes a professional level of competency although not necessarily a level of quality assurance. Freelance translators operate individually so you may wish to contact several for quotes in order to get a feel for them and their own quality assurance processes, their responsiveness and professionalism.
Using a freelancer requires you to consider their accountability and liability if something goes wrong; you can check to see if they have professional indemnity insurance, and ask about their quality assurance processes such as proofreading and revision.
Non-professional Alternatives:
Using a Very Low Cost Translator: In these challenging economic times, it’s important to be cost-conscious, but getting the best value for your money involves more than just being able to identify a price that is too high — it’s also about knowing when a price is too low. We know this instinctively; products and services being sold far below commonly accepted rates naturally raise our suspicions. When we see a too-good-to-be-true price, we immediately wonder “What’s the catch?”
Using a Bilingual Non-Professional Translator: Using a bilingual non-professional to work on translations can be done in circumstances where the quality of the translation is not paramount. Typically, this would happen when the translation is only needed for the purposes of gaining a general understanding of a text and if it is not to be used in an official capacity. While bilingual people are able to take their own thoughts and ideas and express them orally in two different languages, they are not necessarily trained at grasping the meaning of a text and rendering it accurately, effectively and without distortion into another language.
Quick and Easy – Google Translate and similar online tools: Google Translate is such a well known service that even though it can produce some very strange turns of phrase, it should be included as an option if you just want to understand the gist of a few words here and there. Even then, it can produce some aberrant results, so watch out! Google Translate looks for patterns in millions of online documents to generate its best guess at a translation without human involvement.