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Re: How do you ensure the quality of translations?
Subject:Re: How do you ensure the quality of translations? From:Robert Lauriston <robert -at- lauriston -dot- com> To:techwr-l -at- lists -dot- techwr-l -dot- com Date:Fri, 24 Jul 2009 10:16:43 -0700
Gene said, "I prefer to have my translations done by translators in
the target language's country." In your case, that would mean in the
US.
Doing machine translation in another country and not having native
speakers even proof it is about the worst approach imaginable.
On Fri, Jul 24, 2009 at 10:12 AM, <poshedly -at- bellsouth -dot- net> wrote:
> Gene,
>
> To address your second paragraph statement about translations being done best in the country of origin, it ain't necessarily so -- at least not in my case.
>
> At the end of March, I started with a China-based company which makes heavy equipment. The engineering and sales office where I'm located is staffed by about 25 or 30 folks, pretty much split one-half U.S. citizens and the rest native Chinese who are very new to this country; they are all VERY great people and nice to work with; the company is sort of the Caterpillar company of China.
>
> I like what I do and had already worked for some years documenting the same equipment for another other manufacturer. The problem here, though, is this company's practice of producing English-language documentation in China for U.S. distribution; the docs are _horribly_ written because (I've been told) they simply run the Chinese text through a software program and take what they get (so to speak).
>
> The binding and physical appearance of the stuff is great and was done for surely pennies-on-the-dollar compared to what it would cost here. But with apparently no English-articulate personnel in China actually reading the stuff, my coworker and I spend hours and hours trying to decipher the actual intent of the text (it would be nice if it were only misspellings, but it's w-a-y worse than that). Plus, we here also write totally new docs for U.S.-targeted products.
>
> So to re-state, make sure someone over "there" is English-articulate enough to review the translated docs before getting them to you.
>
> Just my 2 cents (yep, they have those in China, too).
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