The Importance of Mechanical Quality Assurance in the Translation Process

The final quality of a translated document depends on many important factors. Two of these happen before the translation process starts:

• Before any translation is performed, you first need to start with an error free source document. Errors and discrepancies in the source material will propagate throughout the target languages into which you need to translate.
• Also, you have to select the best linguistic team to translate your documentation. Matching linguists who have specific experience with the types of products you produce or the specific area of the medical industry into which you sell will help to ensure the highest quality for your translation projects.

One factor that affects the final quality of a translated document that often gets overlooked is Mechanical Quality Assurance (Mechanical QA). The Mechanical QA step is the final step of the process which entails checking the translated text after all formatting and linguistic proofreading is finished. The intent of this stage of the process is to verify that the translated document follows the client’s specifications and matches the elements of the source document.

The Mechanical QA does not have to be done by the target language linguists; however, you certainly need to select a qualified QA vendor who is very detail oriented.

Some of the key items of the Mechanical QA process are as follows:

• Does the translated document have the same number of paragraphs as the source document?

• Are all the product names spelled correctly and do they match the source document?

• Are all the numbers within the translated document correct?

• Do the numbers within the translated document match the source document?

• Do all of the trademark, copyright and registered marks within the translated document match the source document?

• In a multilingual file, are items, such as measurements, consistent across all of the languages?

One thing to remember when performing the Mechanical QA step is to be sure to allow extra time for the linguists to answers questions plus the implementation of the changes, if necessary.

It’s all Globish to me

It is estimated that there are four times as many people who now speak Globish as there are native English speakers -- about 1,200,000,000. The actual number may be even larger. All of them are trying to use Globish as a middle-ground language. So what is Globish? Wikipedia defines the word Globish as follows: “Globish is a subset of the English language formalized by Jean-Paul Nerriere. It uses a subset of standard English grammar, and a list of 1,500 English words. According to Nerriere it is "not a language" in and of itself, but rather it is the common ground that non-native English speakers adopt in the context of international business.”

Did you know that there are 615,000 words in the Oxford English Dictionary? This is a collection of all the words that have been used in the English language. But very few native English speakers know more than 80,000 of these words. But most native English speakers will not use more than 7,500 English words in their communication.
Globish, the dialect of the 3rd Millennium
Globish is a simple, pragmatic form of English codified by Jean-Paul Nerrière, a retired vice-president of IBM in the United States.

It involves a vocabulary limited to 1,500 words, short sentences, basic syntax, an absence of idiomatic expressions and extensive hand gestures to get the point across Mr Nerrière, 66, originally sought to help non-English speakers — and notably his compatriots from France — in the era when business meetings are invariably held en anglais. He advised that instead of struggling to master the Queen’s English, they should content themselves with Globish.
His two books, Don’t Speak English, Parlez Globish and Découvrez le Globish, became bestsellers in France and were also published in Spain, Italy, South Korea and Canada. They are also being translated into Japanese.
“Globish is a proletarian and popular idiom which does not aim at cultural understanding or at the acquisition of a talent enabling the speaker to shine at Hyde Park Corner,” he wrote.
“It is designed for trivial efficiency, always, everywhere, with everyone.”
Mr Nerrière says that his globalised version of English is now so common that Britons, Americans and other English-speakers should learn it too. “The point is that Anglophones no longer own English,” he told The Times in Paris.
He says that in multi- national meetings, Anglo-Saxons stand out as strange because they use complicated expressions and terms instead of using the elementary English adopted by colleagues from other countries.

If you want to speak Globish, Mr Nerrière recommends the following tips:
“Keep sentences short
Repeat yourself
Avoid metaphors and colourful expressions
Avoid negative questions
Avoid all humour
Avoid acronyms
Use gestures and visual aids
Don’t say Eerie, Say Strange
Don’t say Globish is the gateway to international conversation, say Globish helps you to talk to people from other countries.”

So is this the end of English as we know it or simply the birth of a new lingua franca? Is Globish the Esperanto everyone was waiting for?

Highly Technical and/or Highly Medically Focused Translations: Driving Project Success

When dealing with translators who have highly technical experience and translate very specialized text, you may think that there isn’t much you can do to assist them during a translation project. Indeed, specialized translators know their field very intimately, but there are many tools that you can provide to help them do their work more effectively.

The phrase “A picture is worth a thousand words” may have been coined by a translator. When translating a description of the mechanics or appearance of an item, an image can fill in gaps left by words. Even if an image is not to be included with your translation, sending a reference image to the translator can help them to understand certain items so they can translate without any doubts.


Translators will also benefit when you tell them what not to translate. Standards for non-translatable text vary from client to client, so your input is important. Employee titles, program terms, and product names are examples of phrases that you may prefer to remain untranslated. Letting the translator know your preferences in advance will save them from having to come up with translations that you do not intend to use. This is especially helpful if the phrase you want to remain untranslated is something that is apparently generic, such as “Customer Service” or “Laser System.”


