The acquisition expands Translations International’s face-to-face interpreting capabilities -and strengthens its existing government contracting business unit with the addition of ACT’s GSA language services schedule.

Suraj Singh, Managing Director of Translations International Inc., stated, “The acquisition of Advanced Communication and Translation (ACT) is perfectly in line with our overall business growth strategy and strategic goals. ACT is a very profitable small business which over the last 14 years has developed a solid practice and reputation in the fields of translation and interpretation. Face-to-face interpretation has been a long time core business sector for ACT, but is a new area of business for TIINC , and the combined services will allow us to expand our language offerings to both current and future clients. We are very proud to welcome the ACT team to our company.”

Monique-Paule Tubb, former President of ACT, added: “I feel very good about having sold to Translations International, because we share the same corporate values. I know that my clients, consultants and staff will be in good hands and I can leave with peace of mind.”

ACT’s translation and interpretation services project managers will remain in place—continuing to serve ACT’s clients and ensuring a smooth transition and the exceptional level of service they have come to expect.

About Translations International Inc.
Translations International Inc. is a leader in the translation of business communications, ranging from marketing materials and web sites to legal contracts and manuals. With over 15 years of experience in the field of technical translation, Translations International is “The Center for Technical Translation^®“. Web: www.TIINC.com Press Contact: Shaun Daggett, sdaggett@tiinc.com (703) 969-4896.

As a leading provider of translation services to a large number of global 500 companies, governmental agencies and leading defense contractors, this certification puts the company in a unique position to take advantage to the growing number of supplier diversity programs in each of these sectors.

MMSDC states their mission clearly—Providing a direct link between corporate America and minority-owned businesses is the primary objective of the National Minority Supplier Development Council, one of the country’s leading business membership organizations. It was chartered in 1972 to provide increased procurement and business opportunities for minority businesses of all sizes.

“Many companies have come to realize Minority-owned Business Enterprises meet and surpass corporate supply standards, and have extensive programs to support businesses like Translations International.” Said Shaun Daggett, Executive Director of Corporate Development at TIINC. “As we diversify and seek new business opportunities and explore new channels, we expect this certification will open doors to exciting new business challenges for our company.”

About Translations International Inc.
Translations International Inc. is a leader in the translation of business communications, ranging from marketing materials and web sites to legal contracts and manuals, we are your source for technical translation services. At Translations International Inc., we ARE “The Center for Technical Translation®” Web: www.TIINC.com Press Contact: Shaun Daggett, sdagett@tiinc.com (713) 969-4896.

I’ve been lucky enough to have lived and worked for a long time outside the United States-in Europe, in Asia, and in South America-and I’ve seen hundreds of American executives coming and going in the international marketplace.

And in my view most of them did just fine without the help of the culture cops, who feed on the notion that it just won’t do for dumb Americans to be let loose among the sensitive souls in older and more civilized societies until they’ve been through a boot camp of costly culture-study programs.

I’ve got a bug in my ear about this, because I was reading an article recently by one of these experts, who says that Americans doing business overseas are too much influenced by our frontier past. The expert says we come to the bargaining table with a “do or die attitude that often defeats our purpose.”

The expert further says, “One of the biggest mistakes an American can make is to take his table manners with him to France - because the French get very disturbed watching an American switch his knife back and forth, so it can be embarrassing for a French person to be seen eating with you at a good restaurant” And so forth.

There are people who actually pay good money to be exposed to this kind of rubbish. Here’s the expert again: “US executives only make things difficult for themselves and their companies by saying to executives in Tokyo, Paris or London, “Just call me Pete.” The expert thinks this kind of stuff gives fainting fits to foreigners.

Well, OK, you don’t get too familiar too quick in an American boardroom either, unless your resume includes a few years on a used car lot.

But one thing is for sure: You can insist on them calling you “Pete.” You can insist on their calling you whatever you want if the deal is interesting enough, and if it is, you can be on first-name terms with just about anyone but the Queen of England in about five minutes.

“Dumb American” Story

My favorite dumb American story is the one about General Motors introducing the Chevy Nova in Venezuela, where “no va” means “doesn’t go.” But it’s only a dumb American story because you have to be a dumb American to believe it. To get technical, a native speaker of Spanish would simply not understand “no va” to mean “no go,” in reference to a car. In Spanish, a car can “no marcha”; a car can “no camina”; a car can “no funciona.” But a car simply can never, under any circumstances, “no va.” So the story has no point, except possibly to someone who doesn’t speak Spanish.

General Motors has been selling cars all over South America for maybe seventy years, with in-country staff largely made up of local executives, and I just could never believe they would let themselves get set up like that. As it turned out, they didn’t. I called them up a while ago to ask about it. The guy laughed. As far as GM knows, that story was cooked up on a college campus in Illinois.

And it’s retold as a solemn warning to us yokels-or as a snide joke about us yokels-by the kind of ignoramus whose international business acumen comes right out of the college library. As far as that expert is concerned, the minute you’re in that plane seat, the Lone Ranger rides again. The expert says, “You have a do-or-die attitude that often defeats your purpose.” I say, if you lack the basic business skills of negotiation and compromise, how come you’re in that seat in the first place?

Here’s another quote: Are you “competitive, argumentative and impatient?” You are? Well, don’t feel so bad. Because that blandly smiling Japanese negotiator on the other side of the table is hiding it just as well as you are.

