Professional Translations and Context

Professional Translation Services – Professional Translations and Context

By: L. Amado 01/28/2010

Languages are systems to encode and decode information. Human or natural languages are cultural constructs; they are arbitrary and based on convention. They not only reflect but effectively shape the way we see reality. The main function of human language is communication and all human language carries meaning. But since all communication and meaning take place in a given environment, context plays a major role.

At its core, translation – whether amateur or professional translation – involves understanding the meaning of a text in a given language and producing an equivalent text that communicates the same meaning in another language. The language of the text to be translated is known as the source language and the language that it is to be translated into is called the target language.

Before translating, the translator needs to understand the meaning of a text. To do so, the translator has to take context into consideration. Context refers to the total environment in which a word, phrase, or sentence appears. Context is very important because we do not translate words in isolation but rather words bound by their syntactic, situational and cultural contexts. We can safely say that for most practical purposes context determines the meaning of a text.

Take the word “bat” in English. It can be used as a noun or as a verb. In the sentences “He hit the ball with the bat” and “The bat flew into the night”, the term is used as the same part of speech, a noun, but with two completely different meanings. In the first sentence, we are talking about a wooden or metallic club, in the second about a winged, furry, nocturnal mammal. Things get more complicated when we consider “bat” as a verb. For example, “He will bat next” (meaning to strike with a bat) or “She did not bat an eyelid” (informal, to blink).

According to pragmatics, the subfield of linguistics which studies the ways in which context influences meaning, there are two primary types of context with relevance to meaning: linguistic (sometimes also referred to as verbal) and situational (or social).

Linguistic context refers to all the linguistic factors which influence or shape the meaning of the text. Words or lexical units in a text do not occur in isolation; they interact with other words and the text as a whole. Most words have more than one meaning or category and translators need to understand the way in which they are used. The best way to find the particular meaning of a word is to look into the context.

Situational context refers to the non-linguistic factors which influence or shape the meaning of a text. The same sentence or statement used in different circumstances may have quite different or even opposite meanings. Situational factors may include the body language of the speaker and the hearer in oral communication, and the social, political, moral, cultural and economical environment. Other factors to take into account are conventions, value systems, religious beliefs and even ideology.

Experienced professional and certified translators working for professional translation services companies such as such as ASTA-USA Translation Services (www.asta-usa.com) and its legal division Legal Translation Solutions (www.legaltranslationsolutions.com) are well aware that they do not translate words in isolation, but rather words with meanings determined by linguistic and situational context and that developing context awareness is one of the most important requisites for a professional translator.

Professional Translation Service Company

Why Use a Multilingual Professional Translation Service Company?

By: L. Amado 01/21/2010

If you are in the market for professional translations, a multilingual professional translation service company is the way to go, regardless of the size and complexity of the professional translation project.

Here are some thoughts on why the best option is to work with a multilingual professional translation services company instead of independent translators or smaller single-language vendors.

Only a multilingual professional translation service company who consistently hires and retains the most qualified and certified professional translators can systematically assure not only high quality professional translations but consistent high quality professional translations.

Only a multilingual professional translation service company with a large pool of professional certified translators is able to comply with tight deadlines for professional translations and systematically deliver according to schedule.

Only a multilingual professional translation service company has the ability to deal with simultaneous professional translations to several different languages and dialects and still produce consistent high quality professional translations.

Only a multilingual professional translation service company can guarantee that the customer will receive the professionally translated material according to schedule even if one of the translators is ill, the city suffers a blackout or the building is damaged by a fire.

Only a multilingual professional translation service company can assure scalability, the ability to deal with professional translation projects regardless of considerations of size (word count) or number of target languages involved.

Only a multilingual professional translation service company is able to add value to the professional translation process. Whether you are looking for professional language localization, to outsource your in-house translation department, or for somebody who understand the linguistic subtleties of your markets, a multilingual professional translation service company offers the best value for the money.

Only multilingual professional translation services providers such as ASTA-USA Translation Services (www.asta-usa.com) and its legal division Legal Translation Solutions (www.legaltranslationsolutions.com) can consistently assure customers the highest quality of professional translations, independently of professional translation project size or the number and complexity of the target languages involved.

Language translation quality assurance

Professional Translations Services And Quality Assurance

Professional Translations Services: Some Thoughts on Translation Quality Assurance

By: L. Amado  01/14/2010

As is the case with any professional production process, one of the key components of any successful professional translation service is an accurate and consistent translation Quality Assurance (QA) process.

