Making the most of translation memories
Translation of large amount of text
Our client is a leading fund manager in the financial sector with over 50 years experience. They produce an overview of all fund-based activity in annual and semi-annual reports. International investors make up a large portion of the fund, and detailing account activity for all customers in their native language is something that our client values highly. These reports are often very lengthy, running to hundreds of pages, and they need to be published quickly.
What challenge did we take on?
Our client requires these reports to be localised for the Korean and Taiwanese markets. The challenge is to translate and typeset these finance-heavy documents numbering over 65,000 words into Traditional Chinese for Taiwan and Korean with the utmost care, and then typeset approximately 700 pages. The work needs to be completed within 2 weeks in order to meet the deadline to print.
Quality is extremely important, as is consistency of wording and style within each report, and across all past and future reports.
The turnaround time allowed would normally mean that a team of multiple translators and editors would need to work on the translation in order to allow sufficient time for the typesetting stage. Using multiple translators and editors can result in inconsistencies.
What did we do?
Since financial reports often contain large sections of repetitive text our solution is to employ Translation Memories (TMs) to process the repetitive text semi-automatically.
Before we can begin work using TMs we first need to analyse the files for processing, this highlights the amount of repetitions in any given document. Here we can identify full repetitions, as well as full and partial matches to the TM from translation of previous reports. These segments of text can then be auto-processed to save time.
The matches and repetitions still need to be checked by the translator, but the time required to approve these segments is a fraction of what would be required should TMs not be employed in the translation process. Using TM software our typesetters can automatically export the text from the artwork files, then import the translations back in to replace the original English text.
What was the outcome?
TMs offer many benefits:
- Reduced cost, as we discount repetitions and matches by 70%
- Faster translation, allowing us to minimize the number of translators and use only one editor for each language
- More consistent translation – the TM ensures consistency of wording, and the smaller team size improves consistency of style
- Faster typesetting process – providing cost savings and further increasing the amount of time available for the translation.
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