Half-year report: requirements for a good translation

Half-year reports are just one of the many types of financial documents that we translate here at Way2Global. Take a look at what it takes to ensure a top-quality translation.

A Half-year report is one of the financial documents that listed companies must produce in order to keep market stakeholders (such as shareholders and banks first and foremost, but also employees, clients and suppliers) informed regarding a company’s performance and prospects.

Similar to end-of-year reports and quarterly reports at the end of March and the end of September, a half-year report provides a snapshot of a company’s financial situation halfway through the year. As such, it’s a hugely important document for assessing the performance and health of a company, not to mention the budget and business plan, particularly in regard to future prospects and strategy.

Producing a half-year report is not just a tangible demonstration of good governance and of the company’s commitment to ensuring transparency in its activities – it’s also a tool that can be leveraged to grow a business.

Translating a half-year report can help a company identify new investments or attract interesting partnership proposals. By translating this document into other languages, you maximize its potential by expanding its audience of potential investors and partners.

In addition to an Italian version, the CONSOB (Italian Companies and Exchange Commission) also allows all listed companies to submit an optional translation of their half-year report in English. As such, many companies – including those that are only listed in England – opt to translate the document into another language (usually English), in order to make themselves more attractive to foreign investors.

However, translating a half-year report is a very delicate process due to the nature of the information it contains and given the strategic opportunities it can unlock.

Let’s take a look at the criteria you need to hit to translate this kind of reporting document well and ensure that you maximize the strategic development potential it offers.

Half-year report translation requirements

To meet the needs of the company, a translation of a half-year report must ensure that two fundamental criteria are met:

• terminological accuracy
• uniformity and coherence

Given that this is a financial document, it is naturally full of specialist terms from the worlds of economics and finance. As such, it’s vital that the work be done by a team of financial translators, i.e. a pool of experts who have native-speaker understanding of the target language and who specialize in the financial sector, based on academic qualifications or years of experience on the ground.

It’s also important that all half-year report translations deliver uniformity and coherence.

Every year, the half-year report must use the same terms and ensure the same indices and metrics are used for reporting.

The level of complexity goes up a notch when you consider that half-year reports must feature language and terminology that is coherent with that used by the company in other reporting documentation, such as quarterly reports and end-of-year reports.

Compliance with these requirements is vital to build up credibility and project a professional image to potential investors and partners. And it’s this principle that leads many companies to entrust the translation of their financial documentation, such as quarterly reports, to a professional translation agency.

Which agency to choose to translate your half-year report

To choose the right agency for translating your half-year report, you need to take the following three factors into account:

• Sector of specialization. The financial sector should be the core business of the translation agency
• Experience. The amount of experience a company has is evidence of their knowledge base, best practices and ability to meet the specific needs of the financial sector
• ISO certifications. Having one or more ISO certifications offers a further guarantee as to the quality of the translation, as these mean that the agency adheres to internationally recognized standards.

Entrusting the translation of your half-year report to a professional agency is certainly a big commitment, but it also represents an investment in strategic development.

Half-year report translation is one of the services that Way2Global has been offering for over 30 years. With our three ISO certifications – which in 2019 were joined by Benefit Corporation certification, making us the only translation agency in the world to achieve this – and our team of native-speaker translators specializing in the financial sector, we’re a hugely experienced translation partner and already work with a range of large global players.

Need to translate a half-year report? Get in touch!