Translating your business content or technical digital products comes with many challenges, and you have to constantly keep a check on your translation quality. Global enterprises and LSP mostly suffer from quality issues, even when they are already investing a lot of translations. There are chances that you are ignoring the reasons that are making your translations’ quality go down.
In this article, we are going to discuss the key reasons behind the poor translation quality. Knowing the potential reasons for translation quality issues can help you identify the actual problem. So, you can make timely improvements to your translation approaches to achieve better results.
Potential Reasons Behind Translation Quality Issues
Problems In Source Text
If you haven’t prepared your source text properly for translation, you will have issues with your translated content. Whether you are doing machine translation or hiring translators, make sure to proofread and edit your source text first. Any errors in your source text can lead to poorly translated content. Keep the sentences short and eliminate all complications from the source text and make it easy to understand for translators.
Traditional Translation Workflow
The second indicator of poor translators can be outdated translation operations and complicated operations. There is too much manual intervention in traditional translation processes that not only makes everything time-consuming but also increases the likelihood of errors and mistakes.
You may copy and paste incomplete text, or there can be redundant information because of manually uploading the text for translations. To avoid this issue, it is important to get your hands on a professional translation project management platform. It will automate your translation operations and reduce the chances of manual errors and redundancies.
Lack of Advanced Translation Tools
You can significantly enhance your overall translation project efficiency by incorporating advanced tools and techniques. Lack of the latest technology will only cause delays, and you might not be able to finish your translation project in time. In most cases, quality issues arise when your translators are occupied with a lot of work. They may keep cutting corners to get away with the everyday translation workload.
Using the tools like MT tools, translation memory, glossaries, QA tools, and performance analytics can help you effectively manage your translation project. You can use a professional localization platform that may have all the features to cover your translation needs. This way, you are likely to have more control over the quality and detect mistakes in time.
Non-Native Translators
It is important to find translators that are native and have fair experience in your target industry. Most companies go for non-native translators who don’t have any cultural exposure. It can be another reason why your translated content doesn’t seem engaging with target audiences. So, make sure to do your research before assembling a team to work on your translation project. Just because someone is bilingual doesn’t make him the right choice for your project translations. You must invest in valuable resources to create high-quality and accurate translations.
To find the translators, you can look up freelancing sites, or if you are using a TMS platform, they might have a dedicated freelancers’ community of translators.
Translators’ Poor Understanding of The Content
Just because your translations apparently seem fine doesn’t make them good to go internationally for global brand representation. If the context of your original brand message is wrong, the whole purpose of your brand translation is already lost. Not just that, it may spoil your brand image in a foreign marketplace.
You must provide your translators with all the resources, glossaries, and style guides, so they understand the context of your translations and don’t make any stupid mistakes. You can also provide your translators with samples of other translators as a reference to make them understand your preferred tone and style. This way, you can maintain your translation consistency, and there will be no issues related to quality.
Lack Of Cultural References
In the end, you must keep your translation resonating with the local culture of the target audience. If your translations are culturally offensive and are not fitting to the cultural values, your customers may have a hard time trusting your credibility. That’s why you must always hire native translators with a good understanding of the cultural values of a market. Native translators will create culture-appropriate translations, and they are also aware of what can be offensive in a culture that they must avoid at all costs.
Conclusion
The purpose of translating your brand’s content is to connect with your global audiences at a deeper level. If your translation already lacks quality and accuracy, it will never be able to help your brand stand strong in a foreign marketplace. So, you must avoid translation mistakes and avoid all the potential reasons that can make your translation quality suffer.
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