Translation Business is Booming in Texas due to Mexico’s Energy Reforms

Texas is experiencing a very huge demand for extremely-technical translation services today, which was created by the new energy reforms implemented by Mexico last year.

Energy reform

Mexico’s President Enrique Peña-Nieto signed the Energy Reform itself into law in August 2014. The law opened the energy markets of Mexico to foreign investors for the first time after 70 plus years of seclusion.

The landmark reform was President Peña-Nieto’s big move to push forward the lagging economy of Mexico. It was meant for private investors to pour much-needed capital into Mexico’s electricity, gas and oil sectors. The reform mandates that 35 percent of the power in Mexico must be derived from renewable sources by the year 2024.

In a related development, Cemex, a large Mexican cement manufacturing company said last week that it has established its own energy division because of the country’s energy reform. The new division will start power projects that are seen to provide at least five percent of the country’s electricity requirements in the country by 2020.

The chief executive officer of Cemex, Fernando Gonzalez said they have high hopes for the future of his country’s energy sector and believes that their own experience in project development will help benefit the country.

Bidders

Texas-based logistics and energy companies are among those investors looking to lock in remunerative contracts from the country. It is a requirement that bidders must have all their bids and related documents translated into Spanish. These documents must also be notarized and must contain the official seal of the Texas Secretary of State.

With various companies across the State of Texas wanting to submit bids to Mexico, it had been noticed by translation industry insiders that there had been a remarkable increase in the number of companies requesting for documents to be translated into Spanish. It had been noticed that even during the slow months for the translation industry, normally falling in the last quarter of the year, many translation companies have been kept busy until the last day of the year, with several translation providers working even during weekends.

Need for translation and interpreting services

The translation work is specialized and focused on the energy sector. It is not only document translation that had a remarkable increase in demand in Texas. There is also an increasing demand for English to Spanish interpreting services, as conferences and meetings are being held frequently.

Right now there is a demand for bilingual engineers who are also experienced translators that are willing to be independent contractors, according to industry sources.

High-quality and accurate translation for energy transactions and contracts are now held at a premium, according to Nelson Balido of the Energy Council of the Americas, which is based in San Antonio, Texas. He said that he had recently supervised a multimillion-dollar deal involving the coal bed methane near the border in Coahuila and for that contract he had to hire a law firm to manage the preparation and translation of documents that filled 12 banker boxes that were submitted to the government of Mexico.

Balido added that it is preferable to hire third-party translation service providers instead of tying up their bilingual staff to do the translation work. However, he also noted that there is still a need for a local courier to bring the documents to and from the office of the Secretary of State that is located in Austin.

Image credit: Photo of Enrique Peña Nieto taken by PresidenciaMX 2012-2018 under Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 Unported license.