How to Find the Right Document Translation Services Company
By: L. Amado – 02/14/2010
Professional document translation service providers have to meet the growing needs and requirements of their clients by providing an increasing number of value-added quality services. But what are some of the aspects to take into account to find the one that is right for you?
In a world where more and more aspects of life and work have become computerized, it is critical that a professional document translation firm bases its services on human translation. What is commonly referred to as “machine translation” produces generally incomprehensive results, and while computer-assisted translation (CAT) tools are useful for large volumes of repetitive texts—as can be the case when translating technical manuals—accurate, high quality document translations can only be created by qualified professionals, i.e. certified human translators experienced in their specific fields. Advanced technology certainly has its place in professional document translation services, but the translation process itself relies on the competence, skill, and knowledge of the professional translator.
Another important factor to consider is that the professional translation services provider of your choice should work with a global network of accredited document translators and can take advantage of their geographic placement. This means that your document translation projects are processed 24/7, independent of your location and/or time zone. In this regard, modern technology is vital to relay materials and make document translation results available on secure web server any time of the day.
One of the most important indicators for a quality document translation services company is a solid reputation for reliability. Longstanding professional translation firms are registered with the American Translators Association and exclusively work with certified document translators accredited either by the latter and/or organizations such as The Institute of Linguists, La Société Française des Traducteurs, Institute of Translation and Interpreting, US National Association of Judiciary Interpreters and Translators, and the United Nations.
The professional document translation service of your choice must also be able to efficiently handle all your specialized translation requirements, using a team of certified translators with the experience and knowledge needed for each individual assignment. It is crucial that the translator team handling your project specializes in the respective field and that all translations are subject to strictest quality control.
Last but not least, the project or account managers—your number 1 contact at the professional document translation company—must be experts in all things translation, able to answer your questions, address your concerns, and assign the right document translation team for every individual project. They also must be able to accommodate special requests, ranging from particular layouts to specific certification and turnaround requirements.
With their specialized teams of professional, certified document translators, their proprietary translation workflow process and proven track record in the industry, Legal Translation Solutions, and its parent company, ASTA-USA Translation Services, are an excellent choice when you are in the market for professional document translation services.
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Professional Document Translation Services
Editing and Proofreading as Part of the Translation Process
By: L. Amado – 02/08/2010
Reviews are an important component of the professional document translation process. As a general concept, reviews can take different forms. The most common ones are usually referred to as proofreading and editing. Different people use these terms to mean different things, depending on the context, while others use them interchangeably. When it comes to professional document translation, however, each terms refers to a very specific concept that plays a vital role in the delivery of accurate, high quality document translations.
Proofreading document translations involves reading copy or proof in order to find errors and omissions. It is always performed in comparison to the original. The professionally translated document is checked for grammar, syntax, figures, spelling and related errors and then compared to the original, making sure that the formatting matches and nothing has been overlooked. While modern text processing software is very helpful, especially when it comes to punctuation and spell checks, it is crucial that a professional translator in the respective language pair performs the review.
Editing document translations means dealing more directly with the text, ensuring readability and flow, verifying that colloquialisms and similar idiomatic expressions have been rendered accurately, and generally checking the correct use of vocabulary and terminology, whether general or project-specific (in some cases, glossaries or reference materials are provided by the client). It involves researching problematic terms and entering corrections or suggesting changes. While editing is particularly crucial for document translations meant for publication, clarity and precision in terms of expression and tone are vital to guarantee proper understanding of any document translation.
Editing and proofreading can be performed as one process, meaning that the professional translator reviewing a document translation checks a document for errors while simultaneously improving the translated text itself where needed. However, when dealing with larger scale and more complex projects, it is helpful to separate the two and first have a professional translator edit the document in order for the text to read as it should, then have another set of eyes going over the edited document and checking the translation against the original to ensure there are no typos or omissions.
Under normal circumstances, reading and correcting a professionally translated document is less time consuming than translating “from scratch”. But it is important to keep in mind that estimating how much time will be needed for a proofreading/editing job can sometimes be tricky. If a project is brought to a professional document translation company that was translated by another entity, it can occasionally happen that the translation to be reviewed leaves much to be desired in terms of accuracy and quality. In this case, it may actually require more time to correct the translation than it would have taken to professionally translate it.
Since different people mean different things by proofreading and editing, it is important to make sure all parties involved are on the same page about the requirements before undertaking a professional document translation job.
For professional translation services companies like Legal Translation Solutions and its parent company, ASTA-USA Translation Services, performing the three steps of translation, editing, and proofing for every single document translation assignment sets a rigorous quality assurance standard that is topped off with a final review and certification.
