The world is becoming increasingly globalized and part of that process is translating from one language into another, which involves various subjects and is closely linked to business and technology. Presenting a project beyond a particular country improves its prospective outreach, thereby creating new development and profit-generation opportunities. To spark a foreign audience’s interest, you need to make sure you are speaking the same language. The consumer will inevitably see your company’s content as an indicator of the quality of its products and services. Before entering a market, your offer must be packaged properly, which means translating your website or software, promotional text, and other materials describing the product’s value and special features.
Who Needs a Professional Translation?
A professional translation is distinguished by its high quality and accuracy, as well as the competence of the experts who complete it. Translation services are in high demand among business owners who want to ensure that their companies are moving in the right direction, presenting the right image to foreign users, and realizing their marketing strategy. Strategic areas for upscaling include:
- Product manufacturing and sales
- В2В and В2С services
- IT development
A business translation may include creating foreign-language versions of a web store, the localization of software and applications, and the translation of technical documents, legal information, corporate guidelines, etc. When working with multiple languages and diverse content requiring subject matter knowledge and specific skills, one translator is insufficient. The easiest way to find the necessary experts is to engage a translation agency.
10 Key Steps: Understanding the Agency Translation Process
There are many interlinked processes and a great deal of teamwork behind every professional translation. Here are the key steps that a project undergoes before it is finalized:
1. Receiving Translation Files
The client sends the files containing the materials to one of the agency’s employees. The files may include simple documents and presentations (.docx, .pptx, .xlsx), resource files or other development files (.po, .xml, .json), layout files (.idml, .indd), or many other file types.
2. Project Audit and Assessment
The company’s experts go through the source files in great detail, assess the subject matter, and determine the time and cost to complete the translation. The client communicates their requirements and expectations. At this stage, decisions are made regarding additional services such as foreign market analysis, marketing strategy adaptation, localization testing, final layout display check, etc.
3. Team Assembly
A flawless translation is built upon the providers’ professionalism, experience, and concerted effort. In an agency, each step of processing content is typically performed by an expert knowledgeable in the subject matter. Agency employees may include:
Project Manager
A project manager is the link between the client and the team. They work with the customer to determine requirements, hand off the customer’s materials and instructions, monitor the translation progress, and coordinate team interaction.
Translator
A translator is responsible for conveying the meaning of the source text accurately, choosing terminology that meets industry standards, and using it consistently. According to industry standards, the translator must be a native speaker of the target language. In addition, they must have either additional education in the relevant subject matter or related translation experience.
Editor
To ensure the high quality of any text, it must be reviewed by a fresh pair of eyes. A translator might overlook certain linguistic or terminology details, which an editor is likely to spot. The editing process includes proofreading the completed translation, making style and punctuation corrections, and ensuring that the text is coherent and its sections align.
Proofreader
After the editor has made corrections, it is necessary to ensure that no mistakes remain and that the edited and unedited portions are consistent. Standard quality checks must also be performed.
Terminologist
This expert may be required for large or highly specialized projects. A terminologist creates a glossary containing basic terms and their translations and ensures that it is followed, updating it and adding new terms when necessary during the translation process.
4. Preparing Materials for Translation and Localization
4.1. Converting the Files into a Single Format
Before translation, the source files need to be converted into a working format. Translation agencies, following industry requirements, use automated tools for this. Linguistic software speeds up the work process significantly, allows the efficient use of glossaries, checks terminology consistency, and saves translations to reuse when identical or similar sentences are found in the text.
4.2. Creating a Multipurpose Language Version
When translating into several languages, the most efficient approach is to adapt the materials for one language first, preferably English. Afterward, translating into other languages will be much simpler, largely because of the “native speakers only” professional code. It is significantly easier to find professional translators and editors with the requisite skills and experience to translate from English to any other language than to find similar experts for translations from Russian or Ukrainian. In addition, creating such a multipurpose version provides an opportunity to ask the client to explain acronyms, identify possible source text mistakes, and address questionable or unclear points in the text. The translators for translations into other languages could be provided with additional reference materials to help them in their work.
4.3. Internationalization and Pseudo-localization
Translation of software products may call for internationalization, which is the process of preparing the program and the text for localization. It involves both developers and designers. The process includes setting up language selection algorithms, the structure for storing text strings and graphical components in different languages, enabling format selection for dates, numbers, and currencies, etc. To quickly establish whether there are any text display issues, pseudo-localization is performed with machine translation or by populating the application with text in any target language.
