A subject matter expert is an essential resource for anyone wishing to translate specialized content. Even seasoned translators can find themselves in situations where the source text is too complex. No matter how much time they have spent studying the subject in depth, some words or phrases may still be ambiguous. This is especially the case for highly specialized translations, such as technical translations.
Even though many translators work in technical writing, most people don’t think of them as an obvious choice when looking to hire for their technical documentation team. So what translation skills do language lovers already have that make them perfect candidates for jobs in technical communication?
In today’s global market, it’s not enough to have your content available in only one language: from marketing materials to product catalogues, multilingual content is becoming the standard. But there’s more to translating your text than just transforming it from one language into another. In bringing your content to the correct audience, the secondary stages in the translation process, proofreading and editing the translated text, are what ultimately make the text ready for its intended purpose.
I’m sure this won’t be breaking news to you: English is the main language of technical documentation around the world. Read on to learn how Simplified Technical English can help you make your technical documentation clearer and easier to understand.
As a localization project manager for medical documentation, I receive a lot of back translation requests from clients. If you work for a Language Service Provider and have never heard of the back translation process before, don’t worry and keep reading to find out!
Nowadays, the definition of manager has become so widespread that it is not always clear which types of responsibilities can be assigned to different types of managers (finance, sales, web, etc). More mysterious still, is the profession of a translation project manager. Who are they? – Are they simply dispatchers who merely receive orders and submit them for execution, or are they managers who actually make decisions? Here are some details that could help better understand the responsibilities of translation project managers and the importance of their work.
These days, technical communicators are generally aware that translators almost always use computer aided translation (CAT) tools to work more quickly and produce a translation with the highest degree of consistency possible – given the source text and reference material provided.
The question of what defines a “good” translation is about as old as the discipline of translation itself. But whereas international quality standards have been established in many industries for decades, they are a rather recent development in the translation industry. The ISO 17100 standard is the first international quality standard of its kind for translators and was only introduced in 2015. It defines the minimum standards translation service providers need to adhere to in order to deliver quality translations.
Flitto is a crowdsourcing translation and social media application that allows users to request translations into various languages, launched in 2012. Flitto supports text, image, and voice translations, and also has 1:1 Pro translation service – for those who need to respect confidentiality agreements or require professional translations – in 18 different languages. Bilingual or multilingual people who are interested in doing a little bit of translation on the side, can become translators on this platform.