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Future Trends of Professional Translation
Professional Translation Services – Future Trends of Professional Translation
By: L. Amado 01/28/2010
Of the thousands of languages that exist in the world,1 only a few hundred are spoken by at least one million people. The top three languages by the number of native speakers are Mandarin Chinese, English and Spanish. Languages are living, breathing organisms, constantly evolving and, as such, some are expanding and are some contracting. Languages are the bread and butter of professional translation services companies and their language translation experts need to stay as up to date as possible of changes and linguistic tendencies.
Most professional translators try to keep up with the changes in the world of languages, but, as with any other field, predicting the direction of change is an impossible task. Besides being the second language by the number of speakers, English in general and the American or US variety in particular has been the de facto lingua franca for almost a century. Will English manage to maintain its relative importance in the future?
It is very hard to tell. As an old professor at school used to put it, a language is as important as the people who speak it. English owes its status to the importance and extension of the British Empire and later to the ascent of the United States, initially as a world power and later as the sole superpower, and as a scientific, industrial and technological powerhouse.
Few experts doubt that, just as it happened to Latin, the day will come when some other language or group of languages will replace English as the de facto lingua franca. The question is when it will happen and what language or languages will take its place. Predictions are very hard to do. I still remember my university colleagues who decided to specialize in Russian during the 80s to suffer a major letdown after the end of the Cold War. Something similar happened with the Japanese language in the early 90s. Many people were convinced that Japan would soon overtake the United States as the world’s only superpower and Japanese would replace or at least seriously challenge the status of English. Now, due to dynamism of the Chinese society, the major contender seems to be Mandarin Chinese. Time will tell.
In any event, besides the natural decline of the relative importance of English-speaking societies, there are at least two major threats to the supremacy of the English language. One of them is linguistic nationalism, or the desire of many countries and regions in the world to defend and preserve their languages. Many of them have in place very strict language laws to promote the national language. The other major challenge is demographics. Birth rates in English speaking countries are generally lower than those in countries or societies with other languages.
We can now safely say that we are almost living a dual existence: the real world and the virtual world, or the world of Internet. It is interesting to note that to a certain extent the virtual world of Internet replicates the real world, as far as language usage is concerned. Most estimates indicate that English is the most widely used language by Internet users, followed by Chinese and Spanish. Not surprisingly, the ten languages with the most speakers cover more than 80% of the total number of internet users. Far from promoting uniformity, globalization, with its revolution on the availability of faster and cheaper transportation and easier communications, has created the opportunity for many languages to thrive. Easier communications and more readily available transportation mean that interaction between different linguistic groups will definitely grow.
Does the above mean that professional translators need to ditch English studies and start taking Mandarin Chinese classes? Not at all. It simply means that professional translators working for professional translation services companies such as ASTA-USA Translation Services (www.asta-usa.com) and its legal division Legal Translation Solutions (www.legaltranslationsolutions.com) need to stay current with the needs and requirements of the professional translation services market.
1The most extensive catalog of the world’s languages, generally taken to be as authoritative as any, is that of the Ethnologue organization (http://www.ethnologue.com), whose detailed classified list currently includes 6,809 distinct languages.
Professional Translation Services: The Process
Professional Translation Services: Some Thoughts on the Professional Translation Process
By: L. Amado 01/18/2010
A professional translation services company has to continuously improve its processes, generate professional translations with the correct meaning, terminology and composition. They must also assure that those processes are in sync with the client’s internal reviewers (when applicable).
The professionally translated document must convey the original message in the target language and, at the same time, it has to be appropriate for the culture of the country in question. In order to do so correctly, the professional translators and editors must be fluent in both the target and source languages and have extensive expertise in the subject matter. It goes without saying that the reviewer must also preserve the subtleties and the context of the message of the source language in the professional translation.
The professional translation must also be corrected for spelling, grammar, punctuation, etc. Professional linguists who are native speakers of the target language, who are also proficient in the source language, are required for judging the correctness of the composition.
The terminology should be the one used by actual practitioners in the field. Only a specialist in the relevant discipline has the familiarity to know the contemporary terminology used by the particular industry. It takes a business insider to know the internal jargon in each language. As per professional translation services best practices, the professional translation service provider should, from time to time, ask them for clarification or assistance in order to develop a comprehensive glossary of terms to maintain the integrity of the terminology.
In relation to style, professional certified translators must capture the style of the author of the source material when expressing the message in the target language. To choose among numerous possibilities, the professional certified translator must safeguard the primary need of faithfulness to the accuracy of the message while rewriting the document for the level of education and technical expertise of the target audience.
