An often overlooked step to going global is the generation of adaptable content. However, creating content that is flexible isn’t as simple as it seems and takes time, money, and a streamlined content management process. When you translate a user manual into 100+ languages, it’s important to have a process that produces consistent language, accurate language, and efficient translation. With that in mind, we here at CSOFT decided to briefly introduce one of the unsung heroes of localization – single source content management.
Single-source content management is the process of creating a master document source that can be used to create universal changes across various types of media associated with that master source. To put it simply, a document created from a single source can be converted to a different file type or different language without the need to manually re-edit it. As more companies go global, this allows businesses to produce content quickly, and across multiple languages and platforms with minimal hassle.
Over the past few years, single source content management has quickly become a translator’s favorite tool. With single source documents, translators can reuse content across multiple documents. Now instead of re-translating words, sentences, or paragraphs in multiple documents, a translator can simply translate a passage once, and input it across different platforms knowing that the translation is correct. This improves the efficiency of a translator without having to trade off translation quality.
The ability to reuse translation, and to make changes across multiple documents at once, also consequently improves translation accuracy and consistency. For a translator, consistency is the key to high quality translation. Single source documentation gives translators the tools necessary to ensure consistent terminology and terminology usage. It also reduces the potential for translation variation —something which is hard to avoid if you have multiple translators working on one project.
To put it simply, single source documentation saves a great deal of time for a translator by providing an efficient way to make universal changes across multiple projects. This keeps text consistent, accurate, and of high quality without any additional labor. If you are a company going global, the decision to use single source content management is a wise one. At the end of the day, localization is an extremely complex process, and single source content management helps provide a simple solution to translation needs.
CSOFT makes the use of modern, up-to-date tools a priority. We are constantly seeking to expand our potential by appropriating the most efficient methods while also maintaining the guaranteed skill of our professional linguists. The coordination of tools and human operators in this manner ensures the best success for our clients; a service and an outlook that always impresses.
Written by Patrick Keefe, Technical Writer at CSOFT International
Read more of Patrick Keefe’s blogs
Learn more about CSOFT’s Single Source Documentation Translation here.
[dqr_code size="120" bgcolor="#fff"]