If you already know that you have preferred translated phrases, these should be shared with the translator, too. Whether it’s just a few translated phrases, an extensive glossary, or a translation memory to be used with translation software, any translated reference material will help get the translator familiar with the terminology that you have used in the past. Creating a glossary before large projects can be a good exercise for translators and clients to establish preferred terminology to be used throughout that project.

When such resources are available to the translators, the benefit of an improved translation will be realized immediately and on all of your future translation projects.

Going Global With Multilingual Publishing [PART 2]

First some basics: Any document consists of content and layout. The document translation process consists of recreating a document in the target language that is equivalent to the source document in both content and layout. So, the document translation process has two main subprocesses: content translation and layout adjustment. Content translation must be performed by native speakers of the target language, but the situation is different in the case of layout adjustments. If the goal is to produce translated print documents, the translated text often has to be forced into a predetermined, fixed layout. Due to time constraints, cost considerations, or other logistical factors, desktop publishers often find themselves confronted with the task of touching up a document of which they are unable to read a single word.

Nowadays, most of the DTP (Desktop Publishing) tools provide full language support—including spelling and hyphenation dictionaries—for most European languages. However these features do not replace the need for proofreading by a language specialist. It is always necessary to have a native speaker involved at some point in your workflow.


The Central and Eastern European languages have slightly different requirements from many of the Western European languages. These include Slavic languages (Belarusian, Bosnian, Bulgarian, Croatian, Czech, Macedonian, Polish, Serbian, Slovak, Slovenian, Russian and Ukrainian), Baltic (Latvian and Lithuanian) and Finno-Ugric (Estonian, Hungarian) languages. These are complemented by Romanian and Moldovan (Romance languages), Greek (Attic), Turkish (Altaic) and Albanian. Most of these require additional character sets that support special characters.


The first concern a desktop publisher may have in formatting non-English text is to apply the right font. Not every font has characters, or glyphs, for every language. While many Western European languages use the same characters as English, there are many other languages, such as Czech, Polish, Turkish, Greek or Russian, that require additional characters not used in English at all. OpenType fonts are a good choice in general, but it’s important to check carefully. For example, the font Garamond Pro doesn’t contain the characters needed for typesetting in Russian. However Myriad Pro and Minion Pro are good choices for European languages. It means the label of “Pro” doesn’t guarantee anything about the characters the font may include.

You must be asking yourself:
“Why would I need something special for global text layout if the fonts I am using have all the right glyphs and letterforms that this language requires?”

For most basic left-to-right languages the regular version of the DTP tool will do an adequate job out of the box. However, many other languages require additional language-specific processing to display the right glyph in a manner acceptable to the readers of that language. Many Indic languages assemble multiple characters into a single visual “cluster” (sort of like a syllable), using complicated shaping rules. Some languages, notably Chinese and Japanese, do not even have spaces between words, and therefore need special attention just to get correct line breaking. Then there are right-to-left languages such as Arabic and Hebrew, which require further capabilities.

In the next posts, we will analyze some pitfall and workarounds when working with “special” languages. Stay tuned!

A Superior Translated Project Begins with Proper Preparation

Proper preparation of your source text will result in a superior translated product. Keeping in mind a few simple steps will make sure your translation projects begin in the right direction.

Before all other considerations, make sure that the source text clearly and accurately describes your intended message. Ambiguous or incorrect descriptions will limit the quality of the translation. Correcting source errors after the translation has begun can lead to delays in the process. Re-read your source text before translation begins to make sure that no obvious errors were made. If a re-write of your source text is not possible, identification of known problem areas can greatly assist the translators to craft the best phrases for their languages.


Inconsistent use of terminology in the source is the leading cause of inconsistency in a translation. Inconsistent terminology should be avoided as it can lead to translators adopting similar patterns. For instance, if a text refers to a software directory as “Main Menu” in some instances but uses “Home Screen” elsewhere, a translator will match that usage and it could lead to confusion. If just one term is used in the source, it will be translated just one way in other languages.


Doing a simple spell check will solve most typo problems. However, even if you’re in the habit of checking for misspellings, be sure to proofread all of your text as there are some errors that will not be caught by a spell-checker. Sometimes a word is mistyped and the result is harmless- like “from” written as “form.” But, some errors can be more dangerous. For example, if “hypothermia” is accidentally written as “hyperthermia” a spell-checker won’t detect a problem and there is the potential that the error will be preserved in the translations. So it’s important to read your text carefully. In this case, the human eye can’t be beat!

When your source text has been given proper consideration and all obstacles have been eliminated, you are setting the stage for a successful translation.

Funny Here. Funny There

Springtime cleaning treasures. In rummaging through the basement, I came across a box with my Dutch cartoon collection. In it I found Dutch copies of Garfield, the comic strip about the fuzzy, orange tabby cat’s reflections on eating, diets and exertion.

