In your quest to introduce your product or service into new markets, you want to ensure your message is conveyed accurately to your target audience. Unfortunately, some companies look at business translation service as a commodity rather than a critical service. In an effort to reduce costs, they hire the least expensive vendor to provide their translation.
It’s important to understand that professional translation is not a commodity—it’s an important step in your product’s launch. Who performs the translation and what tools they use is of vital importance to ensure the utmost accuracy. Just as you’d expect your mechanic to use state-of-the-art tools and equipment to fix your car, the same goes for the company providing international language services for your business.
Translation memory is one of the most important tools a high-quality translation company uses to ensure accurate, effective, and timely translation. It aids the translation process in several key ways.
Read on for three ways translation memory helps cut costs, keep your project on track, and ensure accuracy.
How a Business Translation Service Uses Translation Memory to Save You Time
Translation memory is a database that stores language “segments” such as phrases, paragraphs, or sentence-like units like headings, titles, or items on a list that have been previously translated. These saved translated segments can then be automatically reused by a translator to avoid translating the same text more than once. Think of it as a safe, evolving digital archive capable of holding hundreds or even thousands of translated segments.
The translation memory tool is applied to the source document to identify any identical or similar segments included in the file. During the translation process, the translator can then accept each match suggested by the translation memory tool or override it with a new translation, if warranted by the new context. These updates are then added to the translation memory for future reuse.
Translation memory has been around for decades in some form, but has evolved greatly in recent years. It can significantly speed up the translation process, as time is saved by eliminating the need to duplicate efforts and retranslate entire sentences, paragraphs, or even pages. Translators can then devote more time to reviewing the content to ensure overall accuracy.
How a Business Translation Services Uses Translation Memory to Save You Money
In many cases, companies rely on a business translation service to routinely translate new marketing materials and technical documents. These typically contain repeated phrases and even entire sections, like disclaimers or boilerplate language.
Translation memory saves previously translated segments in a customer-specific database. This allows translators to focus their time on translating new material rather than spending valuable time translating the same passages over and over again.
This is vitally important for technical documents, such as manuals that remain consistent year in and year out. It means fewer words will need to be translated, and only segments that cannot be matched by translation memory will need translation. This may speed the translation process significantly.
How a Business Translation Service Uses Translation Memory to Ensure Consistency
Translation memory also has another benefit—it ensures consistency within a document and across all of a company’s content.
Once terminology has been translated, approved by the client, and included in the translation memory, these translation units will remain the same across all source documents. The translation memory storage structure means you’ll always get the most up-to-date translation for all of your technical documentation.
Translation memory is an essential tool when it comes to business translation service, and truly makes a difference when it comes to efficiency, quality, speed, and overall costs for your document translations.
Before you hire your next professional translator, make sure they’re using translation memory as part of their process. Otherwise, you may end up paying for duplicated effort to retranslate terminology—this can put a dent in your budget and interfere with tight deadlines.
