With the wave of globalization sweeping across even isolated nations today, the market for translation and localization services is spiralling to unprecedented heights, and is set to touch US$10 billion by the end of the year. The trend spells good news not only for those working in the area of finance: accountants, financial controllers, and CFO's of companies but also for specialist translators who have a flair for this kind of work. However, people having expertise in translating financial documents are not easy to come by. Finance is a highly specialized field and it takes special aptitude and skill sets for a translator to do justice to the job.

The market for translation and localization services is expected to touch US$10 billion by the end of the year, and the reasons are not hard to understand. The accelerating trend towards globalization in recent years has resulted in creating more work for those working in the area of finance: accountants, financial controllers, and CFO's of companies with headquarters located elsewhere on the globe. Not only do they have to generate reports and analytical statements for their local managements, but also for their overseas principals. Accounting practices are quite far different in different regions and this kind of 'double' reporting requires a level of acumen and sensitivity that far exceeds the demands of doing business within the confines of a single country or region.

Tools of the trade for someone who wants to do a financial or a legal translation have become so much more than pen, document and a general knowledge of the language. Financial and legal translators can access specialized lexicons, thesauruses, and glossaries. Many methods of research are available. Almost any language has a book that can help with the translation process.

(an open letter to international finance and accounting managers)

For many global public companies, filing their documents with various U.S. regulatory organizations means taking the forms and information from the source language and translating them to and from English. As such, the translation of financial and legal documents for internal audits (i.e. Sarbanes-Oxley Act of 2002), U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) filings, or forms and documents to meet the requirements of the Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act of 1999, calls for the use of a highly specialized language service provider familiar with the industry and its regulations.

Traps in Translating Brazilian Portuguese

Have you ever translated a balance sheet? Pretty dull stuff. Intellectually unrewarding. Once you have translated one you have translated them all. Or so most people think—but I strongly disagree. Lots of repetition and near-repetition, yes. But I see this as a plus, not as a minus. Repetition gives me more chances to try different approaches and solutions; near-repetition gives me a chance to fine-tune solutions that reflect the minute differences between expressions that are almost the same—but nevertheless different.

Simply stated, it is not the same thing. Take a car, for instance. Brazilian engineers and American engineers (or Chinese engineers, for that matter) will discuss cars using different languages, but they will be discussing a car—and a car is a car, a definite plus, at least as far as translation is concerned.

Late in 1996 financial statement indexation was officially extinguished. That supposedly sounded the death knell for inflation. Inflation may be dead, but it has left its marks on our language—and they still haunt translators and users of translations alike. I have this hunch that dictionaries will never cope with them effectively.

What a Brazilian bank must call a van Gogh

ICMS is the abbreviation of Imposto sobre Operações Relativas à Circulação de Mercadorias e sobre Serviços de Transporte Interestadual e Intermunicipal e de Comunicação, ainda que as Operações se Iniciem no Exterior (Tax on the Circulation of Goods, Interstate and Intercity Transportation and Communication Services, Even when the Operation is Initiated Abroad).

The reasonably well-dressed woman in her thirties rises to welcome me. We hold each other by the elbows and our cheeks touch twice, then we sit down. She is my gerente de conta, or what would be called my relationship manager in a U.S. bank.