This may seem like a quite straightforward issue, but it is not. It is important to keep in mind that we are dealing with languages, and languages are not an exact science, they are subjective.

I am firm believer in the principle that anything that can be measured can be improved. The question is: How can we measure the quality of professional language translations? We know that from a language translation quality point of view, at the end of the translation process it is not enough to have generated a piece in the target language equivalent in word count to the piece in the source language.

The aim with language translation Quality Assurance should be to provide a measure as objective as possible of the quality of the professionally translated material, according to some predefined criteria.

For example, if the client provided a specific style guide and a list of terminology or glossary to be used, language translation Quality Assurance should measure adherence to that reference material. It goes without saying that it should also account for adherence to language-specific grammatical, semantic, stylistic and usage rules.

Any correction that is not strictly a linguistic error or does not contradict the reference material provided by the client is not an error but a preference (such as choice of words) and should be treated as such for language translation Quality Assurance purposes.

I am in favor of using a very simple Pass/No Pass (or Pass with Errors) rating system for the language translation Quality Assurance process, with reviews of 100% of the translated material if dealing with smaller professional translation projects or a sampling system, when dealing with professional translations projects with larger word counts.

When dealing with a sampling system for the language translation Quality Assurance process, as a general rule, the material translated by more experienced certified professional translators, or certified professional translators who consistently get higher QA scores, should require smaller samples than the material from less experienced certified professional translators or certified professional translators with lower QA scores.

Pass simply means that there are no translation or language errors as per the specified criteria and that the professionally translated material is ready for delivery to the client.

No Pass (or Pass with Errors) means that there are translation or language errors that have to be addressed before the material can be considered ready for delivery.

Simply correcting the translation and/or language errors in the translated material is not enough. The aim should be to act proactively and prevent them from happening again. Every recurring error should be documented in the professional translation services company internal style guide for the language (or project) in question.

In general, professional translations projects with larger word counts or from recurring translation projects or clients require project specific internal style guides and/or glossaries.

Professional translation services providers such as ASTA-USA Translation Services (www.asta-usa.com) and its legal division Legal Translation Solutions (www.legaltranslationsolutions.com) understand that it is impossible to systematically deliver professional translation services without such translation language Quality Assurance processes in place.

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

Automated vs. Human Translation Services

The Pitfalls of Automated Translation vs. Human Translation Services

We have all seen it before in our respective line of business. Due to the fact that they use them everyday, and that everybody has mastered at least one, people tend to believe that working with languages require no special skills or expertise. This is painfully evident when it comes to translations. Everybody is a translator… Few understand what a professional translator really is. Often the results leave much to be desired unless a professional translation services approach is applied. But sometimes you notice instances that perhaps take things a bit too far.

Due to legal requirements to be able to access the Mexican and Latin American markets, or simply to make their products more appealing to a Spanish speaking clientele, many companies are forced to include Spanish translations in their product packaging. Sometimes, most likely to try to cut costs, some of them resort to some sort of automated translation instead of taking the wise approach and using a professional translation services company. Who cares, a Spanish phrase is as good as any other, right? Wrong!

Let me give you an example. Some time ago, I saw the following product made in China in a well-known retailer: High Pressure Jet Washer.

The product description in the box was translated into French and Spanish – in that order. The Spanish translation was as follows: Presión Alta de la Arandela del Chorro.

To the Spanish speakers reading this, let me be clear that I am not joking… To non Spanish speakers, the translation makes no sense whatsoever and is obviously the result of automated translation – not from a professional “human” translation services provider (or a very Spanish-challenged human translator). Somebody typed the English phrase in a free Internet translation service engine and used the resulting translation without having it reviewed by a professional translation services agency that uses accredited human translators.

The English term “washer” has at least two translations according to context. In this particular case, the correct translation would be “lavadora” or “lavador”, feminine and masculine respectively. Instead, they used “arandela”, the translation for “washer” as in “nuts, screws and washers”.

Even if they had used the correct translation, word order renders this phrase utterly meaningless. The correct Spanish translation would have been something along the lines of “Lavadora de alta presión”.

With translations, as with anything else, we get what we pay for.  And cheaper is very seldom – if ever – the way to go if you are looking for correct, accurate and appropriate translation. It can be extremely costly – especially for critical business or legal applications – to avoid using a professional translation services company in order to save a few dollars.