Agrifood translation

For the EU as a whole, the agrifood industry is the main manufacturing activity. The international economic recession has had little impact on this industry, which sees a positive outlook in regard to the export market as a result of the stabilising effect of the CAP (Common Agricultural Policy) on member states' agricultural trade.

The impact of the agrifood industry in Europe

Global crises highlight the importance of certain sectors in the daily lives of citizens, which tends to lead to a reordering of priorities in which it is clear that food supply is non-negotiable both during times of crisis and during good times; these goods are both basic and essential.

However, faced with border closures and travel restrictions, companies within the industry were forced to focus on local markets to secure their own food supplies. Nevertheless, despite possible global slowdowns, this sector has barely suffered and can easily experience a recovery in numbers.

In terms of the international market, the main destinations for European exports are United States, South Korea and Switzerland. It should also be noted that the most exported products from the EU to these countries are: wine, spirits and liqueurs, chocolate, pork and wheat.

The professional translator's role in the agrifood sector

Although professional translation plays an essential role in all foreign trade activities, it is paradoxical that the agrifood industry does not enjoy the same level of importance as other areas, such as medical translation or legal translation. Why is this?

• Many entrepreneurs in the sector are reluctant to exploit foreign markets, as they consider that the profit margins they obtain are not sufficient to venture into exporting their products outside their local area.
• Those who do, often entrust the translation of their documents to free machine translation tools, assuming that they will save on the costs of hiring an agency or a translator.

The reality is that agrifood documents that need translating are not usually machine-translatable, as they use a highly specific language and present a number of additional challenges that require the involvement of an international translator who brings experience in different fields. This covers agricultural regulations and agricultural machinery instruction manuals, where the translator needs to have a good mastery of both legal translation and commercial translation, and also needs to localise the translated documents, making sure that they read naturally and without foreign terms and words that might not be understood by the target readers.

These are precisely the skills and experience that our sanscrit translators offer.