Translation Industry 101 Download as PDF
So you’ve laid the track for entering the global marketplace. You’ve run the numbers, pin-pointed an opportunity and mapped a clever strategy for capitalizing. Your management is on board and it’s full-speed ahead.
There’s only one problem—the road signs are not in English and when you stop to ask directions nobody understands what you are saying.
Penetrating global markets requires more than a solid plan. Effective communications with customers, partners, employees and officials in the language of your target market is a necessity. When you invest resources in preparing your content for translation and in finding a strong language services vendor, you greatly enhance your chances for international success.
Talk the Talk - Localization industry glossary
"It's all Greek to me," you say? Let's begin by clarifying some common industry jargon.
- Translation: The art of translation can be defined as transforming a written communication from one language to another. However, it is more than a mechanical exercise of replacing one word with another. It is a culturally sensitive process that involves understanding the underlying concept and intention of the source communication and effectively saying the same thing in another language, even if the exact words that are used are quite different. Transmitting meaning is the key.
- Localization: Localization is translation with a twist. It changes content to reflect the standards of the local target market, including adapting calendar references, measurement systems (metric vs. English), address formats and names of people (John vs. Juan).
- DTP: Desktop Publishing (DTP) is a term commonly used in the industry to
refer to the process of recreating and adapting layout and design features of documents so that the translated document maintains the same look and feel of the original document. Common DTP applications are Adobe InDesign, Adobe FrameMaker, Quark Xpress and in a limited capacity, Microsoft Word. - TM: The most important technology in the language services industry is that of Translation Memory (TM). Essentially a TM is a database that stores sentences and phrases in both the source and target language. By maintaining this repository of existing translations, vendors can more efficiently process future updates to documents and pass on the savings to you.
It’s in the English – Writing for translation
Any translation will only be as good as the original English composition. Your content should be carefully edited to ensure that it is clearly understandable and, above all, correct. A seemingly inoffensive error in an English source file can become an expensive headache after it has been translated into ten European languages and needs to be corrected.
With technical documentation you can significantly reduce the cost of localization by ensuring that technical writers use consistent terminology and repetitive sentence wording. Vendors will often give cost breaks for strings of text that are repeated in your content.
Since communication is entirely imbued with culture, it is important that any English content you wish to translate be culturally neutral. This means, for example, modifying American idiomatic expressions (“Our company will go to bat for you.”), or removing Judeo-Christian references (“Our product is the holy grail of the industry.”) that may be incomprehensible or insensitive to your target market. Some vendors, including Glyph Language Services, offer source content editing services as a precursor to translation/localization.
Selecting a translation partner – How do you know who’s good?
Translation vendors come in all shapes, sizes and flavors. Knowing which vendor will represent you well can be challenging. This is especially true when cost estimates measure billable items in different ways and when pricing is all over the board. Let me suggest a few ideas to help you know who will represent you well, for after all you are choosing a partner who will be in part responsible for branding your company in a new market.
- Low ball: The main billable item in translation is the total number of words in the document. The industry standard in the US is to charge by the word. Rates typically range from $0.20 to $0.30 per word. If a vendor is offering to do the work for what seems an incredibly low price, it is very likely they are using less skilled translation talent and their processes include only minimal quality checks. Know exactly what you will receive for the quoted fees.
- Big dogs: If you are a software company who is willing to pay for the convenience of dropping your entire product over the fence and getting back a version localized into several languages in a short period of time, working with one of the large translation providers may be the right track. For most translation projects, though, the higher prices charged by large firms will go to supporting their heavy infrastructure, not your translation quality.
- Happy medium: Typically, a small- to mid-sized vendor will provide excellent quality at a reasonable price. Firms such as Glyph Language Services tend to offer more flexible services, adapting on the fly to your particular needs. In this environment, if you have a large project or several projects in a short period of time, you will be in a better position to negotiate rates and terms with a small or mid-size firm compared to a large agency. It pays to be the big fish in a small pond.
The translation industry is all about communicating. Trust a vendor that is responsible and clearly communicates with you from the first contact. Every project is unique in this industry and a vendor should ask questions, from creating the cost estimate to determining your intentions with a particular sentence in the content. Translation should not be an after-thought to your globalization planning. It will be your front line in reaching your foreign customer base and, if done well, your sales rep’s best friend. Preparing for translation by learning about the industry and carefully selecting a reliable vendor will be time well spent.
To learn more about Glyph, give us a call at +1 206.315.0994 or send an email at sales@glyphservices.com
