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Sure, professional publication is deliberately reviewed and edited after a rough draft is written. To ensure that accuracy, tone, and style all meet desired intent of the content, quality translation needs to be proofread.
The subjective nature of language requires both feedback and challenges that the linguists need to negotiate a consensus. A concept can be expressed in multiple ways and a statement can mean different things depending on elements such as culture, dialect, context, and intent.
The old saying “an ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure” is absolutely right for translation quality. With many years of experience handling numberless translation projects, Wise- Concetti has accumulated these six essential tools to resolve issues and ensure translation quality.
Read more:Is Translation Business Profitable?
Correct, appropriate, and consistent use of terminology, whether it be specific to a certain industry, product, or SAP application is crucial to the agreement of any translated documents. When time allows, make a list of such terms with proposed translations for each. Once the terms and their translations are accepted by in-country review teams, the translated terminology list will be incorporated. Once listed in the client’s translation memory, it becomes an important tool that is remained with the following project.
A glossary of terms is not different from the terminology list but includes client-approved definitions. Giving definitions will help the translation team in finding the most appropriate translations for terms. Normally, this step is often highly technical or abstruse.
Style and brand guides that specify tone (e.g., formal versus conversational), hyphenation, formatting, units of measure, “do not translate” requirements, and other client-specific usages are also highly recommended. Such guides are vital in ensuring that our translations are equivalent to the usage of your in-house writers.
Translation memory tools bring considerable benefits when carrying out projects for lines of business. It is supposed to communicate with a consistent style, terminology, and tone (by re-using previously approved content). Wise-Concetti is a very early adopter of this technology because it helps save costs significantly by reducing the number of words translated. When designing an enterprise-level translation and localization program, it is very essential to work with clients to determine how translation memory should be structured. For example, is one TM per language pair sufficient, or do specific lines of business each need their own individual TM? Can multiple TMs be sequenced and leveraged to achieve optimal results? Translation memory is then accessed by linguists for each project as appropriate.
As crucial as any factor influencing the quality, accuracy of translation is the context of the content, particularly in software. While it is extra work on the front end, providing screen captures to reference along with the source strings is an effective way. By providing context to the translators, it will save a lot of time and effort on the back end. Alternatively, there are software tools available for purchase that provide varying levels of visual context during the translation process.
Establishing when in-country or end-user review will happen upfront is important to execute the process and reviewers for success. The reviewers will need access to linguistic assets, be aligned with the overall goals and objectives of the project. Besides, they need to understand how to provide feedback in a constructive and useful way.
By establishing and maintaining these assets and processes, the highest quality translations and continuous improvement over time will enable effective communication in any language.
