What is Translation Memory?
Websites. Product documentation. Sales tools. Marketing messaging. Branding. Customer support guides. What do they all have in common?
They all contain similar, if not identical, carefully-crafted language and messages, recurring phrases and statements that can make up 40% or more of the text within your customer’s communications.
Without using a translation memory to capture this repeated content for future reuse, your translators will be localizing the same phrases time and time again. This can slow down project completion and cause you to pay for the same translation multiple times. In addition, by not using a translation memory can also reduce the quality of localized content, potentially leading to customer dissatisfaction.
Translation memories can aid the localization process, dramatically improving both quality and efficiency. All of a customer’s previous translations can be stored for future re-use so that the same sentence never needs to be translated, or paid for, twice. Furthermore, the acceleration of project completion will mean that you will be able to accept more work and increase your revenues.
What is a translation memory?
A translation memory is a linguistic database that continually grows and “learns” from the translator.
All previous translations are accumulated within the translation memory (in source and target language pairs called translation units) and reused so that the same sentence never has to be translated twice. The more the translation memories are built up, the faster translators can work, thus accelerating delivery of translation projects and increasing revenue.
Using SDL Trados 2007 Suite as an example, the translator would open the source file and applies the translation memory so that any “100% matches” (identical matches) or “fuzzy matches” (similar, but not identical matches) within the text are instantly extracted and placed within the target file.
As the translator works through the source file, the "matches” suggested by the translation memory can be either accepted or overridden with new alternatives. If a translation unit is manually updated, then it is stored within the translation memory for future use as well as for repetition in the current text. In a similar way, all segments in the target file without a “match” are translated manually and automatically added to the translation memory.
Translation memories should be used by anyone who translates text from one language to another. They are most effective when localizing documents with a high level of repetition.
Translation memory is also very helpful when translating content out of context. An increasing number of organizations rely on Content Management Systems (CMS) to manage their information. A CMS allows individual blocks of text, rather than entire documents, to be created/edited and then published in a variety of different formats. A translation memory helps to make this process quicker and more consistent.
Furthermore, even if a translation memory is not being used, the dedicated translation environment allows translators to extract text from the source file and focus on localizing the text without worrying about the tags. For example, with an HTML file, all of the coding will be hidden so you do not have to waste time searching through unnecessary lines for the text that requires translation.
- Accelerates project completion so that you can take on more project and increase revenue
- Ensures consistency and quality within translations for customer satisfaction
- Speeds up the localization process and reduces the overall cost of translations – never translate the same sentence twice
A translation memory tool stores segments of text as translation units (in source and target pairs). A segment can consist of a sentence or paragraph.
A terminology tool, on the other hand, is a searchable database that contains a list of multilingual terms and rules regarding their usage.
Terminology is typically used in conjunction with a translation memory.
Machine translation automatically translates a document without any human input.
These kinds of tools are fast, but result in a poor quality translation as a machine cannot understand the subtleties or contexts of language. As a result, quality and accuracy tend to be around 50% - 70%, therefore it is not advisable to send the raw form directly to your customers. In addition, machine translation can only be used for a limited number of supported languages.
With translation memory software, such as SDL Trados 2007 Suite, the number of supported languages is unlimited, and the actual translation is performed by a professional translator. The translation memory assists by presenting “100%” and “fuzzy” matches from the legacy translation database, so that the translator can work with greater efficiency, consistency and quality.
Yes, SDL Trados 2007 Suite is compatible with a wide range of programs used to create content. These formats include Microsoft Office 2007, Office XP, OpenOffice, QuarkXPress 6.x/7.x, XML and Adobe InDesign CS (InDesign 3.x)
What is terminology?
By successfully managing your corporate terminology, not only are you protecting your organization’s global brand, you are also creating a foundation for consistent communication and knowledge sharing throughout your organization. With every content creator and translator using the right term, organizations can achieve remarkable improvements in brand consistency and content quality.
