Conventional wisdom has it that the best, highest-quality translation method is human translation and editing (as opposed to a rules- or statistics-based machine translation tool, à la Google Translate). Certainly when style and nuanced meaning are important, there’s really nothing that takes the place of the human mind for intelligent, effective, accurate localization. But there’s also a great tool that aids our linguists during translation, adding the power and speed of computers to the fluidity and contextual smarts of the human cerebellum.
That tool is translation memory, or TM, and it helps us create better consistency both within and across projects for our clients. Translation memory can also lower costs and speed up timelines for greater efficiency.
Language is a fluid and dynamic means of communication. Historically, translation has been best performed by human beings who can accurately adapt and express this fluidity and dynamism in the face of the logical contradictions and irregularities that most languages present. However, in recent years, “machine translation” (or MT) has started to come into its own, as its once-stoic technology – the realm of 0s and 1s – catches up to human adaptability.
Ora Solomon, vice president of sales and operations at Acclaro, describes how machine translation can complement human translation in an article for Marketing Profs:
1. Human Translation
Definition
A professional linguist (most often, an in-country native speaker) reviews your project and, using guidelines agreed on beforehand, translates it to the language you require. The goal is to speak to your audience in the most natural, effective way. You can expect human translations to be free of idiomatic errors and to flow naturally and fluently.
In Spanish they say, “Lo bueno, si breve, dos veces bueno.” The good, when brief, is
doubly good. Brevity is considered a virtue in most communication circles. In
the world of translation, however, brevity is even more: it’s a money saver.
The first thing any localization vendor will tell you about the cost of translation is that it's a direct function of word count. The more words your document, brochure, program, app or website contains, the higher the cost for translating it. Rather straightforward, right?
Containing your localization budget through reducing word count at the pre-translation stage requires a challenging time investment on your part, as no one can really perform an “audit” of your resources in your stead. To execute this effectively, you need either to distinguish between must-have and nice-to-have content through a complete content review, or pare down all of your source texts across the board through avid and diligent editing. It would definitely be easier to simply send all of your files to your language partner and hope for the best.
Yet when implemented, this phase of content review will ultimately pay off two-fold: it will save you a good sum of money on translation across all target languages, and it will make your end product better, since content that has been reviewed with a global audience in mind can be rendered more accurately.
Here are a few ideas for reducing your content as you go global with your program or product.
A picture is worth a thousand words.
What are some ingenious ways to do away with words in the context of your product? You may have the ability to substitute appropriate imagery, for example. After all, a picture is worth a thousand words. Take the example of the Apple iPhone OS. English has the wonderful benefit of offering two practical and short words for the settings buttons: on/off. But in most languages, the translation would occupy the whole width of the phone screen and result in what we call TVA: total visual awkwardness. Here is what Apple did to solve that problem:
Writers these days, whether for websites, software, or documentation, face interesting
new challenges when communicating technical material and product info to a
broad-based international audience. In a recent article for the Content Wrangler, Acclaro President Michael
Kriz offers up compelling
insights and ten useful tips to help you create content for your diverse global
audience.
As we become an increasingly global economy, there is increasing demand on writers — particularly those who work with technical language that describes products and services — to adapt to the changing needs of companies’ customer demographics. When a product is slated to launch in 20 new markets, and over half of the markets require translation of documentation, it completely changes the game for the technical writer. So, to effectively scale a global business, you and your writers should keep a few things in mind.
1. Use global English – For every native speaker of English, there are about three non-native speakers. It’s important that your communication in English is understandable to all English speakers, which means short, simple sentences and no idiomatic expressions or cultural references.
Guest author Christine Kent is an editor with the Content Bureau, a full-service copywriting agency.
The process of transcreation requires
writers and translators to come up with alternatives for the idiomatic and
casual language often used in marketing campaigns, particularly for consumer
products and advertising. However, for some marketing pieces, the transcreation
process can be made vastly 
easier by simply writing clean, usable copy from the
very beginning. In other words, assume that your text will need to be
translated down the road, and from the get-go, avoid piling on the clichés and
idioms.
