Transhorsa

Abstract:   Providing the clients with high-quality professional translation services is not an easy job. A qualified translator to provide their clients with professional translation services must meet the following three requirements: an expertise in source and target languages, some basic knowledge of the specific branch of science your translation concentrates upon, and a lot of discipline in carrying out your translation practice.

 Doing a little casual translation may be not difficult, but, if you want to engage in professional translation services, you need to have the following key qualifications: an expertise in source and target languages, some basic knowledge of the specific branch of science your translation centers on, and much discipline in translation practice.

First of all, if you want to gain competence in professional translation services, you need to have an expertise in at least two languages. A good command of the source language is the most basic requirement for professional translators to start their works. Take E-C translation as an example, before you translate a text into Chinese, you need to perfectly understand which the branch of science it belongs to, like what the  English text is talking about, the associative meaning, including the syntactic structures, all the nuances of the stylistic devices, the language tenor and mode, and the cultural context of such an English text, etc. Otherwise, it will be impossible for you to achieve faithfulness to the source language during the process of translation. In addition to a perfect understanding of the source language, you also must skillfully master the target language (here it refers to Chinese) so that when you are entrusted with a translation task, in order to make your translation totally understandable and acceptable to the counterpart experts in such field of science who can speak and read only the target language, you can know very well how the text shall be conveyed and organized and what kinds of words and phrases you shall choose to use in the target language. To make it short, high proficiency in at least two languages is a must foundation for good performance in professional translation services.

Apart from an expertise in the source and target languages, for those translators delivering professional translation services to the clients, a basic knowledge of the scientific field the text to be translated is categorized into is a must. Usually, a language can be grouped into different genres according to the content and purposes of the text. For instance, English can be classified into news English, English for science and technology, English used in drama, English used in daily life, ect. As for English for science and technology, they may involve the knowledge of different branches of scientific learning, such as physics, medicine, computer science, architecture, electronics, telecommunications, law, and so on. If you have to put theories or scientific procedures of a specific branch of science to paper, you need to resort to the specific language domain where the words and phrases are at, which may contain technological terms that you might have never seen before if you are unfamiliar with such a branch of learning. Therefore, professional translation services require that the translators be equipped with some knowledge of the scientific field to which the translated text belongs.

The last requirement for providing professional translation services is discipline. If you want to translate a book from one language to another, it means a lot of commitment, which demands effort necessary for fighting a war. Such a task will become a torture for those who are not prepared beforehand. If the book consists of 100,000 words, suppose you can translate 5000 words on average per day, you need to work continuously for twenty days. For those who don’t have much experience in professional translation services, they may work very hard during the first few days, engaging a lot of time and efforts, and then they have to rest for a day or two because they feel exhausted, but when the due time is round the corner, they might find that it would be impossible for them to fulfill the tasks. Even some green hand translators are   reluctant to do the job for the first few days, imagining that they can accomplish the work in an efficient manner by just using the rest of the days. In fact, magic will never occur. Experienced professional translators will always make an advance estimation of the average amount of the words that they can translate each day, calculate their time in taking care of their family routines under those circumstances, make a schedule of the translation task, and then try to carry out their plans day by day. In professional translation services, it’s not just the translator’s will to timely accomplish the assigned translation tasks, but is concerned with the fact that whether the translator can strictly observe the discipline and keep doing translation on a regular day to day basis.

To sum up, engaging in professional translation services is not as easy as it seems to be. But to be precise, to master the languages with maximum efforts, to accumulate some professional knowledge by learning some specific branches that your translation work mainly focuses upon and related to, and to develop a good, disciplinary habit in doing translation is very important and helpful to your work in the process of providing your clients with high-quality professional translation services.

Author Information

Marcia  

Translator of

Transhorsa Translation Co., LTD., Shanghai

http://www.transhorsa.org

Native Translator & Proofreading

Industry News high quality translation service, London translation company, professional translation service, professional translation team

Abstract: As the globalization deepens increasingly and the economy development advances with high speed, communications in different fields throughout the world plays a more and more important role.  Translation, in the process of communication, is the connection for those who do not understand each other or who cannot read in other languages.  Due to the demand on communication, translation companies spring up like mushrooms, which provide various levels of translation service.  Nevertheless, not every company provides good service for the customers. Only the translation companies which provide professional service can survive in the fierce competition. 

