More often than not, there is not a single “correct” translation of source text. The quality of translation is very subjective, and both customers and translators struggle to assess the quality of a translation.
The majority of professional linguists and translators would agree that a successful translation communicates the same meaning and intention as the original source text but sounds like it has been initially written in the target language.
In this post, we have identified a few things that you could do to aid your translator in creating a high-quality translation in the shortest amount of time.
Context
To enable your translator to create the highest quality translation, you need to provide as much contextual and background information as possible.
The following information should be available:
• The target audience for the translation
• The Content type
• Tone – casual, formal, or business
• Channel or method you are sharing the translation on
Quality of the Source Text
Ambiguity in the source text can cause issues with the end result. Text that has already been through a machine translation usually doesn’t lead to the high-quality you are expecting. Make sure to review the source text for correct grammar, misplaced words and misspellings before submitting it for translation.
Style Guide
A style guide is a useful tool that provides direction to translators on the use of language, composition, reading level, vocabulary, capitalisation, punctuation, spelling and grammar. You could also specify whether you would like the translator to use American or British English, or write in an informal or business tone.
If you are just looking for overall consistency, you could ask the translator to follow a published style guide such as The Chicago Manual of Style or Associated Press Stylebook instead of making your own from scratch.
Use a Glossary
A glossary is a documented collection of commonly used terms or phrases that appear in both the source and target languages. Defining a glossary is useful to ensure consistency through your translation, for example, if you text is regarding a blog post, you can identify in the glossary that blog post is always to be used instead of blog, post, article etc.
There are a number of industry published multi-language glossaries available on the market to help translators deliver high-quality translations across multiple
Collaborate with your Translator
The best quality of translation is achieved through collaboration between the customer and translator. Consider setting aside time for questions from the translator and collaborating with the translator on calls or face to face meetings to create the end results you desire.