Opinion: new markets - don't get twisted in tongues 27/08/2009

Celine Courcy, founder, Claratrans

KNOWING WHAT odds, user experience, teasers or games appeal to foreign gamers is not the only challenge facing companies when it comes to opening up new markets. Being able to adapt their web architecture to new languages and regional quirks is equally as problematic.

Take translations. Depending on the infrastructure being used, the source text can be stored in multiple locations and formats such as HTML, properties, database, images, xml. Finding the resources to extract the various copies and, once translated (sometimes in more than 20 languages), restore the translated texts to their respective positions can be labour intensive, delay the launch of new products and hinder the overall success of projects.

Companies with international aspirations often find that outsourcing translation work to professional agencies removes these issues; the use of CAT tools (computer aided translation, not to be confused with machine translation) allows translation work to be undertaken within most source file formats and for operational costs to be drastically reduced.

CAT allows files in formats such as html or xml, once translated, to be deployed directly back into their new environment with little or no manipulation. Use of CAT tools is now widespread; as early as 2006, 82.5 % of 874 language professionals surveyed confirmed their use.

Content management systems can also mitigate some of these issues, and sometimes solve character encoding problems too, but they can’t guarantee that in-house “translators” have the right expertise, or that their writing skills are up to scratch. More often than not, in-house translators are recruited as customer service representatives just because they speak the language, despite having no real industry or translation experience.

Posted: 27/08/2009