There’s a whole laundry list of dos and don’ts some people are asked to study before they leave on an overseas trip. Don’t give red flowers here, don’t give white flowers there, and don’t give any flowers at all somewhere else.

Here’s a great one, taken, I’m ashamed to say, from my own company’s newsletter. In Asia, a person’s head is considered to be the residence of the intellect and the spirit. When in Asia, you are advised never to try to touch someone’s head.

Can you remember the last meeting where you tried to touch someone’s head? Never mind in Shanghai. In Baltimore, you don’t go around trying to touch people’s heads. And if you don’t do it in Baltimore, or Irvine, please, see if you can restrain yourself from doing it in Shanghai-and that’s pretty good advice for just about any kind of personal behavior overseas.

I don’t think you should waste a lot of time worrying about cultural correctness.

One recent story has it that an American had to make a speech to a Japanese group, and he had been told that the Japanese are modest folks who always start their speeches with some kind of self deprecation or apology. So the American cooks up something to apologize for in his opening: about the best he can do is to say that he’s very sorry to impose on their time by giving a long speech right after lunch.

And the Japanese crowd breaks up. He gets a huge laugh.

When he finishes the speech, he asks his Japanese manager, “What the heck did I say that was funny?” And the guy says, “Nothing. They were told that Americans always start their speeches with a joke!”

If you behave with reasonable common sense and keep a smile on your face, and if you just eat the way your mama taught you, you don’t have to waste a lot of time playing cultural head games.

But We Need Research

That said, I’m going to turn around and say that we should put much more effort than we do into researching what people will think, not about us, but about our products, and the way they are presented and documented in overseas markets.

When I worked in India, the people in government thought that anyone from Madison Avenue must have the last word on influencing consumer behavior.

There were then, out of a population of some 600 million, more pregnant women in India than the entire population of Australia. So we were asked to work on the development of a national birth control program. We came up with a slogan, do ya tin bhaccha bas-in Hindi, “two or three children are enough,” and we superimposed that on a big triangle-shaped logo that ran on posters all over the country. Soon people got so used to seeing the triangle that even without words it would whisper “do ya tin bhaccha bas.”

It took about a month before the full effect of that campaign kicked in, and the results were stunning. We absolutely killed the national sales of Vicks cough drops, because Vicks cough drops are shaped like triangles. So every time you put a Vicks cough drop in your mouth it whispered “Two or three children are enough.”

We weren’t through yet! The little Philips transistor radios were very popular: You’d see men all over walking along the streets holding them up to their ears. In two short weeks we sent sales of Philips transistor radios into a death spiral with a campaign promising a free transistor radio to every man who signed up for a vasectomy.

Pretty soon, I couldn’t find anyone to sit with at the Bombay Rotary Club lunch. Friends in the business community started crossing the street when they saw me coming, afraid that I might be hatching a new marketing idea for them.

These events started me on a lifelong collection of well meaning stupidities that could have been avoided by research.

You can’t do it without research. It’s expensive; it takes time. But you have to know everything there is to know about the potential relationship between your product and your customers in their home market. You can make zero assumptions.

In Mediterranean countries, most of the stores are still mom-and-pop shops with limited shelf space. In Greece, 77 percent of the people walk to the store, and they have to be able to carry their purchases home. In Holland, most people bike to the store, and if your product won’t go off the shelf and into that bike basket, you’re in trouble. These are big influences on packaging decisions.

Some countries want a washing product that’s gentle on their lakes and rivers. Germans will pay for it. Spaniards won’t. Europeans wash clothes at very high temperatures, and that means a different detergent formulation.

To prepare your product and its documentation for a foreign market, you have to preserve its quality and design but allow it to make no assertions at all about human behavior and local customs. And you have to be really careful with symbols and icons.

An underarm deodorant brand, for example, came up with a cute symbol showing a smiling octopus busily dabbing deodorant under its eight little arms. The marketing department said, “Forget the research, we need a new campaign right now in Japan!” Unfortunately, as it turned out, the Japanese do not look upon the octopus as a creature with eight arms. For the Japanese, the octopus is a creature with eight legs. Get the picture?

A large European food company wrote a brochure for young mothers. One piece of advice was to dip an elbow in the baby’s bath water: If your elbow turns pink, the water’s too hot. It was a big success in Europe, so naturally they sent off thousands of copies-to Africa.

The Japanese think that sweat represents a healthy body. To the Japanese, sweat gives off good vibes. A Japanese company tried to market a soft drink called “Pokari Sweat” in the United States.

Because there are so many languages in Africa, people have come to expect a food product’s label to have a picture of what’s in the jar. WYSIWYG-”What you see is what you get” - to eat. A manufacturer did launch its baby food with a picture on the label. It should have been a picture of carrots. It was a picture of a baby.

A British software application used the wise old owl as a help file icon, and just assumed that it would be fine in the international market. In Hispanic countries, however, the owl is a symbol of evil, and in India, if they call you an owl, it means they think you’re crazy.

I could go on forever about design mistakes made by software engineers. The little e-mailbox, with its red flag? Utterly mysterious to Europeans. They don’t have mailboxes like that. They think it’s a loaf of bread. (The trashcan on my e-mail interface does look like something, though. It looks just like a British mailbox.)

