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5 Biggest Employee Handbook Translation Mistakes

June 5, 2020

We’ve titled this blog about mistakes when it comes to employee handbook translation services. A more positive way of stating things would be how to get better results in the process of translating employee handbooks. Here are a few suggestions. 1) Provide the handbook in an editable format Professional translators can work with a wide […]

File Types for Elearning Translation Services

June 4, 2020

As a category of professional translation services, translation of elearning materials is an important one. This week we’re wrapping up an elearning translation project for a regular client so we’re reminded of how translation services in this area have grown, and will likely continue to grow. In the age of viruses that have the effect […]

5 Biggest Employee Handbook Translation Mistakes

June 5, 2020

File Types for Elearning Translation Services

June 4, 2020

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5 Biggest Employee Handbook Translation Mistakes

June 5, 2020

1) Provide the handbook in an editable format

Professional translators can work with a wide variety of document formats including Word, PDF, and InDesign to to mention a few common file types. The easiest format to work with when available is MS Word. Word documents are directly editable. Any formatting can easily be retained in the final translation document. Some languages require more or less space to express the equivalent meaning in English so some minor adjustments might be needed. Spanish for instance is generally considered to require 10-15% more words relative to English. So some page expansion might be reasonable to expect when translating into Spanish.

2) Make sure proofreading services by a second linguist are included

Quality control is essential. There are various levels of services that translation companies and freelance translators provide. In most cases it’s important for a second linguist to proofread/review the translation of the first linguist. This process of translation and post-translation proofreading by a second translator normally provides a high quality translation. There’s also a process known as translation, editing, and proofreading (or TEP) that some professional translation companies follow to ensure a quality final translation deliverable.

What do translation services clients really buy? They buy the language skills and judgment of the assigned linguists.

3) Native speaking translators

Translators assigned to the project should be native speaking in the target language. The target language is the language going into so for example in an English-to-Spanish translation project, Spanish is the target language and English is the source. While translators are fully bilingual in the language pair they work in (e.g., English-Spanish, English-French, et. al.) their first language tends to always be the strongest language.

4) Allow enough time for the job

The highest quality translation outputs remain the product of human translators. On average a professional translator will competently translate somewhere around 3000 words per day. Some linguist do more, some a little less. Time must also be allowed for the proofreading quality assurance step. So be sure to plan ahead and allow enough time for delivery of a professional quality translation.

5) Set expectations appropriately

What do translation services clients really buy? They buy the language skills and judgment of the assigned linguists. There are typically multiple ways of expressing equivalent meaning in any language. This being the case, a given translator’s approach or choice of words will likely not match the subjective preferences of another person exactly, particularly a lay person even if they speak the target language.

File Types for Elearning Translation Services

June 4, 2020

Elearning materials can be contained in a number of different file formats. The easiest file format to work with is probably MS Word since text is directly editable. The same is true for text contained within cells of an Excel files. PowerPoint files are another file format we regularly receive elearning text in.

There’s a way to handle and translate virtually any elearning material in any format and into the selected target language of choice.

Elearning text for translation sometimes comes to us as image files. In those cases some setup is usually required to bring the text into a format such as a bilingual table. Bilingual tables are two column files with source text (e.g., English) in the left column and a second column left blank for placing the corresponding translated text in the target language.

Elearning text can also come in the form of popular elearning authoring tools such as the application Articulate Storyline. Storyline translation projects can include formatting within the application or just the exported text (via a built in function) and the client then handles the importing of the translated text back into the elearning tool environment.

There’s a way to handle and translate virtually any elearning material in any format and into the selected target language of choice. Fundamentally it’s still text in a format, with an educational objective, that needs to be equivalently expressed in another language.

Half Sized Blog Element (Single Author Style)

Half Sized Blog Element (Multi Author Style)

5 Biggest Employee Handbook Translation Mistakes

File Types for Elearning Translation Services

5 Biggest Employee Handbook Translation Mistakes

File Types for Elearning Translation Services

Full Sized Blog Element (Big Preview Pic)

5 Biggest Employee Handbook Translation Mistakes

File Types for Elearning Translation Services

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