Professional Thai Translation Services

Rosetta Translation provides a full range of Thai translation services to companies in London and worldwide.

Top quality Thai Translation services

Rosetta Translation is a leading multi-sector Thai translation specialist. We also have deep sector expertise in translations for the legal profession,  in translations for banking and insurance, in manufacturing and technical sectors and in medical and pharmaceutical translations.

We assign every single translation to the most appropriate specialised team of highly qualified Thai translators, proofreaders and editors, thus making sure of a consistent and excellent quality of Thai translation in each of these areas.

Combined with our use of translation technology and our extraordinary flexibility as regards client needs, this results in the professional and reliable Thai translation service that our regular customers expect and value.

We also provide Thai interpreting services in London and worldwide.

For a free instant quote, please contact us at any of our local offices in London, Shanghai, New York, Paris or Luxembourg.

Accredited Thai Translators

Rosetta Translation one of the few translation agencies to hold both the prestigious ISO 9001:2015 certification as well as the DIN EN 15038 norm, the only accreditation specifically aimed at translation services. Our customers can therefore rest completely assured of the consistent and excellent quality of our Thai translations.

Our Thai Translations can of course be certified, notarised and legalised to meet your exact requirements.

For a free instant quote, please contact us at any of our local offices in London, Shanghai, New York, Paris or Luxembourg.

English to Thai Translation

For all our English-Thai translation assignments, we only use experienced, native Thai translators – capable of translating in a number of Thai dialects (Standard/Central, Bangkok, Khorat), all of whom specialise in a number of different areas of translation to give the best possible results for our customers. We then make sure the formatting is correct, which is particularly important for Thai, thus providing a final Thai translation of excellent quality.

Thai (ภาษาไทย) is a Tai-Kadai language, spoken by around 50 million people, mainly in Thailand.

At Rosetta Translation, we cater for translating assignments into and out of all dialects of Thai. Our native translators have an in-depth knowledge not just of the language in question, but also have the ability to tailor translations to various communities and registers.

Thai to English Translation

Whether your Thai-English translation assignment is rather complex and technical or more basic in style, Rosetta Translation has the right team of experienced translators on hand to deliver, with expertise in a number of areas, from contractual language to medical terminology.

As an internationally aware company, we operate as worldwide a service for our English translation as we do for our other languages. This means that we can provide English in any of the many existing dialects, whether you need British English, American English, Australian English, even Jamaican English, we have the know-how and the expertise.

Thai, Siamese or Laotian? 

Thai, sometimes referred to as Siamese, is spoken by 40 million speakers worldwide. Thai is also mutually intelligible with Laotian (spoken in Laos) even though they have differing writing systems, and the two countries often share media. Over half of the vocabulary in Thai is loaned from other languages, the majority being from the Indian subcontinent languages Sanskrit and Pāli.

Thai Tones

Thai is what is known as a tonal language, like Chinese or Punjabi, of which it has five. These tones are called mid, low, high, rising and falling. The use of the different tones can change the meaning of a word and can loosely be compared to in English (not a tonal language at all) in the way a question can have an uptick on the last syllable to denote it being a question (think the difference between saying “This one?” compared to “This one.”, the “one” in the former example is said in a slightly higher tone). That very subtle change in tone can vastly change the meaning of a sentence. An example of this is the sentence “mai mai mai mai mai”, which in Roman characters, looks like gobbledygook. However, translated from Thai, with the correct tones: mai (high tone), mai (low tone), mai (falling tone) mai (falling tone, longer vowel), mai (rising tone) means “New wood doesn’t burn, does it?”. Now we can begin to appreciate the importance of tones in Thai. Along with its 44 consonants and 36 vowels, this makes Thai a particularly difficult language to learn for native English speakers. We at Rosetta Translation only ever work with translators who are native speakers, so you can rest assured that your translation will always have the appropriate tone used so that you are confident your translation is accurately and faithfully executed.

Head, Shoulders, Knees and Thais…

Body language is always important in any language, and Thai is no exception. When we write Thai, things like tone can be easily conveyed with the use of the alphabet, however things like body language are not so black and white. Body language is extremely important in spoken Thai, such as the lowering of the head to express respect to someone seen as more senior. The feet in Thailand are considered to be dirty, so any expression made with them or towards them can be seen as offensive. A big no-no would be putting your feet up in someone’s house, although this is considered impolite in English-speaking cultures anyway. Thai people also see overly expressive gesticulation as a sign of anger, which is common in European cultures, such as in Italy. Our Thai-English interpreters understand Thai body language very well, so you can rest easy knowing that not only is the message you’re trying to convey accurate speaking-wise, but that there will be no clumsy hand gestures that may confuse or even offend your Thai business partners.

Why Machine Translation still Fails Thai

Machine translation can be a great tool for everyday people to get a gist of something in another language which they may not have necessarily previously been able to do. However, for Thai, we are still a ways off from Machine Translation taking over the need for a professional translator to perform usable, coherent and faithful translations. One infamous example was in July 2020 when a machine translation of a post from English into Thai about the King’s birthday proved offensive to the Thai monarchy, causing Facebook to deactivate their auto-translate services on Facebook as well as Instagram. It caused such offense that Thailand’s Ministry of Digital Economy and Society sent a letter to Facebook Thailand and Singapore, telling them that they needed to take full responsibility for the incident.

This is why you should trust Rosetta Translation with your translation projects, as your projects will always only ever be done by expert native translators, so you will never have to worry about mistranslations and causing offence to your readers.