The Cutting Edge – January 2004

Export News

By Harold Zassenhaus, WMMA® Export Director, (zemg@erols.com)

The need for translation services has increased dramatically as business has become increasingly global and more dependent upon the internet to market products and services. In 2003, it was estimated that 2/3 of internet use was by non-English speaking persons. Members that want to stay in business need to quickly determine how they will effectively communicate with their non-English speaking customers and potential suppliers, that is to state brochure translations, interpreting foreign language emails and “globalizing and localizing” their websites. This column will deal with the first two issues. We reserve for latter the more complex issue of developing and maintaining multiple language websites.

Product Brochure Translations
Most importantly, you need to translate your sales literature if you want to communicate with non-English speaking customers in the US or overseas.

The biggest problem members will face is translating technical jargon --- not converting measurements but process terms, machining techniques and product names. If you have a professional colleague in the target market, he obviously is a prime source to translate your literature, edit the product or provide you with a glossary of terms. Other sources of support and information include foreign woodworking machinery manufacturing trade associations, technical colleges, trade publications and, last but not least, your colleagues in the WMMA®.

If you go the route of asking a foreign colleague to review your literature, be careful not to ask whether he likes the translation, but rather whether it was clear and accurate. The last thing you want to get involved in is editorial preferences.

Before sending out your literature for translation, you should edit it carefully. The following are tips gleaned from my experiences, those of members, literature, and the internet.

• Apply the KISS principle. Keep text as short and concise as possible. There are three benefits to editing unnecessary words: it makes user material simpler and easier to understand; it makes the material easier to translate; and it reduces costs. Most translation projects are quoted per word.
• Restrict your use of indefinite pronouns.
• Use the active voice
• Throughout a document, use the same term for an action or object. For example, if you say, "Push the button," do not use "Press the button" the next time. Be consistent.
• Include international phone and fax contact information. Remember, 1-800 numbers do not work outside the US (with possible exception of Mexico and Canada) and are not free outside North America.
• Use the international date format --- Most countries use day/month/year format.
• Use Military time rather than AM or PM.
• Use metrics (except for the UK) or dual measurements.
• In Europe and Latin America, the decimal point replaces the comma and the comma replaces the decimal point (2.3 becomes 2,3 and 4,000 becomes 4.000).
• Consider using A4 paper, the standard outside the US.
• Modify warranty information, service contracts, etc. to comply with your capabilities. Modify voltage, plugs, compressed air specifications, certifications, etc. to your product offered to target market customers.
• Avoid catchy phrases - they may not be understood or worse, misinterpreted.
• Avoid attempts to be humorous for the same reasons.
• Avoid metaphors or give your translator license to alter the phrase to a more culturally correct analogy.
• Avoid culturally specific references (e.g., references to baseball or football, holidays, schools systems).
• Computer Prompts. An English computer prompt may not hold meaning for a foreign user; a translation is useful even if it is stated parenthetically.
• If you are designing your English language literature at the same time you are developing translations, design your documentation for possible text expansion. For example, if you want a German translation of your English documentation, you will find that the text usually expands by around 25%. To ensure "copyfitting"- translated materials have the same number of pages as the English material - the source material would need to have more 'white space' on each page.

Finally, avoid using one English version for multiple languages. One target market may differ from the next. For example, the 1-800 telephone number listed for tech support isn't going to work in France, although it will in Mexico; or, warranty information in one target market may have legal requirements that must be changed for other countries. This situation results in two problems. First, you are giving more and more content development responsibility to the translator (the translation company will need to reorganize the document and be sure everything is in the right place). Secondly, the translator no longer has a reliable source document to compare with the final text. You now have multiple versions of your document in several languages. The only way to ensure accuracy in translation is to have rock-solid source documentation specific to your target market - English source material for North America, and English source material for Japan, each with its specific information concerning technical support and warranty. Otherwise, the only way to know for certain what is in the Japanese version of your document would be to have it translated back into English. In this situation, you've lost control of your own material!

Foreign Language Emails
Most of the translation needs that are driven by networked communication are not well suited to translation by humans for several reasons:

1. The volume of content is very large, and human translation, which is priced between $.10 and $.50 per word, would be extremely costly.
2. Emails, web pages and news feeds can lose their relevance rapidly over time, and can change frequently. The time it can take to obtain a human translation of Internet content often exceeds the useful life of the information. For customer support requests through email, a response must be generated quickly.
3. Human translators produce polished, publication-quality translations. Often, with Internet content, only a rough draft is necessary to enable the reader to get the gist of the document.

Translation software is still in its development stages. The better ones will be able to satisfactorily translate only 75-85% of the message. However, they will give you the gist of a message and enable you to respond in the inquirer’s local language. So, as tempting as it is to toss all foreign language emails or automatically respond in English even though you are confident the reader will not be able to read, don’t. Or, before doing so try out some alternatives besides asking the owner or waiter of the neighborhood ethnic restaurant to help you out.

The website, http://www.word2word.com/langchat.html, is extremely useful in providing information on most things involving translation and the translation industry, including lists of translation software providers and their websites. The following listed sites will even allow you to try out their software free:

http://www.sdlintl.com/SDL, (same as www.freetranslation.com)
http://babelfish.altavista.com/cgi-bin/translate? (Same as http://www.systransoft.com/) http://www.alis.com/en/solutions_gistintime.html

For last Month’s Export News article on Extending Credit to Your Overseas Buyer click here.

For more on the Exporting/International Business Development Committee, click here (members password required).