Achieving Consistently High-Quality Translations

Introduction

Discover what reduces accuracy rates and how to implement solutions to solve common problems in localization today.

Good content is the best driver of business success today. Of course, a fabulous product or a must-have service is always at the core of what you do—you have to have something to offer, after all. Even so, how you communicate about those goods and services makes a significant difference. “Content” encompasses a range of forms. It can be a simple product description, information about your business, or online marketing materials across every channel.

When you’ve worked hard to develop a strong brand voice and a clear presence in the English-speaking world, moving into other regions is a natural evolution. Bringing that voice to a new audience leads to an array of opportunities. You can open new markets, out-compete other businesses, and facilitate current and future growth. Unfortunately, you can’t merely run your content through Google Translate and consider the job done.

You could take that approach, but the quality of your results will be passable at best and unreadable at worst. Pure machine translation such as the kind provided by free online tools does little to consider nuance, structure, or voice. All the effort to produce content that reflects your goals can be rendered pointless within seconds. That’s where translators and language solutions partners can help.

"Pure machine translation such as the kind provided by free online tools does little to consider nuance, structure, or voice. All the effort to produce content that reflects your goals can be rendered pointless within seconds."

Kristina Møller, Localization Expert

Controlling and Improving the Quality of Your Translations

Working with a human translator gives you a much better chance of receiving localized content that reflects the same standards of quality you’ve established for work in English. That is the ideal, anyway. In reality, quality issues persist even with human translators, and it may be difficult to verify the trustworthiness of the finished work. You don’t speak those other languages, so how can you know?

Accuracy has long been a concern in the language industry. In years past, localization that was “good enough” satisfied many businesses. Why miss any opportunity to make a positive impression? With such a wide range of content requiring translation to effectively reach or expand within new markets, each item should receive the same attention to detail and consideration. Yet mistakes, slow turnaround times, and other problems plague the process.

Establishing language workflows that deliver the best possible product is essential. Building that framework starts with understanding what “quality translation” really means. Knowing what pitfalls can hinder your efforts and cause the process to break down is important, too. Finally, today’s technology can transform this entire process from end to end—and you can’t afford to overlook its value. Let’s explore each aspect of what you need to know.

What Makes for Quality? Assessing Translations Accurately

Not everything needs to undergo a long, multi-step process for localization. However, anything you share publicly to represent your business should adhere only to the highest standards. Ensuring quality outcomes begins by defining what that means for your business. Without clear benchmarks, the value of localization projects can vary wildly.

So, how do you measure quality? An accurate translation should satisfy the following categories to meet your demand for high quality:

• Writing style—Does the translated text sound natural and flow as it would if written by a native speaker? Does the language preserve the brand voice of your business, and does the style conform to the specifics of your marketing plan?
• Accuracy of content—Does the content say the same thing with the same main ideas in both languages? Have words been erroneously deleted, or have sentence meanings changed due to additions? The translated text must communicate the same things as the source text.
• Foreign language fluency—Is the text recognizably distinct from a pure machine translation? Does it include slang or idiomatic language where applicable?
• Inclusion of key terms—Are your industry-specific terms and phrases correctly represented? Do they convey the appropriate information, or will they be confusing to audiences who don’t recognize the words?

Establishing these expectations and ensuring they are met should always be your first step.

The Big Hurdles: Challenges to Obtaining and Assessing Quality Localization

Even with definitive expectations, translations that are consistently accurate can be hard to acquire. Some challenges are inherent to the existing way of doing things for organizations at every level. Translations can pose unique challenges in industries that require consumer education, such as advanced manufacturing or software development.

What are the obstacles that negatively impact quality?

• A poorly defined procurement process. Does every team know which translators to use, or are they connecting with a random array of different suppliers? Is quality even a consideration, or are teams only considering cost and time?
• No centralized coordination of translation projects. Unless the entire scope of an organization’s localization work is properly managed, rogue and duplicate spending can cause financial chaos.
• Little to no oversight of projects in progress. Without management of the project, supervising language service providers is not easy. Waiting for answers can mean deadlines slip by unnoticed and projects fall behind schedule.
• No connection to the review process. The work between a translator and a reviewer is much like that between a writer and editor. Because it’s your content in question, shouldn’t you have some sense of how this process works and what issues reviewers identify?
• Unrealistic timetables. As a result of all these process inefficiencies, some teams may suddenly face a need to procure translations to meet a rapidly approaching deadline. The high-pressure situation this creates for everyone involved in the process does not often produce the best results.

