How to Prepare Your Content for Translation

How to Prepare Your Content for Translation

文章源自WordsLinker-https://www.WordsLinker.com/how-to-prepare-your-content-for-translation.html

You understand the impact of multilingual communication, you’ve chosen the right target languages for your business, and you’ve selected a professional translation company. Congratulations, you are on the path to translation success.文章源自WordsLinker-https://www.WordsLinker.com/how-to-prepare-your-content-for-translation.html

However, there is one step that is often overlooked and can save you considerable time and money—preparing your content for translation.文章源自WordsLinker-https://www.WordsLinker.com/how-to-prepare-your-content-for-translation.html

Knowing your foreign audience and establishing writing style, terminology, and format will structure your current and future translation projects for success and guarantee fewer obstacles, and better results.文章源自WordsLinker-https://www.WordsLinker.com/how-to-prepare-your-content-for-translation.html

Below are the best practices for preparing your content for translation and how you can use them to jumpstart your translation project and ensure faster turnaround times and a higher ROI.文章源自WordsLinker-https://www.WordsLinker.com/how-to-prepare-your-content-for-translation.html

Writing for Translation

Style, terminology, sentence structure, and target audience. Why are they essential to translation?文章源自WordsLinker-https://www.WordsLinker.com/how-to-prepare-your-content-for-translation.html

Because knowing who you are writing for and how to write for them establishes a streamlined and repeatable translation strategy.文章源自WordsLinker-https://www.WordsLinker.com/how-to-prepare-your-content-for-translation.html

You will be better organized and prepared for future projects, and your translation partner will have a clearer understanding of your content objectives.文章源自WordsLinker-https://www.WordsLinker.com/how-to-prepare-your-content-for-translation.html

Let’s look at them in detail.文章源自WordsLinker-https://www.WordsLinker.com/how-to-prepare-your-content-for-translation.html

Know Your Audience

You must know which languages to focus on and why. But to get the best ROI, you should have the specific locale you are targeting in mind.文章源自WordsLinker-https://www.WordsLinker.com/how-to-prepare-your-content-for-translation.html

For example, you know you want to translate into Spanish but does your audience speak Spanish from Spain, South America, or North America?文章源自WordsLinker-https://www.WordsLinker.com/how-to-prepare-your-content-for-translation.html

Also, think about what type of readers you are targeting and how they interact with your product or material.文章源自WordsLinker-https://www.WordsLinker.com/how-to-prepare-your-content-for-translation.html

Are they professionals that are knowledgeable in your industry? Or are you targeting an audience that might be unfamiliar with your product or service?文章源自WordsLinker-https://www.WordsLinker.com/how-to-prepare-your-content-for-translation.html

Style Guide

A style guide establishes a set of rules regarding style, tone, and voice and is instrumental in establishing brand consistency.文章源自WordsLinker-https://www.WordsLinker.com/how-to-prepare-your-content-for-translation.html

It guides translators to convey your writing style and brand voice to foreign readers accurately.文章源自WordsLinker-https://www.WordsLinker.com/how-to-prepare-your-content-for-translation.html

Translation Glossary

Some words have multiple meanings that differ according to the context and industry or product.文章源自WordsLinker-https://www.WordsLinker.com/how-to-prepare-your-content-for-translation.html

For example, the word “screen” for a technology company could mean the front of a smartphone or television. However, for a life science company, a screen is a medical examination.文章源自WordsLinker-https://www.WordsLinker.com/how-to-prepare-your-content-for-translation.html

The purpose of a translation glossary is to reduce any ambiguities by providing company-specific meanings to commonly misinterpreted words.文章源自WordsLinker-https://www.WordsLinker.com/how-to-prepare-your-content-for-translation.html

Layout & Format

You can significantly streamline a translation project by providing your translation partner with files that are easy to translate and localize.文章源自WordsLinker-https://www.WordsLinker.com/how-to-prepare-your-content-for-translation.html

Global-ready files account for text expansion, international writing systems, source file formats, and the cultural meaning of images, colors, and symbols.文章源自WordsLinker-https://www.WordsLinker.com/how-to-prepare-your-content-for-translation.html

Editable Source Files

If available, provide your translation partner with the source version of your files and check that they are the correct draft versions.

Examples of source files included MS Office or Google Docs, Indesign or Illustrator files, or web files such as XML or HTML.

Today’s translators use software to extract text and reformatting files in other languages. This technology cannot be leveraged easily with scanned files or outlined PDFs.

Also, providing images without hardcoded text will reduce turnaround time since they will not need recreation.

Leave Room for Text Expansion

A translation will often take up 20% or more page space than its English counterpart.

Layouts that haven’t accounted for text expansion will often look cramped and need to be reformatted after translation—raising costs and slowing deadlines.

A global-ready document will have enough white space to allow for text expansion and will maintain a visually appealing layout and better reader experience.

Use Unicode Fonts

Some fonts will only work in English or a single writing system.

When attempting to use Latin-only fonts with foreign scripts such as Cyrillic, Asian, or Brahmic, the reader will instead see question marks or boxes.

Using Unicode fonts from the start will reduce the extra cost for multilingual desktop publishing.

Images & Symbols

Some images, colors, and symbols are irrelevant or inappropriate for foreign target markets.
For example, using an image of a yellow school bus for an educational product wouldn’t be appropriate outside of North America since they are only used in the USA and Canada.
It’s best to remove any images or symbols that are unique to the source country.

An LSP that offers cultural assessment can assist in providing feedback on images and symbols before translation kickoff.

Better Translation Preparation Means Efficient Collaboration and Project Success

You can see how preparing your content for translation sets you up for fewer bottlenecks and smoother process.

Once you have established these processes, they can be repeated across languages and projects—a definitive sign of being global-ready.