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In the past, a translator sat on their own in a room and typed out the translation on their computer. This continues to be the dominant image in most people's minds, but this is quite far from the reality. Translation Memories and the Internet have turned translation into a truly global service.
What actually happens when a document is translated?
Put simply, localization is when you adjust something to the local conditions of a target market. First and foremost, this includes the translation. But it goes a lot further than that:
If I want to distribute American software in Germany, this software must recognize and display German addresses (without requesting a double-digit state code), German prices (€ and not $), a German date format and so on. Ideally, names and images in examples are also adjusted. What is localization?
Internationalization means that the source material can be translated. This includes the ability to enter and display umlauts, cyrillic letters or Chinese characters, or the option to also process all of the texts that are displayed (these may be graphics, for example) However, this also includes the elimination or adjustment of cultural peculiarities or sensitivities, such as the use of colors (white = innocence or sorrow?), examples or images (the use of a miniskirt in Islamic countries?) What lies behind internationalization?
This search is extremely difficult: standards, certifications and membership of, or collaboration with, certain organizations provide a first clue, at best. Then you must dig a little deeper: How much experience do they have? What references do they have? How far is the provider willing to go in order to meet the needs of the customer? Do they offer more than the actual translation? This link leads to a mind map, which you can use to interactively explore the search for a provider. How do I find a good provider of translation or localization services?
Each natural language is subjective and continuously changes. For this reason, it is very difficult to objectively measure quality. However, there are criteria such as grammatical correctness, adherence to terminology guidelines, consistency and adherence to style guidelines (direct or indirect speech). In addition, the quality of the delivery can be measured by complying with the layout, delivering on time, complying with customer specifications and so on. How do I measure the quality of the translation?
Each natural language is subjective and continuously changes. This is why languages and standardization only work together under certain conditions.
Workflows and process steps can be standardized and two standards are applicable in these areas for localization/translation: ISO 9000 (very limited since this is based on production) and EN 15038, the "EU translation standard". The EN 15038 standard is more applicable in practice but its requirements exceed the scope of services for which companies are usually prepared to pay. It is therefore necessary, in each individual case, to check whether it makes sense to apply the EN 15038 standard. A "registration to EN 15038" is simply a declaration of intent that has no validity. You therefore should not let yourself be dazzled by this!
Some large companies and program providers have started to certify their vendors or service partners. As with standards, these certifications involve complying with processes and also involve specialized knowledge and skills that are required or useful in the relevant field. Are there standards and certifications?
An automatic translation provides exactly the same quality that you find on any Internet-based MT service: a largely unusable translation with a few good sentences in-between. Why?
MT systems translate sentence by sentence and therefore cannot process any information outside of the individual sentence (with a few exceptions). They are also very sensitive to errors. Where you would correct "trnslation" to "translation" in your mind while reading it (in most cases not even realizing what you just did), an MT system just sees an unknown word and this prevents a complete analysis of the sentence and leads to unpredictable results. This is also true for omissions and sentence fragments. Finally, there are many words which may have a completely different meaning, and therefore a completely different translation, depending on their context: "Setting" has a completely different meaning for the sun than for an engine.
MT is therefore anything but automatic. It returns useful results only if you invest time in preparing and postprocessing the text, which is definitely worth one's while if there is a large amount of text. And sometimes MT is the only option for translating a text (due to time or cost restrictions). Can I use MT to automatically translate my texts?
Translation is manual work (or should we say brainwork?) Apart from repetitions or similar texts that are caught by the system, there are no benefits of scale. To the contrary: For large projects, the efforts of the individual translators must be coordinated. This therefore incurs additional project management costs. Savings can only be achieved for uniform streams of work over extended periods, since this enables us to optimize the workflow. Why does my translation not become cheaper as the volume increases?
A generally accepted guideline is the 2000-2500 words that a good translator can translate in a day. This corresponds to about 10 pages loosely filled with text. This value will vary depending on the text type and on how familiar the translator is with the topic, but you can use it to help you estimate how long your translation request will take. 20,000 words requires 8 days in addition to time for layout work and quality assurance. Of course, several translators can work in parallel on the same task, but this always leads to inconsistencies (personal style, different terminology and so on) and this means that we must find the best compromise between quality demands and time restrictions. How long does it take to do a proper translation?
Most customers do not require large teams to process their requests. It is more important that the service provider has the ability to quickly put together a suitable team and increase the size of the team as required.
This means that the existing network or the virtual size becomes the decisive factor, while the number of staff employed has a greater effect on quality than the possible output.
The important question is: How many translators, project managers, and layout people do you need at a certain point in time? How large do I need my translation provider to be?
There is no universal answer here. Up until a short time ago, larger companies tended to give all of their translations to one provider in order to save internal costs. However, as a result of technical advances, very small teams can now take on the complete management of a project, which means that the pendulum is again swinging in the direction of sole providers in the target country since this approach may save money and increase quality. Do I assign all languages to one provider or do I assign each language individually?
What level of quality can you expect (see "Where should the translators be located?")? If you assume that the actual translation occurs in the target country, then the only other areas in which savings can be made are project management and additional services (such as DTP). This means that there is not much potential for cutting costs, and the disadvantages of a greater need for communication effort and the doubling of the amount of management tasks are not balanced out. Can I get cheaper translations in India/China?
To save time, translation requests are almost exclusively sent electronically. This means that the distance between customers and providers is of no importance (as long as they are located in the same time zone). In addition, discussions do not occur every day. This means that the advantage of being geographically close has less relevance.
It is much more important that there is fast and extensive communication between all of the parties involved. How important is the location of the provider?
In contrast to the previous question, geography is much more important in this case: translators should not only be native speakers of the language, but they should also live in the relevant target country so that they speak the "correct language". This is particularly noticeable in marketing, since language continuously changes in this area. Where should the translators be located?
It is easy to realize that a translator can only produce work of a high quality if they know everything that they can possibly know about the material that is to be translated. For this reason, it is counterproductive to extract the text from the original format and send it to us in, for example, Word or Excel format. Modern translation tools automatically extract text from layout programs or operator interfaces (menus, dialog boxes and so on) and, at the same time, provide the translator with context information, such as a preview. Additional reference material and terminology lists are also extremely helpful. What should I send to the translator?
Globalization Management Systems (GMS) promise simple management, complete control over the process, cost savings and much more. In reality, these systems attempt to squeeze the translation process into a ready-made schema that is unsuitable in almost all cases. We are definitely in favor of a system that is as automated as possible in order to save time and costs and to prevent errors. However, we advocate for a "loose coupling" of the individual parts in order to be able to include various providers and to change subprocesses without having to scrap the whole solution. Do I need a GMS?
Some providers offer their customers a special Translation Memory and also sometimes offer a special workflow. This may suit your needs well, but you must always ask yourself what will happen if you wish to change the provider or call on a second provider. On the other side of the spectrum is the use of standard tools (in translation, this is Trados). This is also not always ideal. Translation providers must be familiar with various tools. Here at Eule, we are proficient in the use of many tools, but we prefer to use the Across Language Server because we believe in the advantages that it provides. Is it more advantageous to use a proprietary Translation Memory?
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