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How to Work with a Professional Translator – Practical Guide

How to Work with a Professional Translator – Practical Guide

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How to work with a professional translator, practical guide. Photo by ames Kovin in Unsplash. Unsplash License. https://unsplash.com/es/fotos/bb3EEbn1flM

At one time or the other, most companies will need the services of a professional translator to work on a script, video, website, or document. With companies becoming increasingly global, there is an increased need for localisation.

When hiring a professional to localise your content, it is important to work with someone who is experienced and has an eye for detail. Let’s explore some of the things to look for to ensure you can get high-quality localisation services.  

Choose the Translator Wisely

One of the first things you will have to decide when hiring professional translator services is whether you want to work with a freelancer or a professional agency. Freelancers tend to specialize in specific fields such as movie subtitles, animation videos, or working with a particular language.

A professional agency like GoLocalise, for example, works with a large talent pool of freelance professionals with a variety of specialisations. When you hire an agency, you will be able to receive excellent results, regardless of the scope of your project.

Freelancers tend to be less expensive, but their availability may be limited. Agencies, on the other hand, are available to work on short notice. Whether you work with a freelancer or an agency, it is important to take the time to vet their services in advance to ensure you are working with the best possible professional.

Provide Contextual and Technical Information

When choosing a professional translator to work with, it is essential to provide as many details as possible to ensure you can find the right fit. Provide details about your target audience, the intended purpose, the style and tone of the document, and more. This will minimize the chances of re-works and revisions later.  

A professional language translator will also need the right information to localise the copy tailored to your specifications, style, and taste. Here are some of the materials you should prepare for your project:

Reference Materials

Compile a list of materials that the professional translator can refer to for more details. This can include existing manuals, a link to your website, a URL, a catalogue, or any other company material packed with information.

Glossary

Providing a glossary is important to maintain consistency throughout the copy and reduce revisions. Ideally, a glossary should include in-house jargon, technical terms, proper nouns, and more that are used consistently in the company.

Style Guide

Style guides are helpful for certain projects such as the localisation of the company’s website, annual reports, or press releases. These guides provide details about how to format a document, so it is consistent with the current style of your company.

Translation Quality Control

Mistakes may happen, regardless of the level of skills of a professional translator. When choosing a professional to work with, ask about the quality control methods they use. Most reputed providers will have certain quality safeguards in place, whether it is following the client’s style guide or stringent quality checks.  

GoLocalise has a stringent quality control process in place to ensure the accuracy and quality of each project. Project managers follow these three quality control steps for each project:

  1. Hand-Picked Professional Translators

Each translator working with GoLocalise is screened for technical knowledge and linguistic ability. These applicants have over five years of experience in the specific field and must pass rigorous language tests and interviews.  

  1. Editing

Once a document is translated, it is then edited by another translator to spot linguistic issues and ensure accuracy. Editing is assigned to professionals that specialize in the subject matter.

  1. Revision

As an added measure, the final quality control step involves revision by a third specialist. The document is reviewed to ensure correct formatting and editing to ensure there are no errors.

Formatting and Layout Matters

Translation is not just about translating words from one language to another. The formatting and layout of a document can also change drastically between languages. Specific languages take up more space while others take less space.

For a professional translator, it is also important to ensure that elements like bibliography, footnotes, and table of contents are formatted correctly depending on the language of translation. When hiring a professional translator service, it is important to ask if formatting and layout will be handled by them as a part of the package.  

Human-Made Vs Automatic Translations

While automatic translations are available today, they have not yet managed to replace the quality of work achieved by humans.

Automatic translations may be suitable only if you need a rough translation or if your document does not include jargon or technical terms that may be difficult for the software to process.

For everything else, human-made translations are still required. Consider the scope of your project and the quality of the final document you need when deciding between human or automatic translations.  

Professional Language Translation Services

Another important point to consider when hiring a professional translator is whether they offer complimentary services that you may need with your project. In addition to translation, you may also need a variety of services such as:

GoLocalise has a pool of professionals with experience working in more than 300 languages, along with state-of-the-art recording studios, and equipment to handle projects of all types. The team of linguists, translators, and project managers work together to localise your content perfectly.

Look at this video about the working method of Golocalise professionals.

Here are some of the specialised services that GoLocalise can offer:

Dubbing and Lip Sync Voice-Over

Man doing lip sync like in a professional recording studio. Foto de Foto de Amin Asbaghipour in Unsplash, https://unsplash.com/es/fotos/Vn3MBnZ5fdE

Audiovisual translation is a specialised service that is getting increasingly popular in our technological world.

AVT is complex and requires additional skills to be able to fit the translation into the video’s time and space specifications. GoLocalise has a team of professionals experienced in providing dubbing services for video productions.

The team is also highly specialized in providing lip sync voice-overs for TV shows, ads, and marketing productions to ensure that the finished video will be suitable for your target audience.

Video Game Translation

For a video game to be successful, it needs to read well and sound great. GoLocalise offers video game translation services so you can increase the reach of your video games to players around the world.

Our team of professional translator and linguists are gamers and specialists in this field to ensure that every detail is taken care of. These professionals use the right terminology and word choices for each platform such as Xbox, PlayStation, and Wii to ensure accuracy.

E-Learning Translation

When working on an e-learning localisation project, the process involves translating the on-screen text and course material, localising the course graphics, recording the voice-over for the course, and quality control.

GoLocalise offers end-to-end e-learning translation services that manage the entire process so your content can be delivered to foreign markets. Our team of experts have extensive experience and understanding of the e-learning market as well as the industry sector they deal with.

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