Terminology is the study of terms and their use. Terms are words and phrases which describe products, services or industry jargon. They frequently drive competitive differentiation. Most companies use an increasing number of industry- or organization-specific words which need to be accurately stored, shared and translated. Terms could be anything from a product name to a marketing tag line.
A termbase is a central repository, similar to a database, which allows for the systematic management of approved terms in both source and target languages. It also allows you to control the terms you define for your business and therefore helps you control your brand consistency. Use of a termbase alongside your existing translation environment ensures that your business can product more accurate and consistent translations, as well as becoming more efficienct.
It is important to manage your corporate terminology so that you can guarantee that a consistent and accurate message is conveyed in all customer touch-points, in all languages. Without managing terminology it is likely that inconsistencies will occur with both source and translated content, which confuses and frustrates your customers, damaging your brand and impacting customer satisfaction and loyalty.
SDL MultiTerm is the terminology management software from SDL. It provides one central location to store and manage terminology. By providing access to all those involved with applying terminology, such as engineers and marketing, translators and terminologists, it ensures consistent and high-quality content from source through to translation
- A terminology tool is a searchable database that contains a list of approved terms and rules regarding their usage
- A translation memory tool differs, in that it stores segments of text as translation units (in source and target pairs). A segment can consist of a sentence or paragraph.
- Translation memory is typically used in conjunction with a terminology management application to ensure terms are consistent in the translation.
Although a flat file can store terms, its ability to offer long-term business value is somewhat limited. This is due to flat files not being scalable, share-able or embeddable. To achieve maximum flexibility with your terminology, your termbase needs to be searchable in any direction, allow for limitless terms, users and languages. With SDL MultiTerm your termbase is capable of growing with your business and your terminology requirements.
Software localization
Discover the benefits of software localization
Software Localization is more than the translation of a product's User Interface. Companies localize software in order to overcome cultural barriers for their products to reach a much larger target audience. |
Software localization is the process of adapting a software product to the linguistic, cultural and technical requirements of a target market. This process is labour-intensive and often requires a significant amount of time from the development teams
Software localization is the translation and adaptation of a software or web product, including the software itself and all related product documentation.
Traditional translation is typically an activity performed after the source document has been finalized. Software localization projects, on the other hand, often run in parallel with the development of the source product to enable simultaneous shipment of all language versions. For example, the translation of software strings may often start while the software product is still in the beta phase.
Translation is only one of the activities in a localization project – there are other tasks involved such as project management, software engineering, testing and desktop publishing.
A software product that has been localized properly has the look and feel of a product originally written and designed for the target market. Here are just a number of points that have to be considered, as well as the language, in order to effectively localize a software product or website: measuring units, number formats, address formats, time and date formats (long and short), paper sizes, fonts, default font selection, case differences, character sets, sorting, word separation and hyphenation, local regulations, copyright issues, data protection, payment methods, currency conversion, taxes.
The standard localization process includes the following basic steps:
- Analysis of the material received and evaluation of the tools and resources required for localization
- Cultural, technical and linguistic assessment
- Creation and maintenance of terminology glossaries
- Translation to the target language
- Adaptation of the user interface, including resizing of forms and dialogs, as required
- Localization of graphics, scripts or other media containing visible text, symbols, etc.
- Compilation and build of the localized files for testing
- Linguistic and functional quality assurance
- Project delivery
SDL Passolo is a software localization tool that accelerates the many technical aspects of software localization and allows users to concentrate on the translation. When working with SDL Passolo it is possible to display the dialogs and menus in which the translated text strings will appear. If the length of a text string changes as a result of the translation, any necessary layout modifications to dialogs and forms can be made directly within SDL Passolo.
SDL Passolo offers the tools required to localize all the elements contained in the software, including strings, menus, dialogs, bitmaps, and icons. With SDL Passolo you can create localized software versions without requiring access to the source text files or the development environment used for developing the software.
Providing automatic test functions, interfaces to the major translation memories, and the option of working with all the major Windows formats as well as text files and tagged formats such as XML and HTML, SDL Passolo is the state-of-the-art software localization tool.
CAT Technology 