Finally, a computer company sent worldwide a technical update documentation called a Major Release Document, or an MRD for short. Pronounced in French, to the ineffable joy of its recipients in that country as “merde.”

The Bottom Line

Which neatly segues us back to those solemn folks who want to change your eating habits. Please, eat the way your mama taught you. It’s not your table manners that need work. You need research to adapt your product and its documentation for the target market. That’s what makes the real difference between success and failure in overseas markets.

The experts apparently neglected to inform Cervantes of this notion. And Gabriel García Márquez. And Jorge Luis Borges. Not to speak of McGraw-Hill, with five publishing divisions and thousands of titles in Spanish. And the authors of the many school and college textbooks that have for years been in common use by students in every Spanish speaking country in Latin America, and in Spain.

The experts are plainly talking nonsense.

While, as in the United States, there are regional differences in pronunciation, idiom, slang, and dialect, with research and the appropriate translation memory tools, an educated writer from any Spanish-speaking country is perfectly capable of expression, on any subject, that is clear and unambiguous to an educated reader from any other Spanish speaking country. Period.

Microsoft, with all its deep pockets, and with a mandate to speak clearly to its software customers everywhere, prefaces its Spanish language manuals with a User Note addressed to the 300 million people of all countries that share the Spanish language. The note says that Microsoft writes manuals only in a universal Spanish that all of their software users can understand.

Why do they do this? Because it saves a lot of time and money. Microsoft’s manuals aren’t written in some kind of lowest common denominator pablum, either. They are as precise and clear in Spanish as they are in the original English.

Microsoft admits that some of their readers will have to put up with an occasional uncustomary - not unknown - term. In Mexican Spanish, “checar” means “to check”. In everybody’s Spanish, including Mexico’s, “to check” is “verificar”, or “revisar”, or “comprobar”. A skilled translator will use one of those instead of the localism.

For the past six years we’ve been translating the Spanish language edition of Adams-Hunter’s bimonthly magazine Auto And Truck International. It goes to 20,000 car buffs and automotive techs all over Latin America and in Spain. Circulation is rising: it’s clear that our readers understand every word. Which, we like to think, is a good reason why we’ve been doing it for the past six years.

Readers of our proposals will be familiar with a concept called register - “any of the varieties of a language that a writer uses in a particular social context”. It requires translators to match the words they use to the abilities- bluntly, to the level of education- of their readers. A guide for assembly line workers uses register different from a guide written for graduate engineers. A professional translator is very skilled at the art of writing to the correct register.

Another skill our translators need is in the use of Machine Assisted Translation. Consider: engineers speaking the same language, in the same country, in the same industry, and even on the same shop floor, sometimes by preference use a different word for the same part. That makes it hard to construct a glossary of terms that everyone is happy with.

MAT applications - TRADOS, Transit, IBM, and others - make it possible to build a client-specific glossary as the translation is created, and then to manage text revisions or updates in a manual. As important, with little additional cost or effort, MAT manages changes considered necessary for specific markets- for example number and date formatting in Mexico, which follows the U.S. style, or because your customer is more comfortable with certain terms.

We e-mail most of our work now for review overseas by the person who will actually be using it, before final typesetting.

We’ll do your work in FrameMaker, QuarkXPress, InDesign or PageMaker; Mac or PC; and in various other presentation and graphics formats.

Our clients are category leaders who know they are paying a fair price for translation accuracy and dependability.

We are accurate. We deliver on time. You can depend on us, and we trust you to recognize the value in that. Our clients do. Just ask for a reference.

]]> http://tiinc.com/blog/?feed=rss2&p=54 http://tiinc.com/blog/?p=52 http://tiinc.com/blog/?p=52#comments Mon, 10 Nov 2008 16:40:43 +0000 Shaun http://tiinc.com/blog/?p=52 You may manage translation projects, but chances are you have never actually spoken to a translator.

We’d like to introduce you to some of ours. But first, there are some things you should know about translators.

FACT: most professional translators work by themselves, for themselves. 95% (this is a good guess) of the membership of the American Translators Association are independent contractors. Buy a copy of the ATA’s Annual Translation Services Directory, and you can study the professional resume of every translator in the country who has passed ATA accreditation. If you want to manage your own project, it’s not hard to find a translator. And it costs about half of what you would pay us.

FACT: the ATA lists 52 languages into which translators work from English, and 65 languages from which translators work into English. Remember that a translator only works one way - into his or her own, native language. So you can get Thai into English, but not English into Thai (at least from the ATA).

FACT: translators specialize. They’d better. The ATA lists 11 categories and 120 subjects, from Accounting to Zoology, in which translators say they are qualified to work. Now multiply that by a minimum of the target languages you might need - the Europeans, Russian, three oriental - ten, let’s say? That’s more than a thousand translators into those target languages. True, most translators have more than one specialty, but still, no language service can keep that many translators under one roof.

Inescapable conclusion: independent specialists - freelancers - do most of the translation in this country-and overseas, too. What it means: if the translation of your manual requires a high degree of specific subject expertise, and you use any outside resource, it’s almost certain it will be entrusted to an independent translator.

FACT: some translators are better than others. Some of them have enough training and experience to author the manuals they translate. Many of them deliver their work precisely on schedule. A good number of them produce consistently literate, intelligent, accurate translation-and still respond amenably to good editing. There are those who are happy to work on weekends. Some-not many-offer desktop publishing skills. And some work smoothly as team members on large projects.