4.4. Glossaries and Dictionaries
A decision regarding the use of a glossary is made at the start of a project. This is necessary to ensure consistent terminology. The client may either provide their own glossary or approve the version prepared by the translation agency.
5. Text Translation and Graphics Localization
The translator translates the materials into the target language, taking into account cultural differences in the target region. This is followed by editing and proofreading. In addition to the translation, which addresses the text, the visual elements must be localized, i.e., modified. The length of the translated text in graphical elements may differ from that of the source text, so the correct word wrapping and font choice must be assured. In many cases, images may need to be changed if they may signal inappropriate associations for users from different regions.
6. Translation of Audio and Video
Translation of Audio Content
The materials to be adapted may include audio recordings such as recorded lectures, training materials, and voiceovers for presentations. Linguists with strong listening skills transcribe the files, transforming the source material into an interpretation that a foreign listener can understand, adapting the terminology, idioms, and slang expressions.
Translation of Video Content
If a company has a YouTube channel, product reviews, or promotional or educational videos, they must be adapted via subtitling or dubbing.
7. Quality Checks
7.1. Translation Analysis with Automated Tools
In addition to completing the translation steps for specialized software, each of those steps involves automated quality checks with additional tools (such as Verifika or Xbench) that help efficiently find partially translated sentences, punctuation and capitalization errors, double or missing spaces, terminology mistakes if a glossary was used, and spelling and grammatical mistakes.
7.2. Translation Analysis by a Third Party
To guarantee the highest translation quality, the adapted materials are submitted to a third party for review. This is an independent translation agency uninvolved in the previous steps of the project. Peer review and translation recommendations will help achieve a flawless result.
8. Target Format Testing
In addition to translating the text, the content display must be tested in its final form as it will be seen by a foreign reader or user; for example, in a PDF file or on a PC screen. The final step of documentation translation is comparing the target language document with the original: how the text looks overall, how headings, tables, and figure captions are displayed, and how content blocks are laid out. Desktop publishing may help address visual differences. After localizing a website or a software product, a localization test is recommended, which involves confirming that the translated UI items match the overall page context and ensuring that the content displays correctly on the screen.
9. Result Alignment and Client Approval
When the translation is completed, the materials are sent to the client for approval. Any necessary additions and corrections are made and then the project is considered finished and ready to launch.
10. Project Monitoring
The world moves rapidly and we must adjust to trends and user expectations. A successful project is constantly evolving: new content is added, updated software versions are released, etc. Updating is much easier if the materials are handled by the same team of professionals. A translation agency also uses a translation memory to save the previous project materials—this allows the new text to be separated from any previously translated text and avoids the need to re-adapt the document from scratch. Not only does this save money but it also ensures that the previously translated and client-approved text is preserved untouched.
How Much Does a Translation Cost?
When reaching out to a translation agency or a language service provider, clients often wonder how much a translation costs and how the price is calculated. The price of a translation depends on the volume of material. By industry standards, the translation cost is determined by the word count or, less frequently, the number of hours spent on the project. Another cost-defining criterion is the target language-pair experts that need to be involved. For instance, imagine you need a translation from Russian to Chinese, Japanese, and Swedish. It is possible to find translators living in the target regions, but it would take more time and may be more costly. In this case, it would make sense to translate the materials into English first. The cost of translating into English and subsequently translating into other languages will be lower.
Key Takeaways
A professional translation is a detailed and nuanced multi-step process. One should order a professional translation for reasons including:
- Guaranteed Results. Having your project handled by a team of professionals, all of whom are experts in their fields, speeds up and optimizes the translation process significantly. It is much easier to address inaccuracies and complete complex and unusual tasks with the coordinated effort and experience of a team.
- First Impression and Image. Translation quality is a good indicator of product quality. A flawless translation that gets all of the language subtleties right will serve as a solid foundation for any further promotional efforts. By entrusting professionals with your translation project, you can be sure that it will have what it takes to succeed in foreign markets.
- Saving Effort and Time. When working with an agency, you can be sure your content will be completely taken care of, regardless of content, volume, or the number of target languages. Communication with the project manager saves you the trouble of explaining the same task to several translators and monitoring the process, deadlines, and results.
- Audience and Revenue Growth. When a product enters the international market, it gains more prestige and global impact. A well-prepared project will be more likely to get positive feedback from foreign audiences and achieve its goal.
To learn more about the advantages of using a translation agency, read the article Why Do We Need a Professional Translator.