About Fri-Trans

Fri-Trans is not a company as such, but rather a group of freelance translators who have resolutely decided to use the power of the Internet to offer their professional services directly to end clients rather than working through translation agencies. The sole purpose of this structure is to enable us to keep our prices as competitive as possible.

The core translators (FR, DE, EN) are based in the city of Fribourg and are entirely accustomed to working to Swiss standards. Other language pairs are covered by carefully-vetted translators living both in Switzerland and abroad who are members of our professional networks.

Fri-Trans translators have decades of experience between them and have handled projects for some of the largest companies in Europe including Airbus, Citroën/Peugeot, Thales Alenia Space and Repsol, as well as governmental organisations such as the Spanish Ministry of Defence and the State of Valais, and academic institutions such as the Universities of Madrid Complutense, Fribourg and Geneva.

AI Translation

Fri-Trans came about in response to the massive - and often chaotic - changes taking place in the translation industry following the mass uptake of Automatic Translation tools following Covid.

We all use AT when browsing and shopping on foreign-language websites and it is indeed a fantastic aid, as long as the information is not critical. But is AT a valid solution for translating important corporate documents? Documents which are often confidential and may have legal, reputational and/or financial consequences for the company… We think probably not. In fact, many translation customers are now prohibiting the use of AT by their agencies and translators due to the impacts on quality.

Are there circumstances in which AT can help companies save money? Yes there are, and we can help you identify them. Why not book a consultation with us today!

Fri-Trans is all about communication, be it a marketing message, a doctoral thesis, a partnership contract or a website, our translators only translate into their native language and use their language skills and expertise to faithfully transit the content of your document. As native speakers they are able to fine-tune translations taking the local linguistic and cultural context into account.

We use cutting edge CAT tools to manage translations and to ensure consistency across projects. We can also create and manage glossaries of terminology (Termbases) for our clients and reduce costs for repetitions and very similar documents. Non-editable documents such as PDFs are usually delivered in Word or another format.

We take security seriously, files are transferred between translators using a secure file transfer system entirely based in Switzerland (kDrive). We are happy to sign Non-Disclosure and Confidentiality Agreements.

Communication