Humor requires shared values and references. When something is funny in one language, is it or can it be funny in another language? The controversial Danish cartoons about Islam’s founder Muhammad that have sparked protests with Muslim fundamentalists certainly suggest not. My curiosity was piqued. I started digging around in comic cyber world and found examples of cartoons and shows with a high level of ‘Americana’ that are enjoying great reception beyond US shores:
The Simpsons:
The animated television sitcom centers on a family and their life in the typical American of Springfield. The series uses a plethora of cultural references from movies, television, music, literature, science, and history. In addition, it has developed a steady number of neologisms. The director of the Linguistic Data Consortium, Mark Liberman, has said that, "The Simpsons has apparently taken over from Shakespeare and the Bible as our culture's greatest source of idioms and catchphrases, such as Homer's annoyed grunt "D'oh!"

The dysfunctional Simpson family rings a bell in Thailand, where the ground-breaking American animation show has been running every Saturday since 1995. By the way, the pixilation in the image on the right is no coincidence: by government mandate, Thai TV blurs images of smoking.


Calvin and Hobbes
Six-year-old Calvin and Hobbes, his sardonic stuffed tiger venture through American suburbia. The comic chronicles their view on political and cultural issues in often academic, philosophical language.

Calvin and Hobbes’ Chinese counterparts, Kaiwen yu Hubuo, seem to fit right in.


Dilbert
The white-collar office strip Dilbert, here in Portuguese, appears in 65 countries and 25 languages. In taking on American corporate culture, the strip has spawned the language of Dilbertian with the creation of words like induhvidual and cow-orker.

Some people think humor does not travel well beyond culture and language. However, considering the entertainment industry's success in marketing the characters of Disney, Pixar and the likes to all corners of the earth, it is safe to assume that the message gets across. And very effectively, too, I might add.

Somehow, in the process of translation and adaptation, the original idiosyncratic message –tied to a certain culture and locale and loaded with cues that seemingly can only be picked up on by the members of the message’s native environment– somehow, that message gets across. And not only that, the reader is rolling on the floor laughing.

Come to think of it, that’s what we do. We take the Dilberts, Simpsons’ and Calvin & Hobbes' of the medical industry –clinical trials, protocols, IFUs and manuals– and process it into a message effectively understood by patients, equipment operators and physicians. We only hope the reader is not laughing.

Managing Copy Changes Mid-Project and Keeping Translation Costs at a Minimum

Sometimes the cost and time to make a copy change during the middle of a project can come to quite a surprise to a customer.


Consider a simple change, such as adding a register mark to a name. This is something that can normally be done with a search and replace operation in Desktop Publishing. Proofreading this change can also be done quickly with a search function in the final formatted document.


However, consider a terminology change, such as changing the word “device” to “instrument”. A search and replace function may not be able to be used, as the existing translation may appear in various forms, such as a subject and/or object of the sentence, or in singular and/or plural, etc.. Most foreign languages have different endings and/or different modifiers, depending on the form or gender of the word.


A copy change like this will entail the work of an editor, a desktop publisher, and proofreaders (both mechanical and linguistic). Naturally, the number of occurrences of the new term determine the cost and additional production time needed to handle the change.

This is another good reason to do your best to assure that your source material is approved and final before beginning the translation process.

Portuguese Spelling Reform

About

The Portuguese Spelling Agreement (Acordo Ortográfico) aims to establish a unified spelling code for all Portuguese-speaking countries.


Currently, the spelling rules differ across all Portuguese-speaking nations. The spelling discrepancies between Portugal and Brazil are of particular interest to U.S. based companies, because these contain the world’s two largest Portuguese-speaking populations, and are therefore the most common Portuguese-speaking target audiences. The reform will not eliminate all orthographic differences between the two dominant forms of Portuguese found in Brazil and Portugal, but it will move Portuguese closer to a unified written language. The goal of the reform is to attain 98% standardization across the board.


Most spelling variance has to do with the placement of accent marks and hyphens within words. Currently, in Portuguese, the words “pára” and “para” carry two different meanings simply because one has an accent and the other does not. According to the reformed Portuguese Spelling Agreement, the accent on “pára” will be eradicated so the difference between the two words will only be determined through context. This is just one small example of the changes to come; the reformed Portuguese Spelling Agreement will affect a projected 1.6% of all words in Portugal, and .5% of all words in Brazil. Some symbols and letters will be eliminated, some added, and the use of all accent marks and hyphens will change dramatically in order to achieve standardization. Implementation of the reform has begun as of 2009 and will continue over a projected 6 year transition period.

Possible Impact

Naturally, these reforms will have a great impact on translation and localization. If your target audience is a Portuguese-speaking nation, it is wise to consider the ramifications of publishing material that may soon become out of date. You may also consider reviewing material that has already been translated and decide whether it may be prudent to update it accordingly.