Machine learning, translation memory systems, and well-coordinated workflows add flexibility and efficiency.
A website here, a white paper there: thousands of texts are translated in this country every day. With annual sales of around 1.25 billion euros, Germany is by far the largest translation market in Europe. This was the result of a study by QSD e.V. Germany is followed by France with sales of around 627 million euros and Italy close behind with around 607 million. Global markets and expansion strategies mean that more and more content needs to be translated into other languages so that it can be understood by the relevant target group. Finding themselves faced with such a high demand for translation, contracting companies and organizations often ask how they can cut costs without sacrificing quality. Your translation partner can help you make this decision.
Savings tip #1: Before the translation comes planning
The first step is to determine exactly which departments or divisions actually require professional translations. It is essential here that all employees and decision-makers are on the same wavelength. Agreements need to be made as to which departments require which translations, what similarities there are and what differences there may be. For example, one person may need support with financial topics, while another focuses on technological content. Regardless of how different the various needs may be, it is advisable to determine an enterprise-wide strategy and approach so that the general direction remains consistent, even if the terminology varies. For example, an Italian subsidiary may have been working with a translator from its own city for years, while the PR department relies on an international agency. In this situation, it is important to coordinate requirements and to find a uniform solution for the entire company. These kinds of structures should ideally be scrutinized, because processes can often be merged, integrated and streamlined. This not only enhances transparency and oversight – an optimized centralization of translation workflows also helps to minimize costs.
Another useful consideration is a terminology database. Draw up a list of important terms and their translations that can be provided to staff and outside consultants. This makes their work easier, prevents misunderstandings and supports consistent communication. It is particularly helpful if your translation partner offers this service straightaway in their package, creates such a list and then keeps it up-to-date. You merely need to confirm that the terminology is correct.
Ideally, the specific glossary is also directly linked to the translation partner’s translation software to ensure that the predefined terminology is always displayed during the translation process. In this way, you increase the quality of your translations and also prevent costs caused by errors.
Savings tip #2: Create seamless translation workflows and data flows
If processes are not coordinated and have to be reset again and again, this costs time and money, and leads to errors and frustration. The same applies to your translations. If you are operating on a global scale and growing internationally, the number of documents that need translating also increases, which leads to increasing complexity. What you need to focus on, therefore, are processes that can be linked. For example, it is helpful if the content stored in your systems and which needs translating can be easily and quickly transferred into your translation partner’s system.
Translations can be automatically sent to the translation service provider and re-imported via an interface (API) to the CMS or CMS plug-in for multilingualism. This approach saves time when placing and processing orders. You minimize the number of queries, confirmations, emails and phone calls, regain flexibility and have more time to attend to other urgent tasks. The fact that this also reduces costs is beyond question.
Savings tip #3: Consider using artificial intelligence (AI)
As the number of translations grows and other matters crop up on your agenda, you often need results faster and faster. Machine translation, based on artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning (ML), can be a great help. The quality and accuracy of the texts produced by these translation machines improves the more texts they translate, because they need large neural networks to learn. The crux: When it comes to context and meaning, even machine translations often still reach their limits. Anyone who has ever worked with Google Translate or other free online tools knows about the strange translations that solutions like this can deliver from time to time when they assign contexts incorrectly. A good example of this are terms that have multiple meanings, so-called homonyms such as wing (section of a building and body part of a bird) or bark (outer layer of a tree or the noise made by a dog). The order of sentence components can also cause machine translations to be incorrect – the word order is correct, but the reader does not understand the meaning. Accordingly, caution is advised when using machine translations. But this does not mean that this option has to be abandoned completely. After all, it can bring enormous cost savings – especially when it comes to translation prices per word. For content that features regular repetitions, such as product documentation or legal texts, machine translation can provide invaluable help. The same applies to texts where you are primarily concerned with ensuring that the general meaning is understood, such as reviews in your online store. In contrast, machine translation of poetry, metaphors, or proverbs is far more likely to fall short of requirements.
Savings tip #4: Make use of technological aids such as translation memories
If you need to translate a lot of texts and content, it’s good sense to choose a translation partner that uses technological systems and solutions to minimize effort, time, and also translation prices. Well-known examples here are CAT tools and translation memory systems.. You don’t know what that is? No problem. Before your text is returned to you in another language, it is usually processed in several stages at the translation agency. This often involves the use of CAT tools, i.e., “computer aided translation” solutions. This is software that helps with translation. A key component of these tools are translation memory systems, also called TM systems, a term that might be more familiar to you than CAT.
During the translation process, the integrated TM system stores the text segments and sentences written by the translator in a database created specially for you. These translation databases are created per language combination and per customer and form the translation memory for your future texts. If something is repeated in the text or if a segment is found in the same form in another text, this part does not need to be translated again.
Price reductions
A big advantage of TMs is that they save you time and money by storing translations – which is especially useful if you translate similar texts over and over again. Technical documents or new versions of an existing document reduce translation prices. A translator localizing a piece of software, for example, can retrieve and adapt previously translated sections stored in the translation memory system. It is particularly useful if the translation memory is continuously expanded and maintained. The more texts there are in different contexts, the better for the translator and for you, because effort and costs continue to decrease. The more uniform your corporate language is, the more obvious this effect becomes.
The respective framework agreements of the translation agencies can, for example, stipulate from the outset what kinds of word price discounts are available for TM matches. These “fuzzy matches” are not 100 percent identical to already translated content, but they have a certain percentage of similarity. When a customer sends a file, it is analyzed against the TM. This makes it possible to tell exactly how many new “No Match” words and how many “Fuzzy Matches” or “Repetitions” the text has when creating a quote. This opens the door to price reductions.
See: Quality and cost efficiency do not have to be mutually exclusive, as long as you consider a few of the pitfalls and available aids.
We will be happy to help you find the best option for your needs.
