Make Translation Simpler

"We're entering six foreign markets. Quick! We need to translate product labeling, documentation, marketing brochures, training materials, our website..."

Would you be prepared to hear this demand, or would you be reaching for the Tylenol? Expanding your business overseas is great, but there can be growing pains. Managing content may already be one or more full-time positions in your organization—and six times the content could mean six times the work, stretching anyone's capabilities. The cost of translation alone might be a budget-breaker.

When you're facing a translation effort, even a small one, it pays to assess your content and understand what's involved, before you start translating your documents. It will save you time and money—and the headaches.

Getting Local
First off, you should understand that getting your content ready to venture out into the wide world requires more than running text through online translation software or contracting with your sales rep's Spanish-speaking neighbor.

Adapting a product to an international market, including translating content and adjusting to local formats and practices, is a process called localization. Localization requires having a team of translators and editors fluent in the language and cultural practices for each target market.

Fortunately, you have plenty of outsourcing options to handle your translation. Even the largest companies, such as Microsoft and Ford, outsource translation. Intermittent work makes it too costly to keep professional translators on the permanent payroll, and managing a worldwide network of translators is outside most companies' core competencies.

Translation firms take content from one language and put it in another, but they can also supply valuable advice about local formats and practices that may be in use in your products or services. Formats of dates, addresses, and phone numbers vary around the world, and so do other small practices and idioms that are easy to overlook. A translation firm can help you identify and appropriately adapt these practices.

You'll also want advice from an attorney specializing in international trade. Since you're entering a new business market, you've probably already received advice in this area, but have the attorney take a second look at labeling and documentation for specific requirements that may exist, depending on your industry. In any industry, you should think about copyright notices, liability disclaimers and warnings, and other content that might have legal ramifications.

Managing Translated Content
Once you choose a translation firm, how do you send them your content? Sure, you can pack all the documents in a box, ship them off, and wait for them to come back. But what happens later on when it's time to release a new product with revised documentation? And is the same content published in multiple formats, such as print and online, that can be consolidated instead of translating it twice and maintaining both formats?

Inefficiencies large and small are often tolerated in publishing processes, for a variety of reasons. Occasionally the reasons are even good ones—painstaking customizations of documents for improved aesthetics, or to handle an unusual circumstance.

When content suddenly multiplies several times in volume, however, inefficiencies are magnified greatly. To clean up messy practices and strike a balance between customization and standard templates and processes, you can establish some smart documentation practices in your organization to standardize and streamline content.

The practices that can rescue you are the same ones that are useful in a single language:

• Template standardization and enforcement. Conform all documents to a set of templates for a consistent organization and appearance, which can be automatically applied.
• Single-sourcing of content to multiple outputs. Use the same content, through appropriate filters and export tools, for documents in a variety of print and online formats for different audiences.
• Content management. Set up a system for organizing, storing, and publishing the content.

For one language these practices might seem expendable, but suddenly they're critical for containing the cost and effort of managing multiple languages. These practices keep your timeline, budget, and sanity in check during the initial translation as well as down the road, when it's time for updates.

Speaking of updates, you'll be happy to know that translation firms employ "translation memory" tools, sophisticated software that "remembers" how sentences and phrases were translated the first time through, which will save them time (and you money) on future updates.

Avoiding the Pain
Turning Technologies, a rapidly growing Ohio software firm, needed to translate its product's user guide and online help into six languages. They took initiative to develop the right documentation practices from the beginning, drawing on i-Squared's Wise Content Clearinghouse to help them implement single-sourced content with standardized templates. This forethought enabled one round of translation to furnish both print and online materials, saving 31–34% in the cost of translation. Because the content is also systematically reused for other products where it applies, Turning Technologies saves again when the time is ripe for those products to head out to new markets as well.

What if your current process isn't as streamlined as it could be, but fear of change and unknown costs keep you from taking the next step? Try picking a single representative project to determine if the ROI will be worth the effort. Look for free trials, buy single licenses of the proposed tools, or work with an experienced firm who can deliver the results to you. Don't let change deter you from enjoying the efficiency and cost savings that could give you the competitive edge.

With the right plan for managing your content, you are on your way to making your translation effort easier. With these practices in place, you may even be able to employ advanced XML technologies or a globalization management system to partially automate the process of having new or changed content translated. With standard templates, single-sourcing, and a content management system that supports your business practices, publishing the new content to a variety of languages and formats lets you leave the Tylenol bottle at home.