Translations International

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by Angie McNeill

If you know that your document will be translated into another language, take some extra time to do a basic international edit. Mountains of research have been done to determine the types of sentences and word origins that are most translatable, but the following items should be on any international editing checklist:
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• Select your translation service with as much care as you use in the choice of your legal counsel, your accountants or your advertising agency. Ask them about their translation resource database and their communications facilities.
• Develop a working relationship: Your project manager soon becomes familiar with the terminology characteristics of a client’s business, and takes a very helpful part in delivering the best possible work, consistent with your own corporate style, at the most economical cost.
• Questions may arise when there is more than one plausible way to render a crucial section. A personal follow-up discussion with the translator who did your work should be available if you have questions on meaning or interpretation.
• Translators are bound by a strict and specific code of professional ethics concerning security. Discuss steps they take to prevent disclosure of proprietary material.
• Typesetting and printing: If you have a sales brochure, or any document with a formatted combination of text and graphics, most translation firms offer typesetting and printing facilities that provide a turnkey solution to the demand for professionally finished material, with the entire project supervised by professionals.

Continue reading below for a more thorough study of the translation service selection process.
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Written by KIRK ST. AMANT and reprinted with permission from INTERCOM, the magazine of the Society for Technical Communication. Arlington, VA U.S.A.

International online access is growing at an amazing rate. In China alone, the number of individuals with Internet access grew from roughly 2 million users in 1999 to over 25 million users today. As a result of various international programs in both the public and private sectors, online access is now poised to expand rapidly throughout the world. For technical communicators, this projected growth means an increasing international client base that can use online media to access technical materials. As international clients and co-workers gain online access, technical communicators will need to devise design strategies for effective online materials for this audience.

In many cases, professional localizers (individuals who redesign materials to meet the expectations of a particular cultural audience) work with an in-country webmaster to design culture-specific sites. But for many companies, especially smaller ones, issues of cost, skills, and time prohibit this complex process. Often, the burden is on the technical communicator to design Web sites that translators can easily and quickly adapt to other cultures. This article examines ways in which technical communicators can design Web sites to facilitate translation and localization and increase access to a wide international audience.
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Written by JOHN BALCHUNAS and reprinted with permission from INTERCOM, the magazine of the Society for Technical Communication. Arlington, VA U.S.A.

Since the formation of the European Union (EU) in 1993, member countries have continued to develop and strengthen a single-market economy. This trend to unification is evident in the recent push for translated product documentation and labeling in EU member countries. Focused largely on health and safety concerns, the EU’s industry-specific directives govern the language requirements of end-user documentation. While the overall scope of the directives varies from industry to industry, most mandate that documentation must be provided in the national languages of all member states (General information about the EU, including lists of member states, can be found on the Web at www.europa.eu.int/index_en.htm) Companies in many different industries are working at a feverish pace to produce translations of end-user documentation to meet EU deadlines, some of which are as early as December 2003. As a result of these deadlines, technical communicators in affected industries- such as medical devices and home appliances-are quickly overcoming many traditional translation hurdles. Documentation departments have formed solid relationships with translation agencies, streamlined documents to facilitate translation, and developed corporate level translation policies. However, challenges remain for documentation departments and translation agencies worldwide. One of these challenges is the process of successfully coordinating an in-country subsidiary review, which consists of providing an electronic copy of translated documentation to corporate subsidiaries for linguistic review. Unlike traditional quality control reviews, which focus on the technical accuracy of the text, in-country subsidiary reviews focus on the accuracy of the translation. If your company is doing business in the EU or plans to do so in the future, you’ll want to become familiar with subsidiary reviews. Although not specifically required by the EU, they are a common practice and one that will prove valuable in ensuring accurately translated documentation.
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