Ensuring Effective Translations - Introduction

Be4ward
Written by Be4ward on 08/04/2022

Ensuring Effective Translations - Introduction

As globalisation increases and companies reach customers in many more markets around the world, the need for accurate and comprehensive translations increases.   

Translation activity is an often forgotten back-room process.  It is rarely considered core to a company’s operations, but failure in the process results in incorrect information being provided to customers, suppliers, regulators or shareholders.  At minimum this is embarrassing and may not show the company in the best light.  However some errors can be significant, impacting the safety of the customer or agreements with regulators.  These can seriously damage the company’s reputation and lead to sanctions and fines. 

It is therefore essential that a company has a fit for purpose translation capability.  This should ensure that the processes, roles, suppliers and systems necessary to deliver a quality output are available across the organisation for anyone involved in translation activity. 

In this series of articles we are going to look at a series of tips to help you establish your translation capability.  It is based around a 10 step process as follows: 

  1. Define your approach to translation 

The activities you need to do in your organisation to set out how you will manage translations across the company 

  1. Initiate your project 

The steps you would take to start an individual  translation project and set the project up for success 

  1. Prepare text for translation 

Tips for how to make sure that the text you are supplying for translation is prepared to allow a high quality translation 

  1. Choose translation provider  

Tips to ensure that the translation provider you propose to use is fit for purpose 

  1. Translation Specifications 

How to establish a set of standards for working with your translation provider 

  1. Brief translation provider 

How you instruct the translation provider to undertake the project you want translated 

  1. Prepare translation 

The preparation of the translation at the translation provider 

  1. Review translation 

The quality assurance steps undertaken to make sure the translation is correct 

  1. Approve translation 

The formal approval of the translation 

  1. Securely store approved files and  build translation memory 

How to ensure effective document management and how to start building a library of standard phrases 

In the next blog we will look at the first step – defining your approach to translation. 

We hope you find this information useful.  We are always searching for ways to improve our work, so of you have any feedback, please do not hesitate to contact us at [email protected] 

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