Expert Tips to Save You Time and Money by Keeping Your Translation Project Moving Forward

One of the most challenging aspects of any technical translation project is keeping the project on track. Technical manuals translation services typically involve translation, editing for style and consistency, and proofreading. With so many moving parts, coordination is key to getting high quality results within a reasonable timeframe.

This means that beyond making sure that your language service provider (LSP) offers the best translators in the business, you will want to fully understand their approach to project management. Also, make sure the details are clearly specified in your contract so you know what to expect. You don’t want to run into unexpected roadblocks in the middle of your project.

Consider these expert recommendations and tips for working with a team of professional translators before you commission your next complex project:

1. Insist your LSP uses a dedicated project manager.

For any large translation and localization project, such as technical manual translation or audio video translation, several individuals will be involved throughout the process. Even the most efficient workflow systems can fall apart without a dedicated project manager. If your LSP doesn’t provide someone in-house, it’s crucial that you assign this task to someone in your organization. Otherwise, you risk inaccuracies and confusion.

At Alpha Omega, we make a point of assigning two dedicated project managers, a lead project manager and a junior project manager, to each client project. Project managers decide how best to organize workflow, assign tasks, and set up project milestones for updating clients. Our team works well together due to strong project managers and you’d be surprised how valuable having two can be. If at any point, you want a status update or have a question about some aspect of your project, one of our project managers will get back to you quickly.

2. Review the quality assurance process for technical manuals translation services.

It is always disappointing to find technical manuals translation services with unreliable quality assurance processes. If your LSP assigns your project to a single translator, without any indication of quality assurance monitoring, this should be a huge red flag. The best translation services provide a team of translators who act as a safeguard against individual errors and who can work through any linguistic challenges together.

Best practices for quality assurance involves a front translation team consisting of at least two subject matter specialists, an independent linguistic translation reviewer, a back translator, and an independent industry reviewer. Project managers are responsible for making sure quality assurance protocols are followed.

The goal of any strong QA process is to deliver excellent localization and translation services, while continuously improving the overall quality of translations. This approach requires transparency, continuous feedback, and issue tracking. In addition to providing excellent translations, if your LSP checks for factual inconsistencies, ambiguous passages, and suggests solutions (in track changes or comments), that is an added value.

Although many clients hesitate to get involved with their LSP’s translation process, we always encourage those seeking technical manuals translation services to gather as much information as possible. Does your LSP keep a translation checklist from the start of the project, so any discrepancies can easily be traced back and resolved? Do the translation reviewers use a detailed evaluation system to rate the quality of each translation?

When it comes to editing, do editors complete forms with recommended corrections, which then go back to translators for review and comments? Answers to these questions will give you a good sense of your LSP’s translation process, so you will know you’re getting high quality work. The most effective quality assurance policies require translators, reviewers, and editors all to agree on edits before finalizing the translation.

3. Understand the translation management system.

Once again, which translation management system your LSP uses may seem like a technical detail with which customers need not concern themselves. However, the level of flexibility and automation available to your LSP can make a significant difference in your costs. So it is worth educating yourself, especially if you expect to use external translators for several projects.

Different technical manuals translation services use different digital platform to help manage client projects. The best platforms are highly customizable so that various functions and extensions can be adapted to fit individual client needs. Powerful management tools are needed to ensure accurate translations, lower costs, and direct communication between translators, reviewers, editors, and clients.

In addition to managing workflow efficiently, the right TMS will automatically save translations to a database that can be leveraged for future translations to cut costs, speed up work, and create terminology consistency across all projects. Another advantage for clients here is that you can view histories for all translations and retrieve archived translations delivered months ago.

Our list of recommended translation technology includes MemoQ, SDLTrados, and WordFast. These systems easily integrate into your service provider’s TMS and can be connected to the workflow system. These advanced software programs also allow translators to crowd-source the translation request and complete time-sensitive projects more quickly.

At Alpha Omega, we love the ability to use state-of-the-art technology and our Translation Memory Engine to place literally hundreds of people on a client project to work on it simultaneously. Of course, crowd-sourcing has its drawbacks. But when combined with a dedicated project manager and a tested quality assurance process, clients gain incredible value from crow-sourced translations.

Conclusion

Perhaps nothing harms the reputation of the translation industry more than low-quality technical manuals translation services. Unfortunately, the lack of serious regulation in our industry means that consumers need to educate themselves to guarantee they receive high quality translation work.

If you follow the above recommendations, you will do a lot to protect yourself and help us maintain the integrity of our industry. At Alpha Omega Translations, we practice what we preach. For each project, we custom build a team with professional translators, editors, reviewers, and linguists to meet your unique needs. Contact us and request your free quote!

Category: Translation Services