The few that have all of those qualities can select their own projects. We know who they are. And we have made it our business to merit their respectful attention.

In the beginning we advertised in newspapers in the U.S. and overseas for professionals trained in specific technical subject areas. Today, dozens of applications a week come in by fax, e-mail and through our web site. We classify them, qualify them, test them. And we choose the best of them. The best that the world has to offer-wherever they live.

Telecommunication works for business. Use it, we say.

So when you send your project to us, it doesn’t land in a pool. It is targeted specifically to a translator who has made your business terminology a professional life’s work - and whose name and qualifications will be on your desk, along with those of the equally talented editor. Working together, we manage the final review process with your customer - your overseas office, distributor or buyer. We e-mail over half of our work today for review overseas by the person who will actually be using it, before final typesetting.

We’ll do your work in FrameMaker, QuarkXPress, InDesign or PageMaker; Mac or PC; and in various other presentation and graphics formats.

We are accurate. We are fast. We are on time. You can depend on us, and we trust you to recognize the value in that. Our clients do. Just ask for a reference.

Some grammatical structures in English can pose problems for translators, particularly if those structures can be interpreted in more than one way. Murphy’s Law says that your reader will often use the wrong interpretation, resulting in mangled translations.

Spoken language allows supplemental methods-like voice intonation, facial expressions, and physical movements- to convey meaning. However, print communication lacks the support of those nonverbal clues. To ensure clear meaning, writers must avoid expressions that require supplemental, nonverbal clues. They must depend on good structure and correct grammar to communicate their meaning.

In this article, we’ll take a look at some grammatical structures in English that are potentially misleading and see how we can remove these stumbling blocks for our translators and end-users.

Unsafe Structures

To appreciate some of the pitfalls of English grammar, consider the following paragraph. Eight or more grammatical problems in this example can pose problems for readers and translators.

Gardening requires planning and care taken with selection of plants based on their hardiness. Without using prescribed, time-tested guidelines, recommendations, and advice from local greenhouse experts, gardeners might err, since interpretation of data obtained might get misconstrued. While hardiness determines suitability of planting locale, it also better ensures a longer-lasting landscape. You should avoid and reconsider selection of plants based on color coordination suitability.

This text is difficult to read. It’s even more difficult to translate. Let us see why, issue by issue.

Gerunds

In the first sentence of the paragraph, “gardening” is a gerund. Gerunds pose problems-they are nouns that look like verbs. Because nouns and verbs don’t perform the same grammatical function, it is best to use this construction only when you can surround it with other words (for example, “By gardening”), or avoid it altogether (for example, “How to garden” or “A garden is…”). The gerund requires interpreting, first to identify whether it is a noun or a verb, and then to convert it to an approximate meaning. Gerunds are a common convention in English headings, but I’m not aware of this noun form in other languages. So avoid gerunds like “gardening” and instead use a noun (”a garden”) or a verb form like an infinitive (as in “how to garden”).

Relative Pronouns

“Care taken…with” and “interpretation deduced” appear without the relative pronoun “that,” which normally alerts the reader that a subordinate clause follows that describes the preceding noun. “That” as a relative pronoun is commonly dropped in spoken English. Clearly written English includes it, because the pronoun is a clue that following the noun is a modifying clause. A better structure here is “care that was taken with” and “interpretation that was deduced,” respectively. Use relative pronouns (”that” and “which”) to introduce subordinate clauses, as appropriate.

Modifiers

A string of modified nouns appears in our example (”Without using prescribed, time-tested guidelines, recommendations, and advice from local greenhouse experts.”) These constructs are tolerated in English, because we generally assume that a string of modifiers applies to all the nouns in the string. In other languages, modifiers may follow the noun or nouns they modify, or they may describe only one item in a string of nouns. In our example, the modifiers “prescribed, time- tested” precede “guidelines,” but do they also apply to “recommendations, and advice”? Are the three items, namely guidelines, recommendations, and advice, all obtained from the local greenhouse experts? A translator cannot make assumptions. A better approach in this instance is to modify each noun (” prescribed guidelines,” “time-tested recommendations,” and “reliable advice”) or reword it in such a way that modifiers act on all nouns (”without using guidelines, recommendations, and advice that are all prescribed and time-tested”).

“Helping” Verbs

Helping verbs such as “might” can cause problems for translators. Helping verbs-including “can,” “could,” “should,” “might,” “may,” “would,” and their various verb forms (”could have,” “might have been”)-are often used to convey ability, possibility, and obligation. They are also used to signal advice and to show politeness. However, when the meaning is intended to convey a requirement, “must” or “need to” is better. Where it is called for, it is important to clearly state requirements. Otherwise, use a recommendation or a suggestion (”Company X recommends…”). Think about every use of these helping verbs, and restructure sentences to minimize their use.

Adverbs

Adverbs such as “since,” “while,” “where,” and “when” have meanings beyond time and place; they can also mean “whereas,” “although,” “after,” or “because.” Consider these examples of misuse: “Since it’s dark, it’s time to go” (because); “While you can say it, you can’t do it” (although). Every word has its most appropriate use, and professional communicators need to choose the word that best conveys the desired meaning. Rethink how you use all these adverbs to ensure their appropriate application; prefer using “although,” “after,” or “because” when these words are the meaning you intend to convey.

