As a client who is looking to have materials translated there are certain industry terms that you’ll hear quite often when working with a Language Service Provider. Being familiar with translation terminology will help you to better understand the translation services offered by language services providers!
Why Should You Be Familiar With Translation Terminology to provide more quality Transaction Services?
Like any industry, those who work in the field of translation have a plethora of terms and concepts that have evolved to describe the tasks translators do on a daily basis.
The terminology of translation is quite expansive, and while not all of the terms are relevant to individuals outside of the professional translation services field some do relate to concepts important to you as a client. This include terms related to pricing, quality control, and the actual services you need for your project.
Knowing translation terminology can help you decide on the best translation strategy, and also help you communicate more easily with your project management team about information relating to your translation.
So what are some of the must know translation terms for any clients? We’ve listed 24 that we think are the helpful below.
Transaction Services: Commonly Confused Translation Terms
Before we get in-depth with the terms, let’s take a look at some commonly confused terminology in the translation services field.
Translation versus Interpreting Services
Translation is the process of converting written text from one language into another language. Interpreting is orally translating one language into another.
The Main Difference: Translation Is Written While Interpretation Is Oral.
Translation versus Localization
Translation and localization, though often requested in one package, are distinct practices. As mentioned before, translation is the process of converting written text from one language into another language.
Localization is the process of adapting your text to better fit the cultural and linguistic norms of your target audience – translation is included in the process of localization (see a more detailed definition of localization below).
The Main Difference: Translation is the process of conveying meaning between two different languages, localization is the process of adapting that meaning to be better understood and received by the target audience.
Transcription versus Translation
While translation is the process of converting written text between languages, transcription is the process of converting spoken or motioned language into written form.
The Main Difference: Translation Is A Text – Text Relationship, While Transcription Is A Oral/Motioned – Text Relationship.
Localization versus Internationalization
To understand the relationship between these two processes, let’s take a deeper look at what each of them are.
Localization – the adaptation of text, materials, websites – you name it – to fit the societal, cultural and linguistic norms of a foreign area. This can be everything from words and numbers, to currency, expressions, rules of conduct, keyboards, colors, legal requirements etc. This is extremely important for businesses expanding into global markets, law firms looking to serve international clients, medical companies looking to do research in different countries and pretty much any task being performed internationally.
Internationalization – there are various uses of this word, some overlapping with globalization, but it generally refers to the specific design and development of a product, software or content that allows for easy localization. In other words, internationalization takes place before a localization process, and allows the localization process to be easier and potentially more cost-effective.
Some Areas Where This Takes Place: CSS For Vertical Text, Unicode for International Text, Calendar, Date and Time Formatting, Numerical Systems
The Main Difference: Localization is the process of adapting your text, software, audio, branding etc. to better fit into your target audience’s culture and language. Internationalization is the way in which a product is designed and developed that allows for localization to be performed later.
Transaction Services: 20 Must Know Translation Terms
Now that the main distinctions have been made for some of the more common translation services requested for a project, let’s look at some of the translation terminology that may come up when speaking with your project management team.
Translation Terminology For Speaking With Project Managers
- Adaptation – not to be confused with the process of localization, adaptation can be considered more of a “free translation” if you will – it occurs when an idea/phrase from one culture must be changed or explained in a different manner during translation, due to the fact that the target culture does not have an equivalent.
- Audio Dubbing – a method of translating audio by recording voices in the target language over the original audio.
- Back Translation- a method of quality control / review, back translations occur after a document has already been translated into the target language. The text will then be translated back into the source language by a third party to ensure that the information was conveyed accurately during the translation.
- Bidirectional – refers to languages where the written text is read from right to left, but where numbers are read from left to right. Some examples of these languages include Arabic, Hebrew, Urdu, Punjabi and Yiddish.
- Consistency – consistency refers to the amount of times a specific term/phrase is used in exactly the same manner throughout a translated document. Many words can be translated multiple ways, but a document with a high level of consistency will use the same translated term in each instance of a specific term/phrase.
- Desktop Publishing (DTP) – programs and applications that help prepare materials in terms of layout for publication in the target market – can be used for printing or electronic purposes including pdfs or emails.
