Writing for translation
Don't miss the opportunity!

Rich collaboration

My work and experience in the online space is exciting and fulfilling because of my close collaboration with two very talented and creative professionals, Renée Todres and Heather Schoenheimer.

Renée is the Managing Director of Tipping Point, a digital services company with extensive experience in e-marketing, website design and innovative web-based business solutions.

Heather is the CEO of HS Consulting, and a specialist consultant in HR, Learning Development, Organisation Capability and Leadership Curricula.

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Susan Harkus, Independent Consultant,
susanharkus@telstra.com
Tomoko Gondow, Business consultant & Lecturer in English, Seijo University, Japan
tomoko@tgstokyo.com

In 2000, we needed to reduce localization time

In 2000, we were developing a product for several European markets and we knew that we would only have a short time to prepare the product for each market. Would a combination of automatic translation and human translators help us reduce localization time by reducing translation time?

I knew that the English text had a major influence on the quality of the automatic translation, so I reviewed available research and developed a set of disciplined writing guidelines.

During a period of six months, everything that I wrote conformed to the guidelines. No one noticed any difference in what I wrote - no one, not the customers, not the engineers, not the marketing team.

By writing for translation and by maximizing the efficiency of translation software, we reduced the time required to produce a first foreign-language edition of the documentation by two-thirds.

In 2006, we need to increase the accessibility of Web content

This article re-examines automatic translations from a new perspective. It's no longer a question of localization but of instant access to Web content.

The World Wide Web has changed the mathematics of translation. The Web is an environment where millions of people are publishing millions of pages, and where millions of users are visiting millions of pages every hour.

For most Web content, human translation is impractical.

• No one has the human translation resources to translate even high-value pages into the languages of anonymous readers.
• Translation takes time. Even when human translators use computerized tools like Translation Memory, translation extends publication times to days rather than seconds.

Let your readers benefit from online translation technology

If we create web pages that can be translated efficiently, everyone wins. An imperfect but acceptable translation exposes our messages to non-native speakers because any reader at all can use their preferred translation engine to access our information.

What I learned in 2000, and what my colleague, Tomoko Gondow, and I confirmed in 2006 is that you write for translating by helping the software do its job. And the added benefit is that your English-speaking readers will find your documents easier to read.

The latest paper is based on collaborative research by Tomoko and myself. The paper can be found on the CIDM website and includes revised guidelines for writing for translation - Writing for translation: don't miss the opportunity!

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