In order to assist international business, business translation arises. For business translation, the most important thing is to offer customer-oriented service and help customers’ business go ahead smoothly; otherwise, the service is bad.

About the project:

Source files: more than 10 Word files converted from PDF;

Language pair: English to Simplified Chinese;

English source words count: about 210,000 words (Repetition: 135,000 words);

Our translation team handled translation: about 75,000 new words with Trados 2011;

Customer handled auto-translation for about 135,000 repetition words via Trados 2011 with TM we delivered;

Layout Chinese words count: about 360,000.

Challenges:

  1. There are problems such as wrong off-line, missing contents for special characters, wrong order in Word source files converted from PDF. We revised most of the problems before translation start but not 100%.
  2. Customer is not Chinese and don’t know how to deal with tags when handle auto-translation with TM we delivered. (Problems in translated Word files: missing contents, extra contents, contents in wrong places and so on. All the contents need to be rechecked word by word compared with source.)

What should we do according to customer’s request:

Recheck all the translated Word files compared with source PDF, revised the places if need and make sure the final Word files are 100% OK. Delivery time is limited. Customer was willing to pay for the checking time.

Our solutions:

  1. Assigned the job to the editor who handled editing for 75,000 words of this project.
  2. Instruction to editor: a. checked all contents compared with source PDF and revised the places with missing or extra contents; b. checked all the website, words with color, words in italic/bold, numbers and special character, to make sure they are right and in the right place compared with source PDF.

Problems we encountered:

Editor handled proofreading for all the Chinese words, while she didn’t notice that the most important thing is that files needed to be rechecked compared with source PDF with limited time. First, we need to make sure the translated contents are complete, right and in the right place compared with the source PDF.

When Account Manager handled the final checking before delivery and found problems above. Then it cost Account Manager, related Project Manager, translator and editor more time to check for the third time.

Summary:

  1. All the participants of the project should read instructions carefully before job starting. Then handle translation or checking strictly with instructions.
  2. Business translation is greatly different from Translation of literary works (novels, short stories, plays, poems, etc.). For translation of literary works, the choosing of every word is very important, while for business translation, translation according to customer’s request is the most important thing. For example, a client’s need is not receiving translated words with highest quality but simple translated documents with urgent delivery to assist his urgent business. Under this condition, if translator delays to deliver finished files to client because of the pursuit of high quality, it may cause serious consequences.