The global market is constantly expanding and as a business owner or professional wanting to make a company international, it’s important to make the most of these markets to increase your audience and reach new customers in other languages. Language services like translation, localization and interpreting can help. However, it can be difficult to know what language services you need. In this blog, we are going to talk about the differences between translation and transcription.
What is Translation?
When you translate a piece of content you have the ability to alter the language in which it is originally written, so more people can understand it. An example would be a company that creates a marketing campaign in US English could translate that same campaign into German or any language they wanted (or over 220 languages with the right partner). This gives organizations the ability to enter and communicate in global markets.
AI and Human translation will be used by industries to communicate accurately with customers. These include:
- Banking and Insurance
- Legal sector
- Leisure and Tourism
- Education and Training
- Software and Game Development
But truly any industry could benefit from communicating on the international stage. Bigger audiences, more clients, and increased revenue – translation should be an integral part of any scaling corporation or start-up.
What is Transcription?
Put simply, transcription is the process of turning audio or spoken word into written form. There are two types of transcription:
- Verbatim – is the case of transcribing text word-for-word. This includes all speech errors, slang words, and filter words like “um,” which will be included in the final transcription.
- Clean Read – is used in professional situations and removes any false starts, repetition, and other speech errors. In the final transcription, no language mistakes will be included.
Transcription can be thought of as a script, except it is written during or after a board meeting or recording has taken place.
This type of language service is mostly used by organizations in –
- The Medicine and Healthcare industry
- Legal Proceedings
- The Financial Services
- Manufacturing, and Engineering
- Marketing, Advertising, and Creative Industries
The difference?
Most business decision-makers looking for multilingual language services don't realize the difference between transcription and translation. So, to re-cap - transcription turns audio, live speech, and video into text in the same language. Whereas translation converts text in one language, into another language. This means you can translate a transcript and transcribe a translation! Or you could use an agency to do it for you.
With each transcription project, we can also offer a translation service. Organizations wanting to market products or services internationally will need to rely on language agencies like Wolfestone Group to provide an accurate, localized, industry-considered translation.

In today's global marketplace, it is more important than ever to be able to communicate with customers and clients in their native language. Whether you are looking to translate a website or create international marketing materials, professional translation and transcription services can help ensure that your message is clear and accurate. With the experience in providing quality translations and transcriptions, the experts at Wolfestone Group are equipped to handle any project.
Get in touch today to learn more about these services and how we can help you reach new markets!