Articles

We often drop the articles “a,” “an,” and “the” in English and form “telegraphic sentences.” Examples from our paragraph include “selection of…” and “suitability of planting locale.” When we drop articles, we omit a written clue indicating that the word that follows is a noun. This custom is a problem in translation, especially with words that function as both nouns and verbs (”display,” “record,” “time,” “document,” “address,” “use”). For some of these expressions, differences in pronunciation alert the listener to meaning; in script, they require additional clues, such as articles. My recommendation is to use these constructs consistently in one way, either as nouns or as verbs (”display” as a noun, “show” as a verb), and to use articles whenever appropriate (”the suitability of the planting locale”).

Colloquial Expressions

Some verbs are used often in colloquial expressions: “Get” is one legendary example. Consider these expressions: “I get it” (understand); “I get it” (receive); “I’ve got to do it” (must, need to). These informal uses are not appropriate for technical writing. I avoid using “get, got, gotten, have gotten” and prefer using ” understand,” “receive,” or “must.”

Noun “strings”

Noun strings are my favorites. “Color coordination suitability” is just too dense an expression for the mind to grasp easily. Other expressions-such as “the failure reason” (the reason for failure), “the battery conditions” (the conditions of the battery), or “the battery recovery” (to recover the battery)-may also be problematic, because they combine words in a concatenated form. The record for noun strings may be Dick Crum’s 10-item string, “The Commission was impressed by the Test Project command module reaction control system engine oxidizer vapor inhalation damage recovery results,” which appears in International Technical Communication by Nancy L. Hoft. I see a growing preference today for nouns that avoid all verb forms (”the installation of” and not “install,” “the recovery of” and not “recover,” “the development of” and not “develop.”) Make your selection between nouns or verbs depending on the type of material you are writing. Nouns have their place in some types of writing, but I prefer using verbs for task-based procedures.

Rewriting

Let’s now look at a revision of our paragraph that clarifies its meaning and eliminates structures that require interpretation. Compare this paragraph with the original, with particular attention to the improved grammar.

A successful garden requires planning and care that is taken with selecting plants on the basis of their hardiness. If gardeners don’t use prescribed, time-tested guidelines or recommendations and advice from local greenhouse experts, they will make mistakes, because the interpretation of the data that was obtained can be wrong. A plant’s hardiness determines whether it will grow in a particular locale; hardiness also ensures a longer-lasting landscape. We recommend that you avoid selecting plants primarily on the basis of color and shape, and pay attention to their ability to adapt to local weather conditions. Acceptable sentence structure for translation requires using grammatical clues that help clarify meaning.

Ambiguous terms, problematic expressions, and complex grammatical structures degrade communication. Poorly written text requires more time to read, and its meaning is less easily understood.

Documentation that is difficult to understand can reduce the quality of the product and result in more translation time and higher costs. It also ultimately compromises client relationships. Writers must avoid sentences that require interpretation and must rewrite any structures that, although acceptable in speech, are potentially misleading in print.

Remembering Gerunds

A gerund is a noun based on the root of a verb; for example, “skating” and “editing.” You can identify these constructs by adding “the” before the word in consideration. (”The writing is clear.”) However, gerunds also look like present participles, which are verbs. (For example, “I am writing.”) To understand which form is used in a sentence, look at the grammatical clues around the word in question.

Read this article touching on some of the costs behind a web site localization project to learn about some pitfalls you can expect, and more importantly, the ones you can avoid!

1. HTML - There are great tools on the market now so that anyone can build a web site without knowing HTML. You can translate web files without knowing HTML also. We have a tool called Trados, which is a Computer-Assisted Translation tool. It has a filter called TagEditor specially designed for tagged file formats such as HTML, SGML and even RTF. In a nutshell, it protects the tags in your marked-up files so the translator cannot alter them in any way. Using Trados, the integrity of your files stays intact.It isn’t just as simple as that, though. Your translation service should know how to manage HTML and other web design techniques in order to be able to anticipate and fix the idiosyncrasies of web files. Example: a recent web site project that included a translated glossary of terms. Easy enough, right? Well, once you translate those terms, you need to re-alphabetize them. Without knowing HTML coding, it might not have been possible.

   Our Project Managers are HTML certified and have taken a whole spectrum of Web site classes to ensure quality assurance in dealing with their clients’ web files.

