Where translation specialists meet!
Where translation specialists meet!
Essential recommendations to ensure high-quality translation outcomes
We strongly recommend clients to make sure they have checked and well prepared the following recommendations:
Clients and translation providers are continually striving for quality, faster turnaround times, and lower costs. Applying the following recommendations when creating the English can help you achieve these goals and at the same time ensure a higher level of reader comprehension and acceptance.
Avoid sentences that are over 25 words long. Shorter sentences aid clarity and also improve translation memory efficiency.
Explain acronyms the first time they appear in a chapter or include an acronym glossary for the reader.
Avoid grouping multiple nouns in a row without prepositions, as this can be confusing for translators.
Bullet points and numbers add clarity and structure to lists and procedures.
Be consistent in your use of terminology and acronyms. Avoid using different terms or acronyms for the same item.
When possible, proofread your English material before translation. Doing so helps avoid subsequent reworking in multiple languages at the translation stage.
The design and structure of an original English document can affect costs for formatting the translated document. You can reduce downstream costs by following these basic guidelines.
If the foreign language document needs to fit within the same number of pages as the English document, allow extra space when writing the English document. Other languages can occupy up to twenty-five percent more space on the page.
Use numbered call-outs in graphics, and position the text outside the graphic, making it editable as text and not part of the graphic.
Full justification can require additional proofreading during the page layout stage because of foreign language hyphenation.
If your project involves localizing software, try to finalize the user interface before releasing the document for translation.
Diagrams and screenshots are effective tools that can help explain your message.
Implement conditional text at paragraph level or at sentence level. This will improve translation memory efficiency.
Keep index markers to a maximum of 180 characters to allow for foreign language text expansion.