We have a lot of translation to get done. And it has to be done just right.
Marketing translation requires the input of in-country reviewers who are familiar with the local market and brand strategy goals to make sure our translation hits the mark. Who knows that better than your team? Good thing they are sitting around in the break room waiting for their next assignment – as if!
On top of lots of time, reviewers also need good linguistic skills in both languages (there are tests for this) and familiarity with the tools and processes used by professional linguists, which we can train for. But it is essential that your reviewers have the style chops to know effective marketing content when they see it and to correct it if they don’t.
We expect our reviewers to be able to edit about 1000 words per hour on average. This can really become either a production bottleneck or a leaky sieve if your busy staff is unable to devote the time required to sign off on all the new content we’ll be generating for you. So an important part of our job is to take the pressure off of your reviewers. Better quality assurance will mean less need for quality control.
Quality Assurance Steps to Reduce Quality Control Efforts
1. Chances are that the glossaries and translation memory will need some work. We’ll initially run it against your current content and publicly available resources to expand and edit.
2. We’ll have a number of linguists and project managers working on this project, but a single language manager will have sole authority of these assets and harmonize the efforts of our team. We suggest you appoint a single language manager for each language as well.
3. We will make sure your reviewers are trained to effectively coach our professional team of linguists.
4. We will update and correct the glossary and other assets and submit them for your review before translation begins.
5. We will have a kick-off meeting to make sure all stakeholders are on the same page on marketing content goals and to brief them on procedure.
6. As translation begins, we will track changes and change history within the translation and localization platform and audit and harmonize as necessary based on our LISA QA-inspired methodology.
7. As we gear up, our language manager will work with yours line by line. Our expectation is that our team will soon be living your content, allowing your reviewers to concentrate on particular parts of the translation.
8. We’ll harmonize any changes made or requested by your reviewers.
9. Close supervision of the glossary by your language manager is critical, and we will notify you of any changes we make to the glossary or style guide for your approval.
By using this procedure as translation proceeds, we hope to reduce your validation tasks to audits or read-through only for portions of the content, allowing your language manager to concentrate on particularly important content.
For more information, or to discuss your organization’s requirements, please contact Kenneth Richard Clark at 646-847-3309 or [email protected].