It's been a long time since translation involved a typewriter, a printed dictionary and very skilled translator. The process of translation, as well its quality standards are taking leaps and bounds forward thanks to modern technology. Today's advanced language service providers (LSPs) utilizing computer-assisted translation tools (so-called CAT tools) have turned translation from a one-off, ad-hoc service, where only the initial price is a decisive factor, into a long-term sustainable client-supplier relationship.

Translation services: A love story

Let's explain the latter thought further: thanks to employing a combination of human translation powered by IT, considerable value has been added to translation services nowadays. There are numerous tools to ensure this, such as creation and maintenance of translation memories (read more here) or glossaries (read more here) and machine-powered quality analyses with subsequent final human input in the form of proofreading, while every single intervention is recorded and stored on clients' account. In fact, the more data and text segments (phrases, sentences, expressions) that are collected from previous translations as a result of creating glossaries, translation memories and understanding clients' specific terminology, the less content needs to be translated in future translation projects. And, as the phrases and segments used in clients' materials meant for translation tend to be repetitive (especially in technical translation and documents like catalogs, user manuals, etc.), many of them have already been translated and recorded in memories and glossaries. Eventually, this leads to a clear equation: the longer and deeper relationship with your language service provider you maintain (and the more material you have translated) = the lower cost of translation you get.

Invest in your translation healthcare

Maybe you have never thought of it this way, but an investment into your translationresources is similar to those into your health. The more you maintain an active lifestyle and a good health, the more you guard against future medical outlays. Keeping your translation resources in good condition and error-free is very similar, while it significantly and visibly pushes down your future translation costs. To achieve this, you need to find a suitable LSP that has means to clean, update, convert and store your resources. Here at idioma, we're ready to offer you such services on a whole different level, upgrading mere translation to a smart and efficient service with a long-term benefit for our clients and truly added value.

To learn more, please visit www.idioma.com or contact us about our SMARTER translation services.

Ever wondered what makes global brands successful?

Well, it's actually many factors, but to name just a few, let's go for authenticity, consistency and professionalism. These are "those things" that sometimes induce nightmares to marketers, but make people willing to convert into (loyal) customers. On the other hand, business is primarily about making money, and the success is related also to the general economy. It is only logical that brands need to make compromises to find a balance between what's desired and what's feasible. But do they?

First impression REALLY matters

The outcome of your compromises can have serious negative impact on your brand's perception, although meant to do no harm (or even worse, to do good). Mainly if venturing into unknown waters – e.g. when expanding the brand to new international markets, the "let's save $500 now in order to miss $50.000 in the future" approach can make you fail in the moment of truth – the first impression towards local customers. To prevent this, you need to invest in proper localization of your content. Not just your packaging, guidelines or manuals, but also your website. It's the multi-channel approach in communication and localization that makes you authentic and consistent and what makes the difference in seizing or losing the market. This surely would be common knowledge to most everyone.

So why are there still so many businesses out there, who think they will impress and win local customers with machine-translated websites?

Google doesn't like machine translation

Ironic as it may sound at first, the very company that powers the largest machine translation platform in the world fights against auto-generated content including machine translated websites. After all, with browsers having built-in features for automatic machine translation, it goes against logic to pretend that you care about local clientele and went the extra mile with "real translation" of your website, while you merely clicked a button.

When Google algorithms can see through it, so can your potential human customers. And while search engines may forgive you your SEO sins within several months, your disappointed customers won't forget the negative first impression. After all, why should they, if they already give their money to your competitor who seized the chance and fluently speaks their language...

Indeed, the Internet is a tough jungle, where seconds matter. The free machine translation tools that allow you to translate the content in one click (seemingly saving time and money), take their real price in the very first seconds of interaction with potential customers. Professional localization really matters and it's much less of an expense than trying to repair a destroyed brand image and to reengage lost, potential customers.

Don't let that one click destroy your brand perception in international markets. It's just not worth it.

In our previous blogs, we emphasized the advantages of having well-maintained translation resources, which reduce your translation costs, mainly in connection with continuous translation undertakings. We have also touched on the process of "cleaning" and maintaining your translation memories, but what if you don't have any? If that's the case, you should definitely create one if you publish documents with similar content. Here we explain how to go about this step by step.

5 Steps to creating a Translation Memory

The process begins with two similar files – one with source text, the other with corresponding target text in a different language. To create a TM for you, we first need to pool as many of your original files with the translated equivalents. The file format doesn't matter too much. The documents can be in Word, Excel, FrameMaker, InDesign, Acrobat PDF, or whatever other format you may have.

Then, we apply these 5 steps in order to create your translation resources.

1. SEGMENT EXTRACTION. We extract all text segments (basically sentences) from the source and target files to create a kind of bilingual database with original text and the corresponding translated text.
2. SEGMENT ALIGNMENT. We then confirm that all segments are correctly aligned using our unique, in-house developed iSync solution. It pairs segments based on the placement markings and content. The process is highly automated and enables very fast processing, much faster than humans and with high precision.
3. HUMAN EDITING. A human review of the result is necessary, though, in which native translators browse the paired segments to ensure they match.
4. TM CREATION. At the end of the process we delete redundant segments that have no matches in neither source nor target, and we then export the bilingual text segments to the universal .tmx format or any other format you may require.
5. TM QA AND EXPORT. The last step involves applying our QA tools on the final result to ensure segments are consistent, numbers, tags and symbols match and there is no text in the wrong language.

TMs belong to you

Once a translation memory has been created and delivered to you, it becomes your legal property, and you can use it in all your internal processes or whenever you outsource translation projects. This is important to remember, and you can always ask your existing or previous suppliers to deliver TMs they have created in projects ordered by to – we then hope you will relocate your projects to idioma :)

There's no time to waste when it comes to ensuring you have TMs and also keeping them up to date.

Contact us TODAY to get your TM created!