Would you pour money into sumptuously decorating your workplace, lavishing time, thought and effort on the minutest of details, only to invite along a team of graffitists to deface everything with unsightly gibberish? What’s more, would you pay a token fee to the hoodlums for their efforts?

Unless you’re the proprietor of a punk-inspired nightclub, the prospect is unlikely to hold much appeal.

Nevertheless, scores of companies might as well be doing just that when they place their promotional copy in the hands of translators with a shaky grasp of English.

Okay, the analogy may seem a bit unfair to the well-intentioned translators, but the net effect is practically the same. Like graffiti, a poor translation can be an off-putting eyesore that serves only to turn people away and erode credibility. Graffitists may be proactive vandals, but such translators are unconscious ones.

Companies tend to project their brand image through promotional material with high visual appeal, generally coming with an equally high price tag. When it comes to the copy accompanying the visuals, however, the lofty standards are often sent plummeting. This gives rise to one of the Great Marketing Unfathomables: why spend a king’s ransom on the decorative element, then scrimp and save on the functional, descriptive part (the copywriting itself), thereby undermining the entire effort?

Here in Peru, the market is swamped by spanish to English translators, who, at best, might be near native, and at worst, the C.E.O’s niece who “did quite well in English at school.” The result is that reams of text can be translated for less than the cost of an hour-long English class. In either case, the output is unlikely to convince a native speaker of anything other than the urgent need to stop reading the infernal thing.

Translators should only ever work in the direction of their native language; anything less usually results in error-strewn, inaccurate, misleading and off-putting copy – not ideal when a brand image is at stake. Getting the job done properly will cost a little more up-front, but is likely to result in far greater long-term gains as customers respond to accurate, concise and well-projected information.

The point about translation being a one-way street has been pretty well laid-out above, and is one that is widely accepted internationally. Some companies here realize this and try to avoid the problem by blithely assigning the translation task in hand to Joel, the receptionist’s Canadian fiancé, or to Diego, the accountant’s Miami-raised cousin, just because they happen to be native speakers. Lima is swarming with cash-strapped gringos who are more than happy to do a bit of Spanish to English translation on the side, so wouldn’t this be a viable, low-cost solution?

No, for much the same reason you wouldn’t entrust the writing of a company press release in Spanish to a cobrador de combi (Limenian bus conductors, not usually known for their literary prowess.) Although the spoken command of a language is an ability developed by everyone from birth, its written mastery is a more rare thing altogether. Native speakers of any language are capable of routinely committing grammatical atrocities that learners are taught to iron out by the time they complete the basic study cycle. Letting them write or translate for you can be a false move out of the frying pan and into the communicative fire.

We, on the other hand, aren’t just good at copywriting, but we thoroughly enjoy doing it. We work on projects together and our impassioned pedantry is such that we are habitually driven to the brink of fisticuffs by a disputed comma, or a contested exclamation mark.

Our perfectionism remains constant through everything we write, meaning that your project, whether it’s a piece to be proofread, edited, translated from Spanish to English or copywritten from scratch, would be in very safe hands. We cover a broad base - our combined experience spans marketing, journalistic, academic, creative and technical copywriting and translation over more than 75 years of English language usage.

We aren’t native speakers of Spanish, but because we only translate in one direction, we don’t need to be. It’s for that reason that we aren’t personally responsible for the Spanish language version of this site – we left that side of things to an experienced, native Spanish-speaking copywriter, and what you see reads and flows naturally as a result.

We are highly competent communicators in Spanish,though, with reading skills that are of a proven academic standard. In addition, having soaked up more than 6 years between us of Trome (best-selling national newspaper, of popular appeal) headlines in the Peruvian capital, we consider ourselves seasoned analysts of the national cultural barometer. This all puts us in a great position to interpret exactly what your intentions are, then project them in English according to our precise knowledge of an English speaking audience’s expectations.

If your company is genuinely serious about capturing the English speaking market, then you need to speak to your intended clients in a language they’ll understand. Your products won’t sell themselves – do them justice with outstanding, persuasive, professionally written and translated copy.

Word Fever: Passion with Precision.