Technical Translation

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