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Technical Translation Services Today

technical documents translation

Last updated on June 5th, 2023 at 03:53 pm

 

technical translation services

Dealing With the Complexity of Technical Content in a Multilingual World

We provide technical translation services in the areas of energy, manufacturing, telecommunications, information technology, patents, and more to companies located in Houston, Miami, Los Angeles, New York City, and around the world. Multilingual technical content is needed daily around the world where products are produced and used by users of different languages and cultures.

Technical content can vary from simple to complex and can have a mix of technical and marketing content, legal and technical content, and even highly technical, in-depth content in a particular field. The technical content can be presented on a website, in a pdf, in a contract, or the explanation of a patent, and even in a video or eLearning course. The ability to work in several formats and file types sharing the same terminology is of extreme importance.

Companies that venture into the world of bilingual or multilingual technical content need to work with a translation services company that can handle the complexity of technical translations, from the creation of a multidisciplinary team of translators to the engineers, designers, and trained project managers to handle the complexities of the mediums used. These projects have several layers of complexity from the linguistic aspect and terminology to the presentation of diagrams, specifications, and instructions within several file types. Careful coordination and attention to detail from an experienced team will be the key to a successful technical translation project.

Today we’ll cover what technical translation means, how it’s used, how you can use it, and what you should know first.

What is Technical Translation?

Technical translation is a highly specialized type of language translation applied to technical content on files and several elements of media. It is different from other types of translation services in that there is a third language at play—the language of the industry and technology involved. The original content is usually created by an expert of the subject, often technical writers, and the translation of this type of content is handled by expert technical translators, that have expert knowledge of the subject matter and of the languages involved.

The use of the appropriate terminology in the translation process is key in a technical translation project. The usage of an approved and validated terminology glossary is one of the first steps of every project. This bilingual glossary would be used as a base for the team and is a key step to creating a technical translation as if it were originally written in the target language. There should be enough time allocated in the workflow of the translation project to create and review the glossaries against the context of the files.
Read on to learn how we handle our clients’ technical translation needs.

Why is Technical Translation Important?

After all, it’s not like technical manuals are trending topics on social media, nor is it often mentioned on the news.  But take a moment to think about how our world might look if we were unable to translate technical documents and media. 

• Technical translation enables multilingual experts, companies, and employees to collaborate. From a quick review of an email to a multimillion-dollar research project, technical translation advances our understanding of technology.

• Technical translation enables billions of dollars worth of commerce every year. If our transactions were limited by language barriers, imagine how much more limited our world would be.

• Technical translation promotes safety. Technical translation services give a business the confidence of knowing that their employees who speak French Canadian are watching the exact same safety video as their employees who speak Spanish in Costa Rica.

• Technical translation ensures compliance with government regulations and insurance. Certain documents must be produced on request from authorities, and certain postings must be made visible in the workplace in languages all employees understand.

• Manuals, user guides, and training programs promote the usage of new technology and keep companies ahead of the curve.

Translation for Technical Documents

What kinds of technical materials do we translate?

  • Training materials of all kinds. This could mean an online eLearning course, a training video for the workplace, to technical manuals hundreds of pages long.
  • Patents, licenses, and certificates must stand up to multilingual scrutiny and possible international legal review. 
  • Glossaries and style guides. These will then be used for other projects and as valuable company documents for internal use. 
  • Product descriptions and specs. If you’re looking to sell some new IT equipment, you’ll need to translate the specs in your pitch accurately to land that million-dollar account.

Technical Translation in Action

Spanish technical translation lets a Spanish-speaking student in the Canary Islands go through an eLearning course to earn a certification that gets them a coveted job. A technical translation of a manual can guide a Chinese engineer through precise instructions on how to use a robotic arm.

Technical document translation enables NASA’s staff to exchange information with aeronautic stations around the world. Technical translation forms an integral part of how we learn together as a total world, not as isolated language groups. By presenting professionally translated technical material to go with presentations and pitches, we form quality connections that grow and evolve.

Industries That Use Technical Translation

Technical translation for medicine and healthcare. Consider all the equipment used in medicine—robotic surgical equipment, radiology machines, magnetic and electric brain stimulators, etc. Minds from all over the world come together to invent medical equipment, test drugs, and develop new therapies and protocols within the world of medicine that do not leave a margin for error.

Mining for oil, gas, metals, minerals, and more needs multilingual technical translations. Technical translation helps run our cars, cool our offices and storefronts, build our roads, outfit our homes, and season our food. Consider a multinational natural gas operation headquartered in Texas that employs crews in Peru, Colombia, and Chile. Among their technical translation needs will be Spanish technical translation for manuals used to run their computers and mining equipment, and those must be professionally localized for the specific dialect of Spanish spoken in the area where they will be used.

Technical translation for IT is more important than ever as our world globalizes, and the Internet becomes more widely available. Code must be written precisely to function, and most of the equipment we’ve talked about so far runs on computer programming of some sort. A less than perfect IT translation could lead to loss of life, equipment failure, massive financial losses as well as a damaged reputation.

Our Technical Translators, Our Company

We use only industry experts for our clients’ technical translation projects. We feel that this is only right due to the depth of knowledge and experience required to accurately translate industry terminology. We can handle any language pairing required, localize for any region and/or dialect, and use the appropriate degree of formality to suit. Our technical language experts use clear language that can be translated again with no loss of accuracy.

We pledge to understand your content and handle it with the same care as it was when it was created. Our translation company will partner with your organization and team to produce quality and appropriate content for the audience of the piece.

Your Technical Translation Project

We have some tips for how to get the most out of your technical translation project by helping your technical translation company help you. 

• Provide the files in the file type requested. Editable electronic files are preferable to PDFs or hard copies. Providing easily accessed, editable, and shared source material will save time and cost.

• Do you have previous translations, style guides, or glossaries? Provide supporting material as reference: previous translations, translation memories, and approved bilingual or multilingual glossaries. Also, provide a list of acronyms used and explanations of those. The style guide followed in English will be important. This will give us a clearer picture of the industry terminology and writing style used in your company and will help incorporate them into the multilingual production.

• Specify your timeline and/or deadline. This will help us set up the appropriate workflow for your project so that everyone can work together efficiently.

• What kind of file(s) do you need for the final product? This also affects our workflow and methods for translating your technical documents, video, audio, etc.

We build translation memories that will be only for your company and will help AI (Artificial Intelligence) learn in case machine translation is used for any of the projects. Machine translation is a good option for files already translated and stored in the translation memory that have minor updates.

We retain excellent records for our clients, their organizations, previous projects, language pairs, and files sent to us for translation.  We use state-of-the-art technology to handle the linguistic aspect plus the technical knowledge and software to manage the technical aspect of the projects. This is complemented by project management tools and personnel to have full visibility of the progress of the project.

Contact us today to talk about your technical translation needs.  We will assemble a team to analyze your project, create a quote, and work with your team from the beginning of the relationship until the completion of all the tasks of the project. We will look for the best approach and workflow to manage your technical project with quality and efficiency.

Sergio Ruffolo
Sergio Ruffolo
Sergio has more than 25 years of multinational experience providing consulting services and leading IT organizations in Africa, Asia and America, which has given him plenty interesting and insightful lessons to teach about global business. He is fluent in Spanish and English, in addition to conversational Portuguese. He has lived in more than 12 cities around the world, moving around and working in different cultures has left him with a real global perspective. Sergio is a real citizen of the world.