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Employee Handbook Translation Basics

August 13, 2020

We are often requested to provide quotations for translating employee handbooks into Spanish. Many of the quotes we issue proceed on to become actual projects. Some basic information and facts about employee handbook translation services follow: How Large Are Employee Handbooks? When we assess the scope of employee handbook translation projects the metric we use […]

eLearning Translation Audience

August 12, 2020

eLearning can be defined as: learning conducted via electronic media, typically on the Internet. Such a broad and inclusive definition of elearning potentially takes in a lot of content found on the internet in various formats. eLearning content for translation is received by our company in formats including standard MS Word files, formatted PDFs, InDesign […]

Employee Handbook Translation Basics

August 13, 2020

eLearning Translation Audience

August 12, 2020

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Employee Handbook Translation Basics

August 13, 2020

We are often requested to provide quotations for translating employee handbooks into Spanish. Many of the quotes we issue proceed on to become actual projects.

Some basic information and facts about employee handbook translation services follow:

How Large Are Employee Handbooks?

When we assess the scope of employee handbook translation projects the metric we use is the word count. Pages are not a good metric since the number of words on a page can range significantly from just a few words to more than 500. So a per page fee typically cannot be provided.

Among the employee handbook translation projects we’ve performed the word count range is generally between 5000 and 20,000 words more or less.

How Much Time Is Needed For Translation?

The time requirement for employee handbook translation services scales with the scope of the project. Obviously larger handbooks require more time to translate than smaller handbooks. The general rule of thumb that we tell prospective customers in advance of reviewing their handbook documents is that an average rate for human translation services is about 2500-3000 words per day. At our company time is also allowed for proofreading of the translation by a second linguist. Translators are native speaking in the target language.

What About Document Formatting?

Our process includes formatting of the document to visually match the original English version in the target language version handbook. Clients may notice that page correspondence is somewhat different in the target language document because some languages require more words relative to English to express equivalent meaning. The word counts for Spanish translations tends to average 15% more relative to English. Most often employee handbooks documents have basic formatting although sometimes more elaborate formatting using desktop publishing applications such as InDesign are seen.

eLearning Translation Audience

August 12, 2020

eLearning can be defined as: learning conducted via electronic media, typically on the Internet. Such a broad and inclusive definition of elearning potentially takes in a lot of content found on the internet in various formats.

eLearning content for translation is received by our company in formats including standard MS Word files, formatted PDFs, InDesign documents, Excel files, animations, and sometimes as part of elearning applications such as Articulate Storyline. Translation of Articulate Storyline files includes the additional aspect of bringing translated content back into the application environment and ensuring the elearning course functionality is preserved in the target language.

The main job of professional translators is to express the meaning originally contained in a source language, but newly in a specified target language. In doing this translators apply their knowledge of both languages, their experience as a professional linguist, and apply judgment to best fulfill the language objectives. There can often be multiple approaches to expressing meaning. Translators strive to select the best option according to their professional judgment.

Clients sometimes provide inputs to support the efforts of translator by including information about the primary audience(s) for a translation, and sometimes supplying preferred translations for certain key terms in the material. For example a client might describe their target audience’s level of education, their country or region of origin, and perhaps demographic information such as age and gender.

Preferred terminology for translations are frequently provided as a bilingual table where key words are listed in a column with the corresponding preferred target language translation listed immediately to the right. The two column bilingual reference is provided to assigned translators at the beginning of a project. Clients might in some cases request strict observance of all preferred translations. Alternatively they might request only a preference for a listed translation but allow some latitude from the translation preferences if the translator decides another word selection would be better in a particular context.

Instructions such as these at the beginning of an elearning translation project can help translators prepare translations that meet customers’ objectives and optimally support both the intent of the elearning materials and its target audience.

Half Sized Blog Element (Single Author Style)

Half Sized Blog Element (Multi Author Style)

Employee Handbook Translation Basics

eLearning Translation Audience

Employee Handbook Translation Basics

eLearning Translation Audience

Full Sized Blog Element (Big Preview Pic)

Employee Handbook Translation Basics

eLearning Translation Audience

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