GLOBALIZATION AND TRANSLATION

It should be no surprise that the rise in international trade and corresponding economic and technological growth have resulted in an increasing demand for more translations. Though English may be the world’s “lingua franca”, consumer preference and (in many cases) legal requirements have driven the demand for technical documentation published in multiple languages.

Firms that provide technical translation services are facing a wealth of opportunities in a world where local and national economies are becoming increasingly connected. The immense variety of new products and services brought to this growing and changing marketplace brings with it the demand for more technical

documentation. More specifically:

•  The growth of transnational corporations in the business, automotive, agricultural, engineering, pharmaceutical, and electronics sectors (to name a few) and related technology
• Higher mobility and the ability to do more business on site have led to the need for more interpretation services (“spoken word” translation).
• The continuous development of new and improved products and services.
• Frequent product updates result in high information turnover. Desktop publishing and other platforms have spurred the growth of the demand for new media.
• The never ending influx of new and updated software has resulted in more and more documentation.
• The European Union’s requirement that technical documentation be produced in member nation languages.
• The economic rise of the BRIC countries (Brazil, Russia, India, China)
• The growth of the Web brought on by the presence of more global players has given rise to the need for multiple translations of websites designed to reach bigger markets.

The Common Sense Advisory, an independent research firm, predicted an exponential average of 7.4% (and greater) growth in revenues from translations services for different countries from 2005 on.

Translation Services (Revenues in Millions of Dollars [USD])
Region	Percentage of Total Market	2005	2006	2007	2008	2009	2010
U.S.	42%	3,696	3,973	4,271	4,592	4,936	5,306
Europe	41%	3,608	3,879	4,169	4,482	4,818	5,180
Asia	12%	1,056	1,135	1,220	1,312	1,410	1,510
Source: Common Sense Advisory, Inc.

An estimated world total of US $31.438 billion was projected for 2011.

CAS-2011 Translation Revenues

Translations are designed to accommodate an audience through a specific process known as localization; where a work is reoriented for a cross-cultural/"local" audience. The effective localization of technical documentation is achieved through computer-assisted translation (a combination of machine and human translation). While a free service such as Google Translator can provide very rough translations, more sophisticated machine translation software will speed up the process while cutting costs greatly. It's important to remember that human translators are crucial elements in the editing and design process. Human translators (not machine translators) understand the complexities associated with designing user-friendly documents.

There are three fundamental steps involved in accommodating a product (software, in this case) to a global market...

 Internationalization, Localization, and Translation

With the continuing rise of the Web and global markets, technical translation firms are definitely realizing a new age of opportunity: http://www.inc.com/articles/2009/08/translation.html

MACHINE TRANSLATION

In an age of automation, there is the constant drive to take on latest technologies to take the labor, expense, and time consumption out of those things that tend to result in a lot of labor, expense and time consumption.


Traditionally-speaking, translations/technical translations can be expensive and time-consuming. The cost of hiring translators is high (and inevitable). The processes of cultural research and redesigning documents can be slow. But there are certain technologies in use and in development that are reducing costs and enhancing efficiency.


One technology in particular is helping to automate translations with increasingly higher degrees of accuracy. Machine translation (MT) software is vital for industries with rapid and voluminous data turnover requiring frequent information updates (e.g. stock market and weather data). MT can also be effective for producing large, cohesive bodies of text that involve relatively little editing. 

Since MT continues to improve with advances in related software and hardware, increasingly more accurate, automated translations of complex content become more realistic. Thus, the burden of translating highly sophisticated technical documents can be made lighter through the use of MT software.

While MT can be divided into several categories; two particular methods stand out: statistical MT and example-based MT. 

Statistical MT uses statistical computer models to generate translations through an analysis of two bodies of text (corpora) in a database. These corpora consist of two different languages: the source language (language of origin) and the target language (language of the translation). The statistical models help determine the probability of linguistic matches when words are compared. The resulting translations tend to be more exacting than those from rule-based methods such as example-based MT; but, the results are generally inconsistent and require more specialized corpora and more and more sophisticated hardware.

The advancement of MT (namely statistical MT) depends on the willingness to support more collaborative research...