Sad but true, oftentimes professional translation services companies have to deal with unfinished or draft source material. Unfortunately, professional certified translators are under narrow constraints regarding the liberties they may take to improve a document sent for translation. We know that a translation will only be as good as the source material. If the source material leaves much to be desired, the translation will definitely suffer.
It is important to keep in mind that while the above may true for the professional translation service company, client reviewers are not under the same constraints. Thus, it is expected that client internal reviewers will review the material for the sake of style or added clarity, aside from changes in content. It is the role of the reviewers of the professional translation service company, using their knowledge of the subject and the needs of the users of the translation, to make all appropriate changes.
It is important to take into account that, in general, a majority of the changes made by reviewers are stylistic preferences, not necessarily corrections of errors. Therefore, as the number of reviewers increases, so does the number of changes based upon personal preferences. Remember, just as “Too many cooks can spoil the broth,” too many reviewers can spoil a professional translation.
ASTA-USA Translation Services (www.asta-usa.com) and its legal division Legal Translation Solutions (www.legaltranslationsolutions.com) have worked diligently at refining the professional language translation process since 1991.
Professional Translation Services: Scalability Matters
Is it possible to provide professional translation services at an industrial scale?
One of the most revolutionary aspects of the Industrial Revolution was the achievement of scale. Scale is one of the most effective ways to reduce the price per unit. The bigger the scale of production, the less expensive the product or service.
Here’s an interesting question which I am sure has occurred to you before. Is it possible to provide professional translation services at an industrial scale? Is a professional translation services operation scalable without significant loss of quality? This is no doubt related to the question whether translation of documents from one language to another is an art or a professional activity (or both).
I worked for almost ten years for the world’s second largest software company. I started in the early 90s as a lowly document translator, progressed to Team Leader, Language Translation Specialist and finally Senior Language Translation Specialist.
The company translated hundreds of thousands of words (sometimes over a million) per software version to some 19 languages (from Spanish – European and Latin American – to Korean and from Catalan to Arabic). Language Translation Specialists were responsible for all linguistic aspects of the localization to the target language (localization involves customizing software and documentation for a particular country; it includes the translation of such things as fields, menus, forms, reports, etc. as well as changes to accommodate different alphabets, cultures and legal systems). My group was in charge for translation involving Latin American (LA) Spanish.
Now, LA Spanish may look very nice in a budget estimate, but let me assure you from the onset that it is not a real language. LA Spanish is an abstraction, it simply does not exist. There are very important stylistic and terminology differences among the Spanish speaking countries in the region.
Language translation specialists for each of the target languages were responsible for all linguistic aspects and worked closely with translation services vendors in the target countries.
It goes without saying that the only way to successfully translate hundreds of thousands of words to 19 different languages in a matter of months is to approach the whole exercise as an industrial process. There’s very little room for the “translation as art” school of thought.
The fact that we dealt with a very specific and limited field and that up to a certain extent we could control the source material was a huge advantage. Some of the key success factors were the provision of very clear and comprehensive glossaries and style guides to the translation services vendors and having in place a very efficient QA process for all translation projects. In a way, we had to limit the natural creativity of the professional translators working for us. We had to aim at having a unique translation per English term so as to minimize the possibility of error.
After all, language is convention.
But the single most important factor, the key to our success, was working with professional translation services companies.
Our professional translation services vendors had to be able to provide scalability. They had to have the capacity to simultaneously translate hundreds of thousands of words into some 19 languages – such as Japanese, Korean, Thai, Arabic, Greek, Hungarian, Finish, Hebrew and Chinese – in a matter of months.
It is simply impossible to achieve that level of professional translation services working with a few uncoordinated independent translators or small single-language translation vendors.
Mission critical means that a professional translation service company has to be able to deliver the highest quality according to schedule, even if a translator gets ill, the systems crash or the building is affected by an earthquake. Scalability means that they have to be able to do it working with a 40,000 word project, or a 400,000 word project, or even a 4 million word project.
To the best of my knowledge, there are very few professional translation services companies in the world able to provide that level of professional translation services. During the course of my professional translation career, I’ve had the opportunity to work with a vast number of professional translation service providers and I can tell you that not all translation service providers can provide scale and quality simultaneously. Two years ago, I began work with ASTA-USA Translation Services (www.asta-usa.com) and their legal division Legal Translation Solutions (www.legaltranslationsolutions.com) and I can tell you that I feel very fortunate to be associated with a professional translation services provider that can put scale and quality together so seamlessly.
By: L. Amado 01/12/2010
