Accounting translation
It can be said
that accounting translation is the part of financial translation.
Accounting translation is defined as translation of accounting
documents or information from one language to the desired target
language. Every business small or big has its accounting
department. The accounting department generally keeps accounts
of the daily expenses, the payments made, cash flow statements,
income statements, balance sheets, profit and loss statements,
auditors reports, tax reports and books of accounts. The
accounting department is responsible to send reports to the top
management to keep them aware of the money flow.
In 21st century with major businesses trying to spread globally
have setup operations in various locations. Every office of the
companies naturally has their expenses and transactions that in
return require an accounting department to take care of such
operations. The accounting department of such foreign location
offices may be in places where the local native language might
be only used and preferred over other foreign languages. In such
cases the employees working in such a location specifically
speak and interact in the local native language only.
This also remains the condition while maintaining the accounting
of the specific branch office. Thus the accounting information
in such a language is required on a regular basis by the
principal offices or head offices that might be in such a
location that cannot understand the information from that
foreign branch office and the requirement of this information to
be translated in desired target language arises. This is how
accounting translation comes in sight.
This could be explained more clearly by an e.g. if an American
company has its offices in China. The offices in China would
have its own book of accounts, money transactions, payments and
expenses, cash flow statements, reports and other accounting
information. This information is maintained by employees at the
Chinese office but in Chinese language as the employees may not
understand English language. This accounting information in
return is needed by the parent company in America on regular or
periodic basis. Now the American employees do not understand
Chinese language text and so it needs to be translated from
Chinese to English language. This would also be the case when
information is sent from America to China as in that case
accounting translation from English to Chinese language would be
required.
In accounting translation the important
point for the translator to take care is understand the numbers
in various languages properly as it is a difficult task when the
languages involved in translation are like for e.g. Chinese or
Japanese where in there are several details that one should know
about the written scripts. The translator should also know the
accounting trends in the target language country to provide
information in desired formats.
