Problem Free Translation Starts with Project Management

（Edited by freelance Chinese translator li – English to Chinese or Chinese to English translation services）
It's easy to think that translation is just about words. After all, if you look up the definition of "translation", you'll read that it means taking something in one language and putting it into another.

However, when you're discussing the translation of documents in the business world, the process is just as important as the actual words. Here's why. When the process is designed properly, it can impact the overall quality of the final product. The process is instrumental in making sure the message is consistent when it needs to be delivered to multiple countries. In addition, the use of a well-thought out project management process leads to the development of efficiencies that save both time and money.

Before you hire anyone to translate your content, review important items/questions with your translation partner. The responses will be an indication of whether the document you're having translated -a web site, annual report, training manual, legal document, drawing, etc - will not only be accurate, but will also be completed on time and in budget.

Does the updated Google translation tool eliminate the need for human translators?

（Edited by freelance Chinese translator li – English to Chinese or Chinese to English translation services）
According to a China Herald blog the newly updated Google translation tool, when compared to Babelfish, actually makes some sense. In a test done with Chinese translations, professional Chinese translators say that about 60% of the translation is correct. The software picks the most commonly used characters, but they are not always the right ones.

According to Google “We feed the computer with billions of words of text, both monolingual text in the target language, and aligned text consisting of examples of human translations between the languages. We then apply statistical learning techniques to build a translation model. We have achieved very good results in research evaluations”.

Do we recommend using it? Perhaps it is useful for limited applications such as technical translations with little grammatical complexity and low incidence of words with multiple meanings. It might also be useful for informal reading of a foreign text and get a “general idea” about the document.

Translation Industry Conference - March, 2007

（Edited by freelance Chinese translator li – English to Chinese or Chinese to English translation services）

According to experts attending the translation conference in Salt Lake City, sponsored by the Bringham Young University, the translation industry is a 9.5 to 13 billion industry which is served by 3,000 translation companies.

Translation services are a hidden profession for most consumers. However, companies that expect to compete in the global marketplace should allocate significant translation budgets. For instance, O.C. Tanner Co., a Salt Lake City company that designs employee-recognition programs, spends around $40,000 a month on translation services.

Although English is the most sought out language, consumers around the world expect websites, brochures and other forms of communication to be delivered in their own languages, according to Ben Martin, vice president of J.D. Edwards, a software developer with headquarters in Denver.

Translating Websites: Is it worth it?

（Edited by freelance Chinese translator li – English to Chinese or Chinese to English translation services）

The simple answer is: it depends.

The real answer involves evaluating your needs and plans to provide services and products, as well as information, to readers in other languages. If you company does business in different countries, chances are that you want to translate your website into the local language. On the other hand, if you are promoting a product locally it is probably not worth it.

Years ago companies debated whether building a website was worth the trouble and expense. How would a website pay for itself? Now, Companies by in large discovered that investing time and resources in a website is worth the effort and many times it represents a mayor portion of their business. With the worldwide reach of the Internet, many are now wondering how to expand beyond their regions and borders.

If the Company is seeking to sell, promote, and educate non-local language markets, there is little option but to translate their website and documentation.

It is estimated that to reach 80% of all Internet users in the world, a website would need to support a minimum of 10 languages: English, Chinese, Spanish, Japanese, German, Korean, French, Italian, Russian and Portuguese.

Big solutions for big translation projects

（Edited by freelance Chinese translator li – English to Chinese or Chinese to English translation services）
Collaboration tools enable translation teams to centralize translation databases, white boards, communications and work coordination. These tools must be hosted in a server and must be able to engage in server-to-server exchange of entire translation projects with the translation providers. The purpose is that individual translators can access resources that are managed in a central location by way of LAN or WAN.

Across Systems GmbH, headquartered in German, developed a software solution for such cases that offers a central software platform for all language resources and to enable the control of the translation process.

Language professionals trained in such tools can offer their clients cost saving advantages and efficiencies that benefit large translation project owners.

(by http://www.language-translation-service.net/)