Communication is Hallmark of Successful Document Translation

In the document translation business, the source document’s quality is directly related to the time it takes to translate it. Its quality is also dependent to the translation cost and the speed and expense of translating similar documents in the future. The level of communication between the author and the translator and its clarity is a key factor for successful source document translation.

A translator visualize  source documents as a raw document containing thousands of words and phrases that needs to be identified, contextualized, and replaced with words and phrases which would make sense in another language. They do not see it as a completed story or presentation, a fluent document that flows seamlessly from start to end. They visualize idioms and colloquialisms as a handicap to effective translation. The creative use of terminology is synonymous with hours of extra work if one strives to obtain requisite target language consistency.

Many examples in the source language are likely going to be lost on target language audience. The abbreviations and the buzz words may needs alteration, explanation or likely to be removed and replaced with relevant phrases. The graphs and tables with graphics embedded in them may require alteration due to the compression or expansion of the target language text.

In other words, when a translator analyses the source documents, they break them lexically, culturally, graphically, and contextually. They split down to terminology, symbols, and signs, where by ensuring there is unity throughout the document.

The translator is the key to ensuring one’s text conveys what is supposed to in the target language. After all, it is one’s data, one’s text, one’s content, and nobody knows it better than oneself. In order to ensure one’s translator knows what one’s document is supposed to mean, one needs to have excellent bi-directional communication.

Most of the times, when documents are submitted for translation, the author expects a translation in a jiffy and does not do any further communication until the document is ready for delivery. This approach may work out for a flyer but if documents have critical information, one does not want to entrust them to somebody that may not fully comprehend the underlying message.

One must ensure that translator has native-level fluency in the source and target languages in addition to the domain specific knowledge in the content area. This will ensure that when one talks with the translator they will have the mandatory knowledge to understand what one is talking about.

Visualise the scenario of explaining the relationships between various chemical compounds of a pharmaceutics to a person who has no knowledge of the field. The chances are that the signs, formulae and symbols and to some extent the specialized language associated the pharmaceutics is totally lost.