Setting the industry standard in customer satisfaction
McElroy’s Mission Statement McElroy Translation provides translation and localization services in all languages to business and government clientele enhancing their ability to compete in global markets.
“Good business leaders create destiny by defining and sharing a vision. To know it, to feel it, and to live it is to achieve success.”
Why should I use a translation vendor, rather than assemble my own freelance translators for a project?
Due to the ever-increasing number of global markets in the petroleum industry, existing companies that want to effectively compete in this arena open new offices in targeted countries and regions. Naturally, this will always present language difficulties as well as cultural differences. Most larger companies in the petroleum industry have traditionally relied upon their in-house resources to perform translations without using a translation vendor. Managers at these companies may think that it is more cost effective to have fellow employees perform the required translations, however, experience shows that in many cases this creates more headaches and cost down the road in spite of any initial benefits.
A translation vendor's chief function is to manage translation projects from the beginning to the end. For bigger projects, especially multilingual ones, your translation vendor will designate a dedicated project manager whose job is to orchestrate the whole process. The translation vendor is constantly improving and growing its translator resource base by recruiting and testing new translators from all over the world. This process allows you to have access to a tremendous talent pool. The translation vendor doesn't just find native speakers for each target language of your project, but also finds subject matter experts with petroleum industry backgrounds.
That is all fine and good, but our employees are native speakers who are also subject matter experts with petroleum industry backgrounds.
This may be true, but you will soon discover that there is a lot more to a translation project than just translation. Translation is an art. It is all about choosing the right word for a particular context. However, each individual translator has a different sense of context, and sometimes a second pair of eyes will spot terminology choices that can be improved upon. That's why the translation vendor will always consult with an editor after a draft translation has been delivered. An editor is a native speaker with a similar technical background, and the editor's job is to make sure the translation includes the correct context-specific terminology.
After editing, it is usually a good idea to submit the document for proofing. Looking for punctuation mistakes, typos and formatting errors is a step most marketing and corporate communications departments include as a matter of course. It is no different with a document being produced in another language.
The process described above is an outline for any project. Of course, the more difficult your project becomes, the more steps it has to go through. Let's say it is a marketing piece. Then some desktop publishing will be involved to make sure the translated text, after expansion, fits in the given space and isn't broken or covered by graphical elements.
There are many obvious advantages in using a translation vendor. The quality and consistency from project to project are guaranteed. Your internal employees can focus on their own work instead of translating, which provides an enormous cost savings over time. Most importantly, you can focus on your work, instead of managing translation resources and projects.
I am always open for discussion - if you have any feedback or comments - please let me know.
Your company has just developed a new idea for a new product. The product has passed the research phase, which required a considerable investment of time, people and money. Your company has calculated the developmental cost and developed a promotion plan. You, the product manager, know that all of your carefully crafted marketing copy, originally written in English, will require translation into all of the languages spoken in your company’s international target markets. Even though you fully understand the importance of this, the process of new product development has consumed all of your time. You’ve started the countdown for the release date of the new product and then you suddenly remember, “ooops, I forgot to translate the marketing and product information!”
How many languages were there again...? 10? 12? 21?
You are confident that your translation vendor will be able to complete all of the necessary translations in time—after all, there are only a few documents that need to be translated. So, you call your translation vendor’s account representative, and she tells you that it will take at least two weeks to complete the entire translation. “Why!?” you ask.
She tells you that those few documents you sent her contain approximately 20K words, and your project will require extensive rewrites due to its heavy use of marketing jargon. You don’t understand—how is it possible? You decide to call a few other translation vendors, and they give you the same answer. You start to panic because it looks like the product will not be released on time, and you are going to be responsible for the delay.
Shall we rewind?
Let’s rewind this potential nightmare and see if you could have a less stressful time dealing with THOSE translations. Below you will find a step by step guide to a stress free translation project into multiple languages.
Let’s say you have a 20K word marketing project. A translator can translate, on average, 1500 words/day. This will require 13 working days for the translation itself. Add an additional 2-3 days for editing. Include at least one business day for project management and QA. For a translation project of this size and type, allow for at least 17 business days. Of course, each project is unique and requires an individual analysis.