2. Graphics - Depending on how your graphics are created, the translation of text within web graphics can be a time-consuming and costly part of any web site localization project. If your menu buttons are graphical, have you left enough room for the translated text? Translated text can expand almost 25-30% in some languages. Do you have complicated graphics with text layered, masked or hidden among pictures or photos? Have you kept in touch with the graphic designer who created these graphics? Do you have the original formats or only the GIF? Some complicated GIF files with text may not be translatable. Have you thought about alternatives? Is leaving a graphic in English going to cause problems?Some web designers recommend that you not use icons to represent ideas. Poll different people in your own company about the meaning of an icon or graphic and you may get a variety of responses. It gets even more complicated in other cultures. A common icon used in the U.S. for email is a little white mailbox with a red flag. Germans think it’s a loaf of bread! Consider changing your icons to simple text links. And don’t worry - we won’t let you get away with anything that will get you in trouble.
3. Forms - Do you have forms on your web site for visitors to fill in? Can visitors send you an email for support or more information? Have you thought about what you will do with this information if you get an email in Spanish? Sure, we can translate it for you, but that might get expensive. If you are selling your products in Mexico, do you already have Spanish-speaking Customer Service Reps hired and trained to be able to take these orders or answer questions? If your forms take information such as contact info and email addresses for a newsletter, does your server-side database which stores this information accept accented characters? Does the database have fields for other address information that the U.S. might not have (i.e. Provinces or 6-digit alphanumeric postal codes in Canada)?
4. Links - Do you offer a links page to supply your visitors with more information about a given subject? Have you researched links in the target language? There’s no sense in sending them to a page full of English links if your site is written in Spanish. Of course, your Spanish visitors might also read English just fine. But, if you include a links page, make sure to include links in each language you offer on your site.
5. End-user review - Do you have a customer or client located in your target country who can review the translation of your new multilingual web site? This is a very important step and should be a requirement of any translation project - web site, manual or brochure. We are happy to work with your in-country reviewers, and in some cases, we can even send a translator to their location to sit down with them in person.
6. Access to your webmaster or graphic designer - Each web site is different, as is every manual or brochure. The designer leaves a unique fingerprint on everything (s)he does. Sometimes, speaking to the webmaster or graphic designer can make a complicated task much easier. If we can communicate with these people in your company, it may save a lot of time and money in the long run. They can usually unveil the mysteries behind the way they did things.

So, do you still want to translate your web site into the language of your target country? Let us provide you with a free translation quote.

In the past twenty years, two developments have had an important impact on the creation and design of communication: the appearance of personal computers on every desktop, equipped with “user-friendly” authoring and design software, and the globalization of world markets. The first development means that document design is no longer left to graphic artists. Technical communicators now may be asked to “package” as well as draft copy, designing documents from scratch or working with graphic style guidelines or a prescribed design template. The second development means that, increasingly, documents authored in one language (usually English) serve as the source for countless localized versions destined for distribution in markets around the world. The concomitant development and marketing of computer assisted translation (CAT), translation memory (TM), and content management systems promote the notion that any and all documents may serve equally well as source documents.

Despite the hype, technical communicators know that authoring software does not a writer make. Graphic designers know that sophisticated design software cannot compensate for a lack of basic design know-how. And, despite remarkable advances in technology, computers still cannot produce the elusive FAQMT (fully automatic, quality machine translation). Localization still requires a committed, coordinated, and skilled team of human beings-software engineers, translators, desktop publishers, and project managers-to produce localized documentation that remains true to the content and graphic intent of the source. Even though effective localization relies on the quality of the source, documentation groups and localization teams rarely collaborate in its creation. It is not unusual for the two groups to have no contact at all: More often than not, localization is undertaken after the source document is finalized-sometimes months or even years later. This estrangement further complicates the already complex process of localization, resulting in high costs and target documents of dubious quality.

At the risk of plunking another hat on the already overburdened heads of technical communicators, I can vouch that localization-proofing the graphic design of your work will add value to the end product. And if that isn’t inducement enough, localization-proofing will prevent the quality of your work from being compromised in the localization process. For the past seven years, I have made a living as a desktop publisher specializing in localized communication. This experience has given me insight into the design approaches that accommodate localization well and the design pitfalls to avoid. Following is a list of design and formatting suggestions that will go a long way toward ensuring cost-effective, quality localization. The list is by no means exhaustive, nor is every suggestion feasible in all document development/ authoring situations. For the sake of brevity, I use the term “technical communicators” to mean both writers and designers.

Font Choice

Most technical communicators know the advantages of Postscript, as opposed to TrueType, fonts. In general, for the simple reason that PostScript is a more recent technology, PostScript fonts have standardized, extended ASCII character sets-that is, special characters, accented characters and accents, non-English punctuation, ligatures, and symbols. This is not true of all TrueType fonts, some of which have very limited character sets. Also, PostScript fonts are more compatible with PostScript printers, which produce a higher quality print output than non-PostScript printers.

Surprisingly, custom TrueType fonts still seem to enjoy popularity. Custom fonts serve two distinct purposes: to “brand” a communication, or to provide a shorthand for firmware references.

In the first instance, branding, a custom font is not problematic unless the branded text will be translated. A custom font used solely to emphasize a trademarked brand name that will not be translated-let’s use “WowTech, Unlimited” as a fictional example-rarely poses a problem, but there may be a problem if a marketing tag accompanies the brand name-”WowTech, Unlimited: We rock!”-and the tag will be translated. For example, to localize for francophone markets, the translator might choose “WowTech, Unlimited: “a boume!” If the custom font does not contain a “”,” or the myriad other characters necessary to localize a document for the expanded European Union, the money spent on branding and developing a custom font will be for naught, and/or the graphic signature (the unique look of a communication that identifies it as belonging solely to your client) will suffer.

The second purpose of custom fonts- to provide a shorthand for firmware references-poses an even larger problem. In a document filled with references to firmware features, it is tempting to create a font that simulates firmware, much like a symbol character set. For example, a skilled engineer can create a font that mimics the buttons on a phone: flash, hold, redial, speaker, memory, etc. However, these custom fonts are rarely “extended” to simulate localized firmware. That is, while the actual product may have localized buttons, the font often does not contain localized characters. As a result, the desktop publisher may be required to create images to approximate each character and insert each image in place of the simple one-stroke custom character, a long and costly process. Also, many fonts (both custom and off-the-shelf) that simulate a dot-matrix-y LCD look do not contain accented letters, diacritics, or localized punctuation.