The example-based (rule-based) technique focuses on sample sentences or phrases in one language that are to be compared with sentences or phrases in another. The sentences are usually common, straightforward, and already translated. Blocks of words are translated through automated comparisons to similar blocks of words. While rule-based translations tend to be less fluent and accurate than the statistical translations, they tend to be more consistent and less reliant on specific, hard-to-produce corpora and don't require the volume or specialization of hardware.




Here is a good summary of MT with a synopsis of the rule-based vs. statistical MT argument...
http://www.systransoft.com/systran/corporate-profile/translation-technology/what-is-machine-translation

COGNITIVE PSYCHOLOGY

What better way to know your audience that to know how they think, react, respond, and how they perceive the world around them?


As I mentioned in a previous post, usability engineering is a continuous process that requires more than observation and feedback – it requires a basic knowledge of what makes the user of technical media “tick.” Thus, cognitive psychology plays a major role in developing an understanding how users of technical documents perceive and respond to the content. The need for clear, easy-to-follow, non-distracting documentation is obvious.

Cognitive psychology involves an understanding of:

• Gestalt
• Sensation 
• Perception
• The different stages of memory
• The cognitive processes involved in reading (ranging from word and visual data recognition to the encoding and retrieval of information)

Here is an interesting (if long) overview of cognitive psychology as a lead-in to a series of videos concerning its implications for usability testing...

When designing a document to be accessible, learnable, and non-distracting, it is very important to make the content predictable with:

• Consistent phrasing
• Active language
• Consistent references to pronouns 
• Official terminology 
• Uniform sentence formats
• Attention to verb tenses 
• Use of short sentences

 It is all a matter of recognizing the subconscious strengths and minimizing the limits of the user.

Notes:

Jody Byrne, author of Technical Translation: Usability Strategies for Translating Technical Documentation, has specifically adapted cognitive psychology to the field of technical communication for the benefit of usability engineering. Cognetics combines such concepts as reinforcement, iconic linkage, and the different types of memory in interface design and usability: 
http://www.jodybyrne.com/785#more-785

                                  INTRODUCTION 

Hello! My name is Byron and welcome to the exciting world of technical translation! This website is dedicated to  the basics as well as the latest updates in the field. 

Be sure to follow my Facebook page which is currently under construction...
http://www.facebook.com/pages/Technical-Translation/385387421473512


You can follow me on Twitter: https://twitter.com/#!/bblomquit... for updates.

At face value, technical translation is the process by which technical documents are translated from one language into another. Less simply, technical translation is the process by which technical documents are translated and redesigned for an international audience. Since technical documents are intended to be concise, simple, and unambiguous; translation might seem to be an undemanding process. Actually, technical translation can be deceptively complex. In many cases, a careful analysis of the language and culture of a target audience for a document needs to be conducted in order to ensure that the work will be user-friendly.

Technical documents include scientific/technical texts (i.e. technical instructions, reports, and documentation, owner’s manuals, user guides, content for product labels, textbooks, etc.) of varying formats. The translation can be something as simple as streaming, by-the-minute weather data; or something as complicated as volume sets of technical manuals. Any subject that concerns some form of technical terminology (such as law and economics) might also be included. No matter what the genre is, there needs to be at least some consideration for the audience for the translation.

Know thy end users...

Knowing the end user is crucial when attempting to effectively “engineer” a “usable” technical document. The right words, symbols, colors, and overall design must be carefully thought out beforehand. Surprisingly, the Swedish furniture chain, IKEA, still manages to generate complaints about its assembly instructions though they involve very simple pictorial descriptions. What works for a domestic audience will not necessarily work for an international audience, and liability is always an real concern for poorly designed documents. Though it is not possible to create a universally accessible work, certain steps can be taken to maximize a work’s usability. Repetition of key terms, consistency, and simplicity are crucial for a document that is clear, easy to understand, and user-friendly.

Localizing a translation is important from a business and legal standpoint. Audiences respond more favorably to technical media that has been produced with their linguistic and cultural characteristics in mind...and in the European Union, it's the law.


An audience analysis is essential for good translations, and can be especially challenging if the audience is culturally unfamiliar to the translator.

The following series of posts will attempt to explain some of the fundamentals of technical translation.

This blog will be an exploration of the field of technical translation.