For the best and most accurate Thai to English translation, look no further. We offer the highest quality translations between the English and Thai languages. Our translators have many years’ experience dealing with an extremely wide variety of different types of documents, from legal to artistic and everything in between.
Many of our clients first come to us after bad experiences with other translation agencies. They are given poor-quality work, especially Thai English translation that is riddled with grammatical errors or work that doesn’t reflect the feeling or atmosphere of the original. Don’t settle for substandard or poor quality translations anymore. You can have confidence that we know and understand language and we will supply you with the most suitably worded translations, and never return you any pieces that have not been fully edited by professional native-speaking editors (in English or Thai). If you are interested in starting your business in Thailand, you need to make sure your translation to Thai reflects your business.
Send us your work for a quotation. Our prices are based on the complexity and length of the work you need and the date that you require the finished translation. Be careful! There are a lot of super-cheap translation places, but unfortunately, you usually get what you pay for. You may find that by using cheap translation agencies that the work they produce is unusable as it is so poorly written. Our translators are paid in accordance with their high levels of skill, yet we can stay within an agreed budget and get work back to you on time.
We work in the strictest confidence. You will not find any of our clients’ names used in marketing nor will anyone except the client have access to the translation. We work with Fortune 500 companies and some of the top SET (Stock Exchange of Thailand) companies on a regular basis. We can also deal with work for small companies or people looking for translations for websites etc.
Thai-EnglishTranslation.com also offers an editing service. If, for example, you have already had your website translated but wonder if there are any language mistakes, we can check it out for you. Our native (UK and US-native) English-speaking editors (who also know Thai) can go through your pages and suggest changes or point out errors.
Never settle for substandard English again!
For a quotation, contact us here.
“Your translation was excellent.” – Fortune 500 company (name withheld for confidentiality)
Why are so many Thai-English translations of such poor quality? If you’ve seen some really poor Thai translation to English, you may be wondering why. There are many facets to this but on these pages we will try to give you some explanations based on many years of translating and editing experience.
First, it is essential that we appreciate the huge differences between the languages. The Thai language is far less complex in terms of its grammar than English. The way it is used naturally is also quite flexible, and so quite often, the reader needs to understand things (people etc.) that are only implied – not specified exactly. This is one of the reasons why machine translation (such as Google translate etc.) give very bad translations. As artificial intelligence algorithms improve, machine translation will also improve hopefully, but as of November 2017, it is basically useless on a document of any more than a few words.
(Please note that we accept previously written Thai-English translated documents, websites and other materials for proper editing in English but we do not accept output from Google Translate or other machine-language-translation apps. If you are interested in having your Thailand-based website or other materials edited, please contact us directly.)
Differences in Tense
The English language has a dozen or so tenses but Thai is usually limited to a basic form of past tense, a simple present tense (which is often used no matter what the time frame), a present continuous tense and a future tense. Although these are sometimes combined, in general Thai does not succeed or fail on the tense alone whereas in English, the tense is vital to giving the correct meaning.
For translators whose first language is Thai (the majority of Thai-English translators), having a perfect understanding of when to use each tense can be a difficult problem requiring deep insights into the English language and its general use.
Because the original piece in Thai may not pay perfect attention to tense, the translator needs to understand the original well to put the translation into the correct tense, which is not always an easy-to-accomplish task.
Plurals
The accepted way of pluralising a noun in Thai is to repeat the word. For example, the Thai word for ‘child’ (เด็ก) will just be repeated to construct the word ‘children’ (เด็ก ๆ). This convention is not always strictly followed and it can sometimes be difficult to know whether the original writer referred to a singular or a plural noun – once again, this is something the skilled translator needs to decide for himself/herself.
Articles
In a similar way, the Thai language does not use articles such as ‘a’ or ‘the’. For translators who grew up using a language without articles, it can be incredibly difficult to know which one to choose for a given context (native speakers do it by familiarity and often find it surprising that this is so difficult to get right for those coming from a language without articles). When articles are used incorrectly, native-English language speakers tend to lose trust in whether the translation is accurate and so this is an important point to get right.
Prepositions
The Thai language does have prepositions but fewer than English and often used in a different way. Translators need to understand the subtle differences between using ‘of’ or ‘from’ etc. where Thai may only have one similar word.
Formality
Much of Thai documentation, especially for business, is still very formal in its structure. The English language has become much less formal over the years and modern business English does not require the same level of formality it did 50 years ago. This presents itself as a problem because translators try to stick to the language of the original as far as possible. In Thai, formal documents very often begin every paragraph with a formal word (often an adverb or words equivalent to English such as ‘moreover’ or ‘therefore’. This can give modern English writing a rather staid look and when every paragraph begins with such words, it doesn’t feel natural or can seem very old-fashioned.
“Thanks for your great work!” – SET listed company (name withheld for confidentiality)
Translating into your First Language
The ideal situation is for a translator to translate into his/her first language. Unfortunately, the number of English-as-a-first-language translators with the depth of understanding of Thai to do a comprehensive job is lamentably low. This means that by default, the majority of translators working from Thai into English are native-Thai speakers. Although some children who grow up in a bilingual household may have an excellent grasp of both languages, not many of them enter into the world of translation as they can often find more lucrative work elsewhere. In addition, translation is a special skill that requires years of training, not just the ability to speak two languages.
For native-English speakers translating from Thai into English, their main problems come from not having a full understanding of Thai idioms (there are many), abbreviations (especially for news reports and business) and getting the full implications of the text. The level of skill necessary for professional work takes many years of reading widely across the spectrum in Thai.
Style
Getting the style right depends on tenets such as wording, structure and formality. To keep the essence of the original is an important thing but there will always be a trade off in making the translation read smoothly and fit the content perfectly. Some words in Thai are very difficult to translate into English as it requires an understanding of cultural concepts. The same is true when working from English to Thai. The translator (and editor) must decide on what needs to be kept very directly and what needs to be slightly altered to fit with the feeling of the piece. This could be the choice of particular words or how a sentence is structured etc. One area where some translators make mistakes is following the Thai structure very directly when it might not be suitable for an English version.
