If you are concerned about the quality of the translations that are done for your company, in this blog post we offer you some basic advice to do your part to achieve this goal traduzione certificata online.
Whether your company’s translations are done in-house through a translation department, or outsourced to a translation company or freelance translator, there are things that can be done to help these professionals translate in the best conditions.
- Don’t be tempted: work with professional translation services
It is possible that you have an acquaintance or a family member who has a good command of English, French, German or any other foreign language and that you think that they could use an income of extra money and your company could benefit from saving resources.
It is also possible that this circumstance occurs within your own company, where there is already a native of a foreign language who can do the translations. If what you need to translate is a non-technical document that is for internal use and does not affect the image of your company, these resources could be a solution to save costs.
Translation is actually an activity that can be complex and require specialized professionals to achieve acceptable quality levels.
Anyone who has read a contract or medical report in Spanish, and even having university studies, has often found it difficult to understand the text in its entirety. Imagine now that it was not your native language and that you had to translate it. In short, a quality translation is not done by just anyone who knows languages: you have to have a high level of the language, know the subject and know how and where to obtain documentation.
If you are concerned about the quality of your translations, you should ensure that your company’s internal resources have training and/or experience in translation. If you do not have internal resources, do not hesitate to hire professionals, whether they are translation agencies or freelance translators.
I leave here the reference to our blog “ I need a translation: I hire a freelance translator or a translation company ” where you can analyze what may interest you most depending on your circumstances. If you opt for a freelance translator and want to separate the wheat from the chaff, you may be interested in reading: “ How to distinguish a professional translator .”
- Provide context and reference material if it exists
It is not unusual for a client to send us a phrase to translate, just like that. However, words can have very different meanings depending on the context in which they are found, and it is a healthy habit to explain where a phrase or document that we are going to translate will be used . Sometimes it is obvious and not necessary, but other times we see it as obvious because it is our usual context, but it does not have to be so for the translator.
A typical case in which translators work “half blindly” is in the translation of databases or Excel files that contain content extracted from a product catalog or from the interface of a computer program. In these cases the saying that “a picture is worth a thousand words” applies. The possibility of having the image of the product or the screen of the software that we are translating avoids many potential errors due to lack of context.
It is also important that, if there is already translated material with key company terminology or with which it must be consistent, you provide the translator with these documents. Not only will you make the translator’s job of searching for terminology easier, but you will also ensure that they use your company’s preferred terminology.
- Get the original materials in editable format
We frequently receive a request to translate a PDF. The problem with PDF documents is that they are not designed to be modified. As its name indicates, it is a “ portable document format ” (literal translation of “portable document format”). Come on, it is designed so that we can view any document regardless of the program with which it was created.
If there is a PDF, there is an original document from which it was created and it is advisable to make it available to your translation department, or your translation agency or translators . The opposite means more work for the translators and, in the event that you need a document fully laid out like the original, more work or budget for you.
This problem is even greater if the PDF has non-editable text, as is the case with scanned documents or documents that were converted to vector graphics .
Modern professional translation involves the use of translation assistance tools or CAT (computer-assisted translation) tools that facilitate the work of translators by arranging the text in a two-column format. In this way, the translator has the source text in one column and writes the translation in another column.
These programs create a database with the translations that the translator makes, which allows you to search for any term that you already have translated in the database. In addition, these programs allow us to detect repetitions or similar text, which speeds up the work and allows translation companies to offer discounts based on this technology.
- Take advantage of your company’s specialists or distributors
No one knows more about your company’s products than your company, which is why it is important that, if your company has subsidiaries abroad or distributors that you collaborate with or can convince to collaborate, you involve them in the translation process to be able to use the most appropriate terminology for your company.
This means more time for everyone, but it is a process that will give your translations a jump in quality , also allowing you to have feedback on the quality you are receiving from the translation department, or from the translation company or freelance translator that you are using. you have hired.
In the event that due to the size and infrastructure of your company you do not have this possibility, be proactive to obtain feedback from customers who buy your product regarding the quality of the translations and to let you know if they do not agree with some of them. of the terms used.
- Provide all relevant information about your target market
Many times there may be characteristics of the audience your company wants to target that can influence the translation of your documents. For example, in the case of Spain there is an increasing tendency to use “you” instead of “usted” , especially if we talk about products that are mainly aimed at people under 30 years of age.
In English, a clear distinction is not made in this regard, while languages ??such as German or French maintain the formal treatment when Spanish would not. Offering this type of information to the translator can lead to a more informal treatment when translating into Spanish.
Another example that also involves Spanish is the case that we make a translation for Latin America. Although translation companies offer Latin American Spanish, the truth is that Latin American Spanish only exists in the minds of buyers who intend to solve their communication needs with Latin America with a single translation.
Also in the service offering of translation companies , with the desire to satisfy the demands of our clients. But no one who knows Spanish overlooks the great dialectal differences between the Spanish of Argentina, that of Mexico or that of Colombia. Igor Zubicaray and I explained it very well in the article published in tcworld : “ Spanish for local and international markets ” (in English).
If you want to save costs and use a Spanish version for all of Latin America, inform your translation service provider which country is of greatest importance to your company as a market, so that a translator from that region or country can be used when creating the version. for Latin America.
By following these five basic recommendations we can avoid many translation errors and be able to streamline the workflow involved in translation, with the benefits in costs, time and peace of mind that this can entail.