- DNT – stands for “Do Not Translate”, it is an abbreviation used to indicate that a certain word or phrase should not be translated into the target language.
- Double-Byte Language – double-byte refers to the amount of bytes a character in a language takes up in computer memory. The letters of single byte languages, like English, occupy one byte, while languages like Korean and Chinese have characters that occupy two bytes. Both bytes are needed in order for a precise representation of the character.
- False Friends – words in multiple languages that may seem similar in terms of spelling and pronunciation, but in fact mean two different things. An example would be the Italian verb “Pretendere” similar to English “Pretend”, but that translates to “to Expect”. It’s good to note that false friends can differ slightly in meaning from false cognates, in that false cognate is a label sometimes used to refer to words that are similar but that have different etymologies (whereas etymology does not matter for false friends).
- Functional Testing – functional testing occurs after software has been localized – it is a review process to ensure that the localization in no way changed or hindered the software functions and display.
- Globalization – a broad term referring to the growing interconnectedness of global markets and society. In recent times it has been advanced by more open trade policies and developments in technology. From a business standpoint, it can be used to encompass challenges that are both logistical and organizational in nature, that a company experiences as it grows internationally. It deals with supporting content, resources and communication across languages and cultures to access new markets and customers.
- Source Language – The language of your original materials or the language you are translating from.
- Subtitles- the words at the bottom of a screen displaying the translation or transcription of the dialogue in the film or TV show.
- Target Language / Target Culture – The target language is the language you are translating your materials in to. The target culture likewise, is a set of collectively shared similarities generally held by the market you are looking to reach.
Moving on, let’s get a little technical, and dive into machine translation and some of the translation tools that translators use to improve quality and save you money!
Technical Translation Terminology
- Automatic (or Machine) Translation – the process of translating materials using software programs – free examples include Google Translate and Bing Translate; however, Language service providers also have sophisticated Machine Translation software that can be used depending on the quality of translation needed.
- Computer Assisted Translation Tools – also known as CAT tools, these are software programs that help translators with increasing efficiency across translations. They include translation memory (TM), propagating of duplicate texts/words in a document, standard glossaries and much more.
- Translation Memory (TM) – a database of text segments that are continuously saved for future use. Translation memory improves efficiency and speed of translators by preventing the translation of the same words/sentence twice – it matches text strings against stored data that can then be paired with identical data in a source text.
- Concordance – a searching feature used with Translation Memory that allows translators to search for a particular term or phrase from the source material to see how it was translated in the past.
- Fuzzy Match – when text cannot be directly matched using Translation Memory, a “fuzzy match” is made, meaning a very close or partial match to translations saved in the TM database. A percentage value (or threshold) of the fuzzy match can be set to aid translators in searching them later on.
- Fuzzy Logic – a method used by CAT tools that produces near matches of text when an exact match cannot be found in Translation Memory. A threshold of the match is set, and the database will show any matches that fall within this threshold.
Developing a Clear Plan For Translation
Understanding the terminology of translation that’s used by professional translators and agencies will help you when forming a strategy for incorporating Translation services into your workflow. Familiarity with different services, concepts, and technical options allows you to spell out exactly what you need from a translator or translation agency.
Not only does this allow for the development of a clear plan for your translation needs, but also for clearer and more effective communication with translation professionals.
What are some important points to know right off the bat before contracting translation services?
- The languages of the audience you are translating for
- What the end goal of the translated text will be, and a clear picture of who the end users are
- Whether or not you need a flawless translation or just “the gist”
- The budget you’re working with
- Any regulatory requirements that may apply to your translation
Outlining the answers to the points above will give you a good starting point – from there you can scan the above translation terminology to find what fits your needs, or start the conversation with a translation agency!
Is there any translation terminology you wish we would have explained in this post? Let us know in the comments!
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Sources:
- http://www.logos.net/translation-glossary/
- https://www.w3.org/International/questions/qa-i18n
- http://philip.pristine.net/http://www.translationzone.com/solutions/cat-tools/
- http://desktoppub.about.com/cs/beginners/f/what_dtp.htmhttp://www.globalization101.org/what-is-globalization/
- http://producthelp.sdl.com/sdl%20trados%20studio/client_en/Edit_View/Overview__Concordance_Window.htm
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