When to Consider Translation Technology Investment
When organizations are feeling the pains of managing some translation processes in-house, what should they consider when making the leap to investing in in-house translation technology? A recent webinar by SDL confirmed that finding the right technology is not the only problem.
Translation Memory
Despite being part of our industry for a very long time, clients often are not aware of the availability and benefits of Translation Memory until they contact us for help. Translation Memory management is the storage, reuse and updating of translation strings (source and target language) in a database for the benefit of consistency and cost savings with repetitive content.
What are the challenges?
Translation Memory is not machine translation. Translation Memory is a software that aids project management and human professional translation to do their job better and more efficiently. Here are some of the challenges with which Translation Memory can help:
It can help identify changes to a document quickly
When a previously translated document goes through revisions on the source language, Translation Memory can identify the differences immediately and quantify the changes that were made based on 100% match, fuzzy (75% – 99%) match and new text (<75%). Unless the changes to a document are minor and can be identified manually, Translation Memory is a much better way to identify and manage changes and to stay consistent with the previous translation. Translation Memory can populate what has been translated before and gives the translator the ability to make the necessary changes where needed.
It promotes and ensures consistent messaging
Translation Memory enables us to go back in time and review how something had been written previously against the source text that we have for translation. This has enabled us to inform the client about any inconsistencies in their own writing (you write A, but previously you wrote B) and correct where needed.
Also, Translation Memory enables us to be consistent in the translation. Together with consistent team selection for our clients, we are able to write translations consistently and provide consistent brand messaging. Our translators use the flexibility of the software to search for terms or phrases from past translations to stay consistent.
It is more accurate and saves cost and time
Translation Memory saves costs and time in many ways:
- Think of having to manually identify, copy and paste changes to a translation into a document. Not only does it introduce manual processes that can affect accuracy, it is also a costly process.
- We can process many different file types directly in our software, avoiding the need to manually copy and paste translation back into the final format. This includes InDesign files and web-based files.
- It allows us to scale up. Translation Memory allows us to keep an active record of all the translations and allows new team members, clients and project managers to be quickly on-boarded. This is further aided by the use of style guides and terminology databases.
Translation Memory + DTP
Translation Memory and Typesetting go very well together. Our software enables to work directly into the InDesign file, eliminating the manual process of extracting text from a PDF and manually entering the translation back into InDesign.
This can cut the typesetting procss by a third of the time and also makes the project preparation more efficient. By processing the InDesign directly, we extract all the styles and text attributes that are used in InDesign, making it more easy to apply the accurate style during the translation process.
Translation Memory + People
LSI spends many hours training Project Managers and Vendors to make sure that the software is being used efficiently and accurately to help us in our every day work. With clients relying on their Language Service Providers to take care of the organization and management of their translation content, it is important to choose a vendor that knows the software well.
We take pride in our organization skills and managing content in order to bring the best results. Our training is also part of our ISO 9001:2008 process.