To avoid these difficulties, choose a simple font and keep font effects (bold, italics, underlining, color, shading) to a minimum. The most common font attributes, very effective in English, may distort non-English characters. Italics and underlining, for instance, may distort Asian characters. Too much bold can convey an unintended stridency in some cultural contexts. An “all caps” or “small caps” attribute simply won’t work for a language system that does not use uppercase and lowercase.

Rule of thumb: Exploit language to its fullest and rely on its strength to deliver the message, not on the ambiguous and potentially counterproductive effects of font attributes.

Style Sheets

Despite the sophistication of style sheet utilities, I often receive graphically complex documents that exploit only one style, “Normal,” overridden repeatedly on a case-by-case basis. Documents in which styles have been based on the “Normal” style, a favored approach for Microsoft Word users, pose the same problem.

In Word documents, “Normal” is user defined, and therefore changes depending on where the document is opened. Worse yet, there is no way to tell whether the original writer’s “Normal” has been overridden by the translators or, ultimately, by the desktop publisher. In working with a document replete with “Normal” or “Normal”-based styles, the primary desktop publishing task becomes decrypting and then replicating the author’s graphic intent. Logical and consistent application of style sheets, like the logical and consistent application of text style guides and terminologies, goes a long way toward ensuring quality localized communication.

Globe-Worthy Syntax

Coherent and effective text relies on clear syntax. Similarly, coherent and effective design relies on clear “graphic syntax”-the orderly arrangement of graphic elements. Using style sheets ensures the consistency of a source document’s graphic syntax. Certain desktop publishing habits can further ensure that graphic syntax remains intact through the localization process. Most of these habits aim to counter the chief result of localization: content expansion.

Effective graphic design is the effective management of space. Text translated from English frequently occupies more space-that is, it expands. Rates vary from 10 percent and up. Greek can easily expand by 30 percent. Notable (but not the only) exceptions are Japanese and Hebrew.

Text expansion has an enormous impact on document design. After translation, one-line headings run to two lines or longer and split across “soft” page breaks. Paragraphs travel, pushing important headings down the page. Text boxes tailored for English crop callouts. Narrow page columns designed to accommodate important sideheads, kickouts, or pulled quotes in English, and tables and charts that strictly circumscribe content, cannot contain the longer translated text. In short, expansion disrupts the careful management of space-margins, tabs, text alignment, graphic boxes, and lines. Hence, localized documents need to be reformatted to restore the layout.

If you consider that a document might need to be reformatted not for just one language but for six or twelve or even thirty languages, the enormity of the task and its cost implications become clear. Consider, too, that each language, unique in its capacity to expand, requires a different “fix.” There is no global approach that meets the needs of all languages. The following suggestions will help you contend with the problems of expansion. With experience, you may discover new ways to make sure that your carefully constructed content stays put.

Don’t eyeball layout. Relying solely on your eyes when making design decisions is a tempting approach for the visually gifted, but it compromises the quality of localized documentation. Software provides the tools to ensure that the design remains intact: tabs, indents, paragraph leading, spacing and justification, etc. Explore your software’s utilities and exploit them to the fullest.

Use the space bar sparingly. The space bar should be used solely for inserting spaces between words and sentences. (Note: One space following final punctuation, not two, is the typographical norm.) Spaces inserted to achieve the effects of indents, hanging indents, and justification will “travel” in translation and will wind up not at all where they were intended to be.

Avoid soft returns or forced line breaks at all costs. Like spaces, soft returns travel. Also, some CAT software tools have trouble managing soft returns. Hard returns should be used only at the ends of paragraphs, not to create space or force text into a desired position. Space before and after paragraphs can be defined as part of the paragraph style. Use “top of page” and “page break before” utilities. Use forced page breaks only when you really want text to appear at the top of the page. Remember: The top of your page may not be the top of the localized page.

To keep paragraphs from breaking across a page, opt instead for ample widow protection. Headings should never break across a page or be divorced from the text that follows. With expansion, one line headings can easily go to two and three lines. If possible, set the widow control at ninety-nine lines to ensure the integrity of your text. In Microsoft Word, use the keep lines together setting by choosing Paragraph from the View menu, clicking on the Line and Page Breaks tab, and checking the appropriate box.

Ensure that your graphic intent is clear. In anticipation of expansion, even if your headings never exceed one line, explicitly set leading (the space between lines in the same paragraph) and, if desired, hanging indents. Keep leading loose to accommodate accents, but not so loose that an expanded heading overwhelms the text that follows.

Do not use icons and graphics as substitutes for text. While it may be true that a picture is worth a thousand words, many of these words are not acceptable in polite conversation. First, many icons and graphics simply do not “translate” well. Second, translating text loaded with icons is time-consuming and therefore costly. While word count is the most common approach to estimating the cost of a translation project, any savings realized by the use of icons (which lowers word count) will be lost due to lower speeds of work at the translation stage. At the formatting stage, icons will have to be repositioned to accommodate the syntax of the translation(s), a process that also increases cost. Such an approach compromises even the most generous localization budget.

