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Subject:Re: Translation questions summary... From:Ian Macdonald <imacd -at- PC -dot- JARING -dot- MY> Date:Mon, 18 Dec 1995 08:57:11 +0800
At 10:15 AM 13/12/95 -0800, Diane K. Ritchey wrote:
<snip>
>Does anyone have good suggestions for testing the quality of a
>translation if you are not a native speaker, and do not have access
>to someone in my company who is? (A friend of mine suggested that I
>have a short document translated into Spanish by one house, and then
>translated back into English by another house. While it might show me the
>differences in translation, I think it introduces too many variables.)
Diane,
I have worked on projects that involved translation into languages that I
had no hope of reading (Arabic, Chinese) or even checking layout etc. and
didn't have access to anyone in the organization who could either. The
solution was to use our existing user base and include the translated system
into the user testing cycle.
If your company has agents/distributors in the target country, they could be
used for testing the translation. If you have access to users in the target
country, they could be used as Beta testers of the translated version.
Another approach that I used once was to contract an independent translator
to test the system. This was much the same as hiring an editor to work with
a writer!
