If your company is thinking of using an individual translator rather than a professional language service provider (LSP), consider some of the advantages of using a professional translation company before taking that next step.
Although individual translators can sometimes offer better prices, a professional translation company can offer competitive prices while still ensuring quality.
Professional LSPs may be more likely to provide free trial translations to help you gauge the level of quality of their finished worked product.
A professional translation firm is far more likely to have set standards for the skills their translation and other company employees must have, as well as criteria for hiring.
Unlike individual translators who may or may not have experience in a given discipline, professional translation services will typically offer subject matter expertise in a much broader range of specialities, such as automobile manufacturing, medical content, and telecommunications.
Because of their more extensive experience and body of work, LSPs usually have comprehensive glossaries and terminology lists as well as the experience in ensuring consistency of terminology across a wide range of documents and outputs.
For any translation work, a critical component to success is good project management and a standard translation process. Professional translation companies have the background in refining their processes to take into account best practices and are able to successfully manage and deliver projects that meet customer requirements, on time and with quality.
Finally, a professional translation company should have the financial resources to ensure their work product and to invest in sophisticated translation memory tools that can help your company save time and money, project after project, by reusing translated content.
Wednesday, June 22, 2011
Check out "Translation for the Safety Industry" - new article published in the June 2011 issue of Professional Safety magazine.
Companies looking for an edge in competing in a global market need to consider and implement practices that will help improve the quality of their translated content to reach a broad international audience. Some key activities to improving translation quality are:
§Chose a qualified localization service provider (LSP). Look for a company that has experience and a solid base of satisfied customers. Ideally, the LSP should use only qualified translators who are certified by the American Translator’s Association (ATA). Be sure that the translators also have knowledge is the subject matter of your content.
§Follow a defined translation process. From quote through final delivery of the finished products, ensure that the translation process you use includes all of the steps that will enhance quality like using a translation memory tool, and following quality assurance steps.
§Write consistent and clear content with translation in mind. Provide your writers with a company style guide that sets out the grammar and style rules you will follow, as well as the standard terminology your company has chosen. Make sure that your standard terminology will translate well into all target languages.
§Use in-country reviewers or peer translator reviews. Once your content has been translated, ensure that you use qualified reviewers to check the translations against the source English. Reviewers should be native speakers of the target language and be qualified subject matter experts in the type of content.
By following these basic steps, you can expect to see marked improvement in the quality of your multilingual content, which will enhance the professionalism of your product and help your company to achieve its customer satisfaction goals.
In March, ICD exhibited at ConExpo/ConAGG 2011, and here is our International Account Manager's take on the show: ConExpo/ConAGG 2011 lived up to its billing as one of the “Greatest Show on earth”.Exhibitor after exhibitor extremely satisfied with the contacts made. If you have never been to ConExpo, you now have to wait until March 2014. It is worth the cost just to see the “Biggest Sand Box in the World.” www.conexpoconagg.com
