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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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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Building a Glossary
Terminology management is an essential part of any translation project. Trados has a built-in glossary component called MultiTerm, which stores translated glossary terms. As these terms appear in a client’s documentation, Trados will suggest them to the translator. Any existing client glossary, including definitions of technical terms, can be imported into MultiTerm.
How Trados saves YOU money
The use of Trados Translation Memory software has the ability to reduce translation cost and time. Every sentence that is translated by a human translator is remembered by Trados software. When it appears again, either exactly (100% match), or changed slightly (we call that a ‘fuzzy match’), Trados will ‘remember’ the previous translation and suggest it to the translator. By computer analysis of electronic files, against an existing translation memory, we can assess the rate of 100% matches for a document. We have experience of match rates as high as 30%.
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Since the days of the Phoenicians, trade has depended upon human translators and interpreters, people who have mastered at least two languages and who have acquired the skill of moving ideas from one language to another. But while old-fashioned clerks were mechanized away by the word processor, old-fashioned translators are still with us.
Now that your work station has more computing power than the average research university did twenty five years ago, it’s logical to ask: can’t all that computing power be put to work? If you’ve been reading the ads in trade publications, you know that there are plenty of applications that promise to do just that.
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Example 1: Last year you paid $17,000 to translate one of your company’s I&O manuals. And you’ve just finished the revisions for Version 1.1.
What’s the fastest and most economical way to execute your changes, and save your investment in the original translation?
Example 2: You have to translate a 1.5 million word online operations manual into French. You can’t alter one keystroke of the HTML code. There’s a lot of repetitive text. And, over thousands of linked files, terminology must be consistent - no exceptions.
With a team of seven translators working, how do you:
Our answer to those questions, from practical experience: translation memory software. We’ve used all three leading translation memory applications over the years, and decided on the one (TRADOS) that gives you:
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Translators work with the written word. Interpreters work with speech. Although we specialize in technical translation, we also offer telephone interpretation service with access to 150 languages, anytime and anywhere.
No, unfortunately, it’s not a money issue. It simply comes down to time. We can do a rush job under some circumstances, but paying us more is not going to make the impossible come true. Each project is taken on a case-by-case basis. Sometimes we can offer a rush translation, and sometimes we can’t.
We are more than happy to work hand-in-hand with your customer from the beginning of every technical translation project. Our job is to find the best technical translator: a professional who knows your industry, and your products or services. But even though our translator may be an expert on the subject, he still may not use the words your client prefers. People quite often use different, synonymous words to express the same concept. This is why we compile a technical glossary before your translation begins. If your client approves of this basic list of terms from the beginning, then we’ve won half the battle. For a long technical manual, we can submit chapters as they are translated for client review. The final user makes whatever changes he thinks are necessary, which will be taken into consideration by our translators for later chapters. In some cases, we can arrange to have our translator meet in person with your customers, regardless of where on the globe they are located. We’re not happy until your customer is happy.