Thoughts on Professional Spanish Language Translations
Professional Translation Services – Some Thoughts on Professional Spanish Language Translations
By: L. Amado 01/26/2010
A professional translation services company should be able to help its customers identify the best target language (the company’s translation team must be sensitive to the idiosyncrasies of individual countries and their regional differences) in order to maximize the benefits and impact of its professional translations.
Language translation experts will tell you that this can be particularly tricky when translating from one language into Spanish. It is important to take into account the fact that the Spanish language has a vast geographic dispersion. From Spain to the Philippines and from the US and Canadian border to Tierra del Fuego, the Spanish language is spoken by nearly 350 million people and is the official language of more than 20 countries as well as being the de facto second language of the United States after English, with around 43 million native speakers.
If feasible, and when appropriate, the best and safest course of action is to go for a neutral or not country-specific professional translation. Such a professional translation would assure clear communication and would be perfectly suitable for all Spanish-speaking markets from a linguistic point of view. Such a professional translation approach should use standard Spanish terminology and grammar, instead of a vocabulary and style which denote a particular geographic preference.
Abiding by the standard linguistic rules and terminology of the Spanish language and producing a professional standard Spanish translation is the best option for most usages. However, one of the issues with this approach is that it does so without the particular local flavor of individual Spanish-speaking countries, such as preferences for verb tenses, regional idiomatic expressions, distinctive terminology, etc.
If using a professional standard Spanish translation is not possible, the first difference to be made is between the Spanish used in Spain (usually referred to as European Spanish) and the Spanish used in Latin America (or Latin American Spanish).
As mentioned before, it is important to remember that Latin American Spanish may be a very nice abstraction, but it is not a language in the real sense of the term. Latin American Spanish is a simplification. There are also very important stylistic and terminological differences among the Spanish speakers in the region. When dealing with certain types of material, such as marketing material, legal material, or sales material, it may not be possible to use the same professional translation for audiences in Spain, Mexico, Puerto Rico, Chile and the vast number of Spanish-speakers in the United States.
Professional translation services providers such as ASTA-USA Translation Services (www.asta-usa.com) and its legal division Legal Translation Solutions (www.legaltranslationsolutions.com) will be able to help the customer to determine whether a professional standard Spanish translation is suitable for a given professional translation project or if it requires a more country-specific professional translation, depending on issues such as the type of text to be translated, the domain, the target audience, the level of specialization and the specific market.
http://www.documenttranslationservices.net/
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