(Whoops, I’ve already broken this rule in the line above: “down the road,” “get-go,” and “piling on” would not make life easier for writers doing a transcreation. Lucky for me, we’re not planning to get this blog post translated!)
This “think before you write” approach makes sense for some, not all, marketing pieces. Ad campaigns usually demand highly colloquial language, especially for taglines—better to write them in the fashion required for the initial audience, then recast the copy into another language using idioms that convey the same idea. However, product brochures, fact sheets, and white papers likely don’t require the use of much untranslatable wording, so it makes more sense to tone down the casual lingo in these documents.
We’ve already written about the importance of a glossary and
why it’s important to create one before 
starting any major translation effort —
whether it be for technical documentation, marketing communications, web,
software, eLearning, or multimedia projects. Now, let’s look at what should be
included in a glossary.
What goes into a glossary?
What should a glossary look like?
A glossary can be a complex database or a simple spreadsheet. It depends on your global reach and the size of your overall globalization efforts. If you are just starting out, you may just want to use an Excel spreadsheet. Then you can work your way up to a more complex database.
Those of you who are new to localization may think that a
glossary is only used for term papers and reference books. You have yet to
discover how this very simple item can revolutionize your daily work life by
sparing you countless redundancies and/or inconsistencies in the original
English, as well as in the foreign language versions of your products and
documents.
Creating a glossary of approved terms in each target language at the beginning of your translation project is essential. It will not only save you time and money (not to mention headaches and sleepless nights), it will also guarantee successful branding of your products in foreign markets.
A glossary (from the Greek glossa, meaning obsolete or foreign word), ensures a consistent style and voice, an accurate rendering of the original text and a level of translation quality that is even throughout. Glossaries are especially critical in the case of technical translations and marketing communications, but should really be employed for any localization project.
When you think of certain brands, you automatically think of high quality. You trust that brand and its products or services. You may pay a little more for it (the $100,000 Porsche, for instance). You may recommend it to a colleague or friend.
Quality can be more than the physical craftsmanship of a product or the expertise of a particular service. It can also be linguistic. Linguistic quality assurance (QA) goes the extra step to make your brand stand out among your competitors in any language. Instead of just getting the general meaning across, with linguistic QA you now have more clarity, eloquence and adherence to your overall brand guidelines. Linguistic QA is a best practice for anything that is translated or localized: documents, advertisements, brochures, websites, multimedia, software — anything. Even the language jumble of the sign above needs linguistic QA!
Professional translation ensures a correct translation, but when coupled with QA, it really makes it shine. If you’ve done your translation internally or through in-country partners, you should consider professional QA to double check that the overall meaning follows the original content, that the brand personality is adhered to, and that the translation is of the highest quality.
Last week Acclaro held a webinar on the basics of technical document localization. We touched on a lot of areas in document translation, including how to write in Global English, best practices for images, and an overview of the document localization process.
One burning question many people have concerns file formats and desktop applications — specifically, what they can do to make the localization process easier.
First, let's just note that if you aren't using XML, you should! XML is by far the best file format for localizers to work with on large documentation projects:
XML and to a lesser extent HTML (it's not as customizable) are great tools to use for document localization. Formatting is embedded in code that typically gets externalized during the translation process. Because of this the engineering end is lighter as it's less likely to have the same problems as MS Word, FrameMaker, InDesign or Quark. With most XML projects, we've seen that the client remains in control of their docs. Acclaro will execute a quick QA, but once prepped and translated, the bulk of our work is done. What does that mean for you? Fewer costs!
Technical communicators generally write, design, illustrate and conduct research for a specific target audience in a specific country. But what should a communicator do when the product is slated to launch in 20 new markets?
During this live, one-hour session on Thursday, July 22, Acclaro's Ora Solomon and Lydia Clarke team up to share best practices and practical, actionable tips for developing technical communication that can easily be transported across languages and cultures.