"To ensure your business excels on the world stage, rein in disorganized processes and look for opportunities to improve, starting with how you originate translation jobs and select providers."

Kristina Møller, Localization Expert

Building a System That Fosters Quality at Every Stage

By understanding what defines good localization and exploring your organization’s shortcomings in this area, you can prepare your business for the critical next steps.

To ensure your business excels on the world stage, rein in disorganized processes and look for opportunities to improve, starting with how you originate translation jobs and select providers. With a clearly defined standard for accuracy plus a style guide and glossary specific to your business, you can ensure translators have everything they need to start making a difference in this process.

How do you find those experts on demand? Once you find them, how do you handle the other obstacles defined above, such as an opaque review process? The answer lies in redefining your process flow.

The technology you choose to empower your system makes a difference, too. Agile processes are crucial in today’s fast-paced and highly competitive world. Taking advantage of the latest advances in machine intelligence and software development makes it possible to consistently steer your system towards quality outcomes. At Straker, we’ve built the ideal platform for achieving that goal.

How Translation Automation Delivers Superior Accuracy

As we’ve seen, many of the inconsistencies and errors that generate poor quality translation work stem in part from traditional, manual workflows. Finding someone who understands your industry and your target languages can be a challenge on its own. Now add the possibility that multiple departments and different teams may have varying translation requirements. It doesn’t take long for confusion to erupt as the process of requesting, receiving, and validating translations becomes obscure across the whole organization.

We’ve built a platform that addresses the typical pain points and goes even further to prepare your business for a more competitive future. By focusing on the seamless integration of an AI-powered platform into your business, we engineer a better experience, facilitate continuous improvement, and target the highest accuracy levels. How?

Our platform is an all-in-one solution for integrating existing CMS deployments into translation workflows with built-in visibility with multiple facets. The DeltaRAY dashboard provides an all-in-one place to view, track, and manage translation work requested from across your organization. All teams report their projects to one central repository, making it easy to see key metrics straightaway. These custom CMS integrations and overview capabilities are only the beginning.

With a network of thousands of professional translators, we use many metrics to intelligently suggest and assign translators to your work. You can pre-define glossaries and technical terms for their use—and the RAY system uses machine intelligence to become smarter and faster with every job. Using translation memory to learn key phrases and jargon allows future projects to enjoy a faster turnaround time and enhanced quality.

Our platform simplifies the validation process as well. You can ensure that all localized content says precisely what you want prior to publication by managing language verifiers directly in the platform. Throughout the process, the power of RAY—and the way it learns to better support your business over time—is an essential tool for achieving a high-quality translation output consistently.

Unlock the Collaborative Power of Humans and Machines in Translation Work

Improving translation quality does more than reduce the costs associated with localization. The effects go beyond increased efficiency. With RAY, your chosen translators and verifiers can complete work even faster. Ultimately, all that extra effort goes to where it matters most: effective and excellent communication in other languages across diverse markets.

Whether the average retail consumer or the business to business (B2B) procurement specialist, buyers prefer to shop in their own language—even when they understand English. These same people will quickly notice when something isn’t quite right. When your business doesn’t speak the language of its market correctly, it reflects on your brand negatively. Instead, crisp content with familiar idioms, sentence patterns and other features can endear you to buyers from the top of the funnel through to a sales conversion.

Settling for quality less than 100% of the time isn’t acceptable in today’s crowded marketplace. At the same time, sacrificing speed for quality isn’t a good trade-off either. With Straker and a system that delivers visibility, connections to expert translators, and the oversight capabilities you need, localization work can become a significant value producer for your business at home and abroad.

Now is the time to learn more about how to reconfigure your translation processes to emphasize quality, speed, and consistency both now and far into the future. Find out more today, and take the first steps towards adopting the latest translation technology.

"As we’ve seen, many of the inconsistencies and errors that generate poor quality translation work stem in part from traditional, manual workflows. Finding someone who understands your industry and your target languages can be a challenge on its own."

Kristina Møller, Localization Expert