Start thinking ahead. Translation is performed by humans and they will need some real time to work on your project. Note the formula at the right to see how the size of the projects affects the delivery.
Write your copy with an international audience in mind. Have your technical and marketing writers create copy that has consistent terminology and avoids complicated sentence structure. Translators will be able to finish your project in an accurate, timely fashion if the meaning you are trying to convey is clear.
Involve your translation vendor at the first stages of the project. Contact your translation vendor as soon as you know some translation will be involved in your project and give her the approximate date of the release, the target locales, the anticipated volume of words, etc. The more detailed information you can provide about the project, the better she can help you.
Further ways to lower your stress level at translation time include:
Maintain all of the editable files in easily accessible, logical directory trees, and keep track of who authored and revised the content. Web help content, for instance, cannot be optimally translated if your translation vendor only has a website URL to retrieve it from. Likewise, PDFs cannot be optimally edited or translated without the original source files from which they were created. Do you want to find yourself at the end of a project on the phone with your web and technical documentation team trying to track down HTML and Quark files?
Keep track of all of the artwork and its editable versions in a similar fashion, especially the ones that contain text. The same rule applies here. If your translation vendor has to re-create graphics from scratch because you can’t find the original Illustrator files, this will add considerable time and money to your project.
For reference purposes and ensuring terminology consistency in the translation, maintain a glossary of specific terms that your company internally uses. While your translation vendor should have specific subject matter experts available for your project, who thoroughly know your industry’s terminology, if you have acronyms and terms specific to your product offerings, these may require translation and explanation to your international audiences.
If you plan on requesting an in country review (i.e., an independent review by one of your regional offices, for instance) post-translation, begin planning for it at the start of the project, as it will affect the time needed for the project to be completed. Of course, let your translation vendor know you intend to have the content independently reviewed.
Don’t send the draft of your documents—wait until the final version is available. This saves you money and time!
Remember that it is possible to assemble a team of multiple translators for big projects to shave days off of the turnaround time—but the consistency of the translation increasingly deteriorates with each additional translator put on a project.
For large projects we recommend you develop a translation glossary—before submitting the final version of your content for translation, create a list of key words and phrases to be translated first, and then ask your regional offices to review the glossary. This procedure alone could save you a lot of time in the long run, and allows the regional offices to have input into the process at the beginning.
Obviously, this is a general list that can be applied to a variety of projects where multilingual content is a necessity. Each individual project, especially a larger, time-consuming one, will have its unique problems, goals and criteria that will allow for modification and customization of this list to meet those specific needs.
I hope that this list will help you make your next project less stressful, and help you plan for a successful international product launch. If the best of plans go awry and circumstances beyond your control create a scenario that is less than ideal, at least you have good information to understand the challenges that you and your vendor will face. I am here to answer any further questions you may have and ensure your success with projects of all shapes and sizes. (
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I was sent to a great 2-day training last August about speaking in front of people. I don't know a lot of people who actually enjoy public speaking. So I was so intrigued to learn the keys to being successful at it!We started with a couple of powerful historical videos where we analyzed each speaker's strengths.
That's what I thought until I attended the High Tech breakfast sponsored by the American Marketing Association. There were 2 speakers talking about the video games industry. They definitely knew what they were talking about. One of them was Chris Kramer, Senior Director of Corporate Communications for Sony Online Entertainment and another one was Shawn McMichael, Director Sales and Marketing for Microsoft Casual Games.
First, I was impressed with the 13 billion dollar market size of this industry.
Want to learn what our future managers are like? Then read my summary of the Futurist Garry Golden's presentation about the millennial children. McElroy Translation is the member of the World Futures Society and I get to attend all the presentations and discussions. This association is all about the future of our society. It is interesting to hear how our world would change in a few years and how to prepare for it. Futurists say – “The future doesn’t just happen – it is being created by us.” Last meeting's presentation was done by Garry Golden who is a young professional futurist. Garry’s presentation was about the Millennnial generation and its impact on the American future.
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