This is a must-see webinar for any company looking to launch products and services in new language markets: today, tomorrow, or anytime in the future. Register today to be better prepared for that very moment, and minimize headaches, costs and turn-around times on your project.
Welcome to Las Vegas and the 24/7 craps tables. While not the easiest game to play in the gambling pantheon, craps is the one most like a team sport. Players actively root for one another and often bolster each other’s bets. When a table is “hot”, players scream, holler, give high fives and yes, even do chest butts.
When it comes to the English language, craps has actually contributed its fair share of terms into our day-to-day speech. However, be careful when using craps and other gambling terms in your documents and marketing campaigns that eventually need to be localized. These terms, although common in English, may or may not “translate” well into other languages and may require substantial reworking by a translator, ultimately adding extra time and cost to your localization project. Read more about how to write for international audiences.
Ever notice that when you plan ahead, and do something "right" from the very beginning, you end up saving money?
We have. And if there's one thing we like to emphasize to newcomers to globalizing content, it's to plan ahead. When you know what to expect, you're much more likely to solve problems before they actually occur.
Writing is a snap. Well, it can be. Take the easiest, most enjoyable type of writing: Sharing a simple message to a like-minded, familiar audience — an American whitewater kayaker, for example, relaying a story of his latest trip down the Upper Yough Sand Run to another East Coast kayaker, perhaps on an online kayak forum, or via email.
In this situation, there is not only no pressure to perform (i.e., gain business or attract customers) but you are writing for a reader with similiar background, interests, and linguistic/cultural perspective as your own.
What if... this were not the case? What if you knew the content you were creating was not only required to have impact in your own language market, but also might eventually (perhaps sooner rather than later) be translated for another?
Do not fear. Follow the five tips for developing global-friendly content, and you'll make the translation process smoother than, well, that whitewater kayak ride.
Who hasn't come — or rather stumbled — across a user's manual or instructions-for-use document for a foreign-made product they just bought and couldn't make heads or tails of the "translated" text? Or had to stop what they were doing and have an attack of hysterical laughter?
The value that a professional translator can add to the basic usability of such documents – let alone to the respect for the customer the manufacturer doubtlessly intends — is best demonstrated by a few choice examples of haphazard efforts in conveying such instructional contents in the target language.
The following is a takeaway from a presentation delivered by Acclaro Program Manager Lydia Clarke at the 2010 California State University, Chico Localization Certification Program in San Francisco.
Content creators often do not consider the possibility that their material may one day be translated into another language. Therefore, they often write, organize, and present information for their target audience, whether that audience is English speakers or say, Spanish speakers. There's certainly nothing wrong with this sense of immediacy, but companies do expand into other language markets and should be able to use the same content for these new readers.
Enter translation, and its many challenges! Words and their many nuances aside, one of the most problematic parts of translating content — be it technical documentation, user interfaces, website pages, or marketing collateral — is images.
The good news is that you, as a content creator, can do a lot now to save yourself time (and money!) down the road:
What in the world did we do for inexpensive, “high”-design, build-it-yourself furniture before IKEA?
Before 1985, when IKEA opened their first store in the States, dorm rooms everywhere were littered with “bookshelves” made out of planks of wood and concrete blocks. Now, instead of going to the lumber yard, millions head to IKEA to for flat-packed everything — kitchen cabinets, desks, sheet sets, lamps, glasses, decorations, and yes, even pet beds.
IKEA is in nearly 40 countries; they are the true masters of product naming, multilingual packaging, and labeling and pictorial instructions.
Need a toilet roll holder? Why not the MOLGER ($2.99 in wood) or the GRUNDTAL ($4.99 in stainless steel)? Sometimes, a name (and note they are always one word) will also be a series – so the MOLGER series also includes a plethora of other items for the bathroom such as a step stool, soap dish, shelving unit, or a mirrored hook rack.
Smart, fun and useful. Acclaro shares news and tips on translation, localization, language, global business and culture.