Should you be hiring technical writers to support your company’s documentation needs? Young and growing companies continue to encounter this challenge when expanding their market reach for the first time.
Technology products are becoming more and more global. Research and development at the world’s largest tech companies is often conducted internationally, and products like iPhones and Lenovo laptops—while designed by companies domestic to the US and China—are now sold internationally as well.
This means that creating English equivalents to product terminology has become correspondingly important in the process of globalizing the technology industry. Documents such as product names, installation instructions and technical features must be translated for the product to launch globally. For life sciences industry, the bar for product localization is set even higher; companies have to meticulously manage and document terminology creation to meet international auditing and regulatory standards.
Save Time & Money
Thus, embedding technical writers from the very beginning of product development is an industry practice that will save companies both time and money despite the higher upfront investment and training. With embedded technical writers, the translation process can happen parallel to product development, resulting in consistent product terminology across multiple languages.
Without embedded technical writers, content authoring and translation frequently involve looking up technical terms in both the source and target languages. Such efforts take up considerable time during content development, resulting in lost translation productivity. These haphazard efforts also often produce inconsistent or incorrect terms, causing confusion among readers and leading to poor product usability.
Employing technical writers saves money. Time spent revising terminology errors results in launch delays, or worse—potentially millions of dollars in damages from product recalls or fines. For life sciences or other regulated industries, terminology errors can also lead to customer safety issues and regulatory compliance risks.
Terminology Management is Key
It is extremely important to provide translators with automatic terminology lookup when they need it. Unlike randomly searching the Internet for such information, collect and build a pre-approved term base and allow your linguists to access this information in real time. These efforts will ensure that your translators speak with one voice.
Although hiring technical writers is a time and labor-intensive process, it represents the highest standard of technical localization and will guarantee a more sophisticated and more accurate translation of your product!