Posts Tagged ‘translation tools’

For many agencies and translation service providers, the process of translation for client delivery involves more steps than simply the translation. It typically requires both an edition and proofreading stage before the document is ready for delivery. However, as translation is the first step in this process, also known as TEP (translation-edition-proofreading), delivering a quality translation from the start is essential for the other steps to run smoothly.

For this post, we have put together some simple tips that will help the translator deliver a higher quality product and thus facilitate later revisions:

1. Before agreeing to a translation, be sure to revise the document first and make sure that you feel comfortable both with the subject matter and language flavor.

2. Also, make sure you are familiar with the file format or requested translation tools such as CAT tools.

3. While translating, use any reference material, style guides or translation glossaries sent to you so that your terminology and style are consistent with other documents for the same client.

4. While you are working, have dictionaries or other online resources specific to the topic you are translating at hand for easy reference.

5. Contact the project manager or client immediately if you foresee any problems with the document.

6. When finished translating, read over the document once more to make sure that the text makes sense and there are no errors.

7. You should always look at your translation as if it were the final product, and don’t count on editors or proofreaders to fix your mistakes.

8. Be sure to run a spelling and grammar check before delivery.

9. Check the translated document against the source for any missing text or formatting issues.

10. With your file delivery, be sure to include any notes or comments for the client or for the editors about the translation.

As translators, we frequently work on high-volume projects, but keeping consistency within one or several documents can be tricky. In order to delivery a quality product to the client, we need to use the CONCORDANCE function within the TRADOS CAT (computer-aided translation) tool, which is widely used, or should be, among translators.

In order to apply this function, do the following:

1. Highlight the expression you want to search within the translation memory:

2. Click on the CONCORDANCE function in the TRADOS bar:

3. The translation memory will display the other occurrences of the expression you highlighted within this document or within the other documents used with this same translation memory:

If we make it a habit to utilize this Trados function when translating or editing, all documents that we deliver to the same client will always be consistent in the terminology.

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.