Translation tools have played a huge role in shaping the industry and here at CSOFT, we consider ourselves experts in the field. So much so that CSOFT’s very own Michael Gray led a workshop on translation tools in the CSOFT San Francisco office recently which was attended by a number of experts in the translation industry. The session was split into 3 key parts; the first part discussed the various tools that can contribute to Translation Quality, the second part spoke about the importance of the Review process in translation, and the final section revolved around the localization service platform; Mojito.
Translation Quality
Michael opened up the discussion by referencing some of the glossaries that are useful to ensure translation quality. Glossaries will ensure that all of the translations a company produces are consistent as well as help the translators by saving them time. Two of the main tools mentioned were Multiterm and Termwiki Pro –both of which help to standardize terms in the target language.
Review
The workshop then moved on to discussing translation tools, the attendees experience with the review process, and other challenges when undertaking it. Everyone in the workshop agreed upon the importance of the review when a translation is completed, but they also found that sometimes the client can underestimate this. The question raised was: to what degree would the translation have to be bad enough so that the client won’t come back to use the same provider again? And why does it even need to get this far in the first place? The group settled on the opinion that quality can greatly affect usage and the review is integral in ensuring that this quality is maintained.
Michael then discussed CSOFT’s review tool ReviewIT which focuses on marketing and technical documents. It effectively puts the text into a PDF on a web browser and streamlines the whole review process. He gave the example of a company working on translating a brochure and explained that the reviewer could open this translated document anywhere and just add comments along the sidebar. This could save companies a lot of time through the process and close off a few loopholes where companies avoid the review in order to save time and money.
Mojito
The workshop then moved onto discussing the Automation platform named Mojito. The platform is run primarily through Box and allows the user to view the status of their translation project on the dashboard as well as being able to view all of their projects in an efficient way. Mojito also allows the user to see if there is any of the text that hasn’t been translated or any new strings of text that need translation; helping to streamline the process.
The session on the whole was a roaring success. The interactive audience engaged with and challenged Michael on the various tools featured while all generating strong collective opinions in the workshop on the whole: The Review is an integral part of the translation process and modern day tools such as ReviewIT and Multiterm will help streamline the process, encouraging more clients to undertake this important element.
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