My work requires a lot of research. One of the challenges I encounter is when I’ll be given research materials that are written in languages other than English or have to interview somebody who doesn’t speak English.
This happened again to me recently when I had to interview a key person to my recent assignment. She is a Russian, barely speaks English and don’t even know how to write it. Your guess is as good as mine, if it were left to me, I wouldn’t be able to complete this task if I had to rely on my language abilities in Russian (because it is non-existent!). I had to find a Russian translation company who’d provide me some Russian translation services.
Luckily, I found one Russian translation agency online. I wrote all the questions that I wanted to ask my interviewee then they provided me with the Russian translations. When my subject replied in Russian, I just had those Russian translators translate them to me in English so that I can understand them and use the data on my assignment.
I’m glad to have found these translators online – real people who would translate my work for me. They really help me in completing my job in time.