Very few icons are understandable in all cultural contexts. Some, like the hand palm up, may be offensive or disturbing to some users. Once you have carefully chosen icons, a glossary may promote understanding. That said, well-chosen graphics and icons certainly add interest to the page and can communicate complex information. Most documents would be very dull without them. Be sure, however, to anchor these elements so that they follow the flow as intended.

Graphics frequently contain text that may need to be localized. But some common practices for increasing the ” portability” of graphics have unintended consequences that affect localization. For instance, Adobe Photoshop allows you to “merge” the layers of a graphic, which compresses all the information into one layer. Creating outlines (in Adobe Illustrator) or converting text to a bitmap (in CorelDraw) transforms text objects into graphic objects, which eliminates font incompatibilities. These practices enable your clients to open, view, and print the document even if they do not have the font that you used to create your graphic. Unfortunately, these practices can hamper localization. For one thing, they complicate text extraction for the purposes of translation. At the desktop publishing stage, removing or masking the English text in a merged graphic can be a delicate, time-consuming process, particularly if the text is surrounded by color. Because the text in a merged file is no longer a discrete element, there is no way to determine what the original font was. The desktop publisher must try to replicate it as closely as possible by choosing a comparable font-rarely an easy task. Preserving “source” graphics with discrete layers and fonts intact saves both time and money.

Ideally, text in graphics should be avoided. Extracting text from graphics is time-consuming and labor-intensive. Worse, text embedded in graphics may be overlooked. The most cost-effective approach is to create callouts in the desktop publishing program that are then accessible to CAT tools.

One final word on graphics: Instead of copying them into your documents, use links. Copied graphics can be difficult to identify, and tend to make documents “heavy” and hard to manipulate.

Generally, the space allotted to all page layout elements-margins, headers and footers, columns, sidebars, etc.-should be more ample than that required by the English text. If you try to “shoehorn” content onto the page to minimize printing costs, increased localization costs will generally outweigh any savings to your client.

Conclusion

Localization presents a wide range of challenges to communicators. This article examines only a few. It is my hope, however, that an increased awareness of the challenges, a dialogue between the creators of source and the producers of localized documentation, and a closer general collaboration between the professionals in both disciplines will widen the range of approaches and solutions.

Nancy A. Locke is a multilingual desktop publishing specialist with over seven years’ experience with localization and translation providers in the United States and Canada.

As with anything in life, each new project is still a learning experience. Each Quark file we get is different from the last. Each Desktop Publisher leaves his or her fingerprints on a file with interesting little quirks we’ll never see again. It keeps us on our toes!

With the help of TRADOS (Translation Memory Software), the Desktop Publishing part of a translation project now takes a lot less time and money. TRADOS has developed filters for most major DTP programs which virtually eliminate the need for hours of formatting after a translation has been completed. Here are the basics on how these work, in plain language, using FrameMaker as an example:

1. SAVE AS MIF - Your English FrameMaker files are saved in MIF format and then run through the TRADOS filter creating a marked-up RTF file. All character, paragraph and other formatting information is hidden inside of tags (like an HTML file).
2. TRANSLATE - The translator then uses a feature of TRADOS called Tag-Editor which protects those tags so they cannot be altered. All the translator will see is the English text on screen, at which point they can key in the translation. (For all you Framers out there, the TRADOS filter sends all of the background “stuff” [index markers, variable text, etc.] to an ancillary file so the translator can work on that too!)
3. RE-FILTER BACK TO MIF - When we finish the translation and independent edit, we process the tagged files back through the TRADOS filter and new MIF files are produced. If, for any reason, even one small tag is out of place on the conversion back to MIF, TRADOS produces an error log warning us to check it before proceeding. This ensures that your translated file will have the exact same formatting characteristics as your original English.
4. FINAL DTP - After the files are back to MIF, our in-house DTP specialists (aka: highly trained Project Managers) will go through your FrameMaker (or Quark, PageMaker, etc.) files, page-by-page and line-by-line, to make sure everything looks right. They will regenerate your TOC and Indices, if applicable, and test any hyperlinks you have in place.
5. CLIENT REVIEW - This is the most important step in the whole process. This is where we send you your translated, formatted file(s) for review. Usually, a PDF is created so your overseas customers or colleagues can review the translation and layout easily without the need for Frame or Quark installed on their system. Any changes from your reviewers can be sent to us outlined in a Word file, notated in the PDF file or marked-up on a hard copy (if the changes are not extensive). We will incorporate reasonable changes at no additional cost to you.

With the use of the TRADOS filters, we no longer need to insist that translators have experience using FrameMaker, QuarkXPress, etc. Now we just provide the tagged file for translation and do the final formatting here in-house.

All of this adds up to great savings for our clients! What used to take hours and hours of desktop publishing charges now may only take an hour or two. That means you get your manuals and brochures translated faster, and at a lower cost.

]]> http://tiinc.com/blog/?feed=rss2&p=44 http://tiinc.com/blog/?p=42 http://tiinc.com/blog/?p=42#comments Mon, 10 Nov 2008 16:36:53 +0000 Shaun http://tiinc.com/blog/?p=42 - Take your lunch hour off and read it - it’s worth it! You will need Adobe Acrobat Reader to be able to view this file. Go here for a free download.