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Spanish Technical Translation

December 4, 2015

Technical translation services for Spanish and other languages is a common category of service performed by translation companies. The word technical is generally applied when the source material is of a specialized nature and contains terms specific to a particular subject domain. What’s Meant by ‘Spanish Technical Translation’ When clients contact us requesting “technical translation services,” […]

Mistakes We’ve Made (and what we’ve learned)

December 2, 2015

All organizations make mistakes of one kind or another. Learning from mistakes is important to ensure we grow and improve as a company. In most cases the marketplace does reward competency in the long term. Lessons we’ve learned from past mistakes include: 1) It’s better to forego a project than promise a delivery schedule that’s unrealistic (or […]

Spanish Technical Translation

December 4, 2015

Mistakes We’ve Made (and what we’ve learned)

December 2, 2015

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Spanish Technical Translation

December 4, 2015

What’s Meant by ‘Spanish Technical Translation’

When clients contact us requesting “technical translation services,” (Spanish or some other language) often there’s a presumption that translation of their text based material will require a translator who works exclusively in the subject domain of the source material. So for example an engineering manual that deals with the technical details of an electronics product might be a source text for translation. For such a project should the translator also be an engineer? No not necessarily. Engineers are not often not linguists. And if the target audience for the text is a general audience (e.g., consumer electronics) then translators might be asked to smooth out technical lingo to produce a translation that conforms to the reading level of a general audience. In the process translators actually improve the quality of the text relative for the target language audience.

Language or Technical Skills More Important?

In many cases the language abilities outweigh the technical ones for the translator. A translator working on a project with more technical language must certainly be able to understand the source material in order to accurately translate it. Just as important they must be able to do research to determine correct translations of specialized terms. Researching possible translations might uncover better translations than relying solely on one’s personal experience and knowledge of a subject.

Assigning the Optimally Suited Translator Resource

Professional translators of course gravitate to projects where the subject matter is of interest to them and within their areas of specialization. Assigning an optimally suited translator to a project is one of the main functions of a translation company that performs more technical translation services. Companies maintain a roster of translators with different specialization so that the best suited translator/proofreader team can be selected. Individual professional translators will also sometimes self-select (or deselect) project assignments that they’re not suited for.

Mistakes We’ve Made (and what we’ve learned)

December 2, 2015

Lessons we’ve learned from past mistakes include:

1) It’s better to forego a project than promise a delivery schedule that’s unrealistic (or too stressful)

No company likes to disappoint a client by declining a project, or to pass up on business, and we’re no exception. Still when a client’s schedule objective is unrealistic or is too tight to ensure a high quality outcome, foregoing a project might just be the thing to do. When we do commit to a project schedule we do so with high confidence of not only delivering on time, but with high quality.

2) There are no unimportant or easy translation projects

Small projects are just as important and require proportionately just as much attention to quality control as larger ones. Clients sometimes agonize over the creation of smaller bodies of text more than large volumes. So no text for translation is trivial nor undeserving of its due attention.

3) Never (ever) mention the words “Google Translate” to a client (even if they bring it up)

Clients still occasionally ask us about Google Translate and sometimes even question the accuracy of a professional translator’s translation when it doesn’t correlate exactly with the output of an online translator (such as Google Translate, which of course we don’t mention). Machine translation may have its place (just not in our company’s work), but its output is not at the level of high quality human translation performed by skilled linguists.

Half Sized Blog Element (Single Author Style)

Half Sized Blog Element (Multi Author Style)

Spanish Technical Translation

Mistakes We’ve Made (and what we’ve learned)

Spanish Technical Translation

Mistakes We’ve Made (and what we’ve learned)

Full Sized Blog Element (Big Preview Pic)

Spanish Technical Translation

What’s Meant by ‘Spanish Technical Translation’

Language or Technical Skills More Important?

Assigning the Optimally Suited Translator Resource

Mistakes We’ve Made (and what we’ve learned)

1) It’s better to forego a project than promise a delivery schedule that’s unrealistic (or too stressful)

2) There are no unimportant or easy translation projects

3) Never (ever) mention the words “Google Translate” to a client (even if they bring it up)

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