Posts Tagged ‘translation process’

I first came across this sign a few months ago, but I feel it’s important to complement justinb’s post to emphasize that ANYONE interested in translation, especially those looking to run an agency, really soak in what happened here. For those of us who have no knowledge of Welsh, we brush it off and turn left (provided that we are not a heavy goods vehicle). However, a Welsh-speaking truck driver with no knowledge of English is pretty much stuck. The sign in Welsh reads, “I am not in the office at the moment. Send any work to be translated.” At least that’s what they tell me.

As professional translators and people interested in someday running our own agency, this tells us a few things:

First, have more than one person who understands the target language look at what is being sent along, especially if it is being used for publication in a place where many, many people can see it.

Second, if a translator you normally work with sends you a translation with no additional comment, confirm that it is a translation and not an automatic message or something that they otherwise sent without thinking.

Third, if you’re generally working with one specific language pair (here, Welsh-English), make sure that your emails are correctly in both, in case someone is looking to contact you from either end.

Last, learn from your mistakes or those of others…mistakes like these can only be prevented by thorough attention to detail from every party involved.

There are dozens and dozens of errors like this out there…don’t have me add yours to the list later…

In the specific case of translation, localization refers to how a language is adapted to a specific country or culture so that the target audience understands the text on a native level. Not only are the words themselves localized, accounting for spelling differences and disparities in word usage, but aspects such as date and number formats, currencies, measurement systems, phone numbers, images, etc. are also adapted to the target country or audience so that the text fits in perfectly with the culture.

Localization is a fundamental service for businesses looking to expand globally. Not only will these businesses need to have their material translated into several different languages, but they will also need to have their material localized if a product or service is to be used in a specific region. This is often times included in the translation process, although clients will need to specifically indicate that they are requesting this service as well as the flavor for the target language(s). For example, if a company in Spain wishes to translate their material for English-speaking markets, they will need to consider which flavor of English they will use. If their product or service will mainly be used within Europe, it is likely that they will use the U.K. flavor of English due to the number of these English speakers within the region.

One of the main advantages of this service is the personalized attention to your clients, as you are able to communicate with them in a language they understand.

Today, clients commonly deliver files in PDF format for a price quote for translation, edition and proofreading services.

This format, which is very practical for sending a file through the Internet, cannot be edited, and thus, when the translation, edition and proofreading services are purchased, it would be helpful if the client would send the original document in an editable format, whether in Word, Excel, InDesign, Quark, Publisher, etc. so that the translator can easily work with the same format of the original document, without having to read the PDF with some conversion program.

If this original editable document is not sent, graphic design services have to put in an extra effort to recreate the file, which will likely be reflected in the translation costs billed to the client.

Therefore, in order to reduce costs for the client for graphic design services and in order to facilitate the translation process, ideally the client would send the freelance translator or translation agency the original editable documents for translation, edition, etc.

One of the helpful tools in the Trados program is the Clean Up function. This function removes all the hidden text and updates the translation memory so that it includes any changes you may have made to the document outside of the translation segments. Whether you are working directly with clients or with translation agencies, knowing how to clean up your file is a fundamental part of the translation process with Trados.

1. To begin, select the Clean Up option in the Tools menu:

2. Next, you need to select the file that you want to clean up by selecting “Add…”

3. Once the file is selected, you can create a log file which will enable you to keep a record of the clean-up process and view any errors that occurred during the process. Select a location for the log file and give it a name:

4. Now that your log file is created, you can select one of the four options for how your document will be cleaned up. The best option to use is Update TM so that any changes made are incorporated into the TM, regardless of whether or not the translation segment was open when you made them:

5. Now you can click on the Clean Up button to complete the process. Once the function has been executed, the window will look like this:

6. If there were any errors in the process, simply go to Log File - View and the .txt file will open, displaying any errors such as broken tags or corrupted segments. If there were no errors, the following message will appear at the end of the file: “Cleanup finished successfully without errors!”

7. As part of the clean-up process, the program will automatically generate a .csv file (same as the .txt log file) and backup file with the .BAK extension. This file is the bilingual file, i.e., it has both the original and target text and is simply a safety measure so that you don’t lose the bilingual file in the clean-up process.

With all the new developments and increasing accessibility of electronic translation tools such as machine translations, some have argued that these technologies will eventually replace the human translator. Are human translators really essential for the translation process, or can their labor be simplified and processed by a machine?

Researchers have been working for decades in order to establish computer systems capable of translating from one natural language to another. These systems do so by essentially deconstructing the components of the text such as the punctuation marks, recognized idioms, single word terminology, and sentence structure and then reconstructing these elements in the target language by applying specific linguistic rules and “learning” from already existing translations.

This all sounds promising, but we are forgetting that languages are filled with ambiguities and complex rules that not even a computer can successfully resolve. As all translators know, the process of translation involves much more than simply replacing the source word with the target language word. This process involves using cultural, grammatical, syntactic and semantic knowledge in order to interpret the real meaning and ensure that it makes sense to native readers.

Machine translations offer an attractive package for users, ensuring instant turnaround times and a systematic and consistent approach when handling translations. However, we must consider that while the process of human translations is much slower in this sense, only humans can determine the suitability of a translation for a particular audience and make linguistic and style choices based on experience instead of a database.