“The various differentiations Swans made demonstrate his dedication towards providing the best Haitian Creole translations. It is a better option than a simple Google Translate.”
Yerrilli Burgos
Kindergarten Teacher
As an English to Haitian Creole translator, over the last 7 years, I have collaborated with various translation agencies around the world to help translate documents, audios, and videos from English to Haitian Creole and vice versa.
If you need to translate English to Haitian Creole, or if you want to translate a Haitian Creole audio or video into an English text, please fill out the form below.
Testimonial from a Satisfied Haitian Creole translation client
“The quality of the work was superb”
Swans Paul supported us to translate a bunch of qualitative interviews from Creole to English. The quality of the work was superb. He was very fast at translating and communication from both sides was smoothly along the way. I would highly recommend his services and if I ever work on Haitian topics again, I would certainly work with Swans!
Carmen Leon-Himmelstine, from The Institute of Development Studies at the University of Sussex
After all those years, I have decided to launch my own translation agency, “Your Haitian Translator” to stop living behind the scenes, and to be honest because most translation agencies want to decrease the rates offered to their translators while charging the same rates to their end clients.
The less they pay to their translators: the higher their profits. And as a Haitian Creole translator, if you should refuse to work at the new rates, you either receive fewer projects from them or you receive a project once in a blue moon.
I have also had situations where translation agencies would send a project to several “vendors” and see which “vendor” would react the fastest to grab the project. I found the approach to be humiliating as it presupposes that the translator must sit 24/7 in front of the computer hoping that the translation agency will send a project and he needs to be faster to accept the project without even knowing what the translation project entails.
Another issue I faced with translation agencies: long payment terms. Some translation agencies ask you to return the project back in the shortest deadline possible. But when it’s time to pay, they want to have the longest payment period. Some go as far as “offering” 60 days to pay the translator, who is the producer of the actual translation while the translation agency is essentially a middleman.
As a result, I have decided to launch, “Your Haitian Translator” a virtual translation agency specializing in English to Haitian Creole translation.
What’s the point of contracting a native English to Haitian Creole translator when there are free online translation tools that can do the job, super-fast and free?
Let me answer the first question briefly.
Accuracy is paramount when it comes to English to Haitian Creole translation. The English language and the Haitian Creole language have different structures.
While most online translation tools can perform basic, literal, word-for-word translations, those translations don’t necessarily convey the same meaning found in the original English text. Not only will there be mistakes, there can also be complete mistranslations that totally negate the original English message.
Without a doubt, an online translation tool can’t review the text and edit its own errors. And even if the online translation tool promises to have human editors work on the original translation, accuracy is still in jeopardy. Why? For two reasons. First, as the pay is low for the human editors for post-machine editing, the tendency is too avoid putting too much effort into the actual editing step. Second, accuracy is in jeopardy because the initial quality of machine translation can be so low that it would make more sense to start from scratch.
The approach you get from an actual Haitian translator, born and raised in Haiti, is totally different from what translation machines would produce. First, I can look at the context. Second, I will be willing to edit and re-edit the text to make sure meaning is properly conveyed. And most importantly, as a Haitian person, I do care about how the message can help the Haitian community. It’s more than about making a few bucks from the translation service. It’s also serving my community.
What’s the point of contacting a Haitian-owned translation agency when you could hire a general translation agency to translate your documents from English to Haitian Creole?
General translation agencies usually turn to unknown Haitian translators like myself to get your documents translated. For over 7 years, I accepted to work behind the scenes. Although I still love and respect the general translation agencies, as a Haitian Creole translator, I have come to understand that sometimes being a cheap translator can be more important than being an accurate translator for a company trying to maximize its profits and slash its costs while maintaining a huge structure. How do I know that? Some clients have hired me as the editor because I am cheaper as the editor than as the initial translator.
Why am I telling you all this?
I am different from the general translation agencies for the following reasons.
1- I focus exclusively on English to Haitian Creole. On the contrary, most agencies offer as many language pairs as possible.
2- I don’t have a huge company structure. As a result, my rates can be lower as I don’t have too many employees to increase my operating costs.
3-Since I am actually a Native Haitian speaker who is also immersed in the US culture, I can produce higher quality translation compared to the newly-minted translator that general translation agencies turn to in order to cut their costs.