This study will show the current situation of translation industry in China, which does not run in a well-organized way.  Therefore, the author will analyze the reasons and sort out a standard of professional service guided by the some regulations. Then based on the discussed standard of professional service, some suggestions will be given so as to keep the industry in a good order, and to improve the translation quality in China.

The statistics shows that there were about 28,500 translation works published throughout China, with an average of 2192 annually from 1978 to 1990. Then the data from 1995 to 2003 is almost nine times of that from 1978 to 1990, which were 94400 and 10489 respectively. There is no doubt that China is a big translation country. However, it cannot be considered as a powerful translation country due to the current situation.

Firstly, the total translation level is not as high as that in other countries. Many translation companies emerge in powerful a large number and various levels of translation services.

Secondly, both of the quantity and quality of translators are badly needed to increase. In despite of that the number of professional translators has reached 60 thousand, there are about 500 thousand part-time translators in China, and the translation quality is still in a low level.

Thirdly, there is no mature regulation to guide and manage the translation industry.

It is obvious that translation service needs to be improved in order to make China a translation power. In fact competitive strength of a translation company depends on its translation service.  Translation service is a rewarding business behavior which offers customers with transforming service of more than two languages.  Because of the irregularity in translation industry, competitions are becoming fierce increasingly.  Only professional translation service can make a company in an invincible position and outstanding among so many competitors.

Above all, the core to achieve professional translation service lies in the standard.

To begin with, professional translation service requests the support of translation management. In other words, it is not performed by an individual, but by an excellent team, in which team members cooperate in a well-organized way. The team consists of project manager, translators, quality assurance department (QA department), editor, proofreader, linguistic expert and technical expert. The talent filtering is especially important so that the involved persons are entitled to their work. Take Soven Trans for example, the talent filtering process is rather tough. Only 3 out of 1000 persons would be employed. Besides, cooperation and coordination among team members is a key to obtain professional service. Every person should be responsible for his or her works.

Then a thorough and prompt communication with the clients makes the project in good progress. It is easy to clearly figure out the translation content, quality, style, purpose, composing requirement of target source, confidential term and so on at the beginning of contact. When the translators encounter difficulties and pose questions, the project manager should contact the clients to obtain the solutions as soon as possible. Then project manager should tell all translators concerning with the difficulties and solutions.

Finally, feedback collected from clients and quality tracing can expose the weakness and help to improve service quality next time. The team will make rapid progress in professional translation service continuously by discovering its weaknesses and correcting them without delay.

Based on the standard of professional translation service, some suggestions are given as follows:

1.            QA department is strongly recommended to take advantage of translation tools, such as Trados, which can monitor the activities of each translator. Besides, resources can be shared through the tool so that the translators tend to work efficiently. It is encouraged to create a system that is unique to others.

2.            Each client can assess the credit and service quality of a translation team. After the team hands in the finished translation to the clients, the latter might give the team an evaluation by rating on the website of the translation company. Pressure puts forward quality.

The related institutions should put emphasis on the regulation of translation industry to establish a healthy market.

There is a long way to keep the translation industry in order, but providing professional translation service is an inevitable trend in the near future. It is time to specify professional translation service right now.

Author Information:

Lucy Zhou

Project Manager of

Transhorsa Translation Co., LTD., Shanghai

http://www.transhorsa.org

Native translator & Proofreading

Industry News London translation company, professional translation service, professional translation team

Since China’s reform and opening up to the outside world, along with rapid growth of its national economy, diversified translation has also been in high demand. China’s translation industry thus has come a way from its infancy to today’s relative development, but it is still far from maturity. The Chinese translation companies as a whole have several characteristics as follows.

1 Small size of Chinese translation companies. The bulk of Chinese translation companies are of relatively small size and privately operated. It is very common for a local company to have staff less than twenty and business turnover under 1 million RMB. With such few employees under its management, it is often run in a family style. Translation companies in large cities like Beijing and Shanghai are definitely larger, while those in small-and-medium sized cities have lagged far behind.

2 Disparity in quality of service among different Chinese translation companies. There are thousands of registered translation companies in China, and even much more unregistered translation shops .Many of them declare that they can handle translation of different languages in a number of fields. But in fact they do not have strict quality control measures in place, and consequently cannot ensure 100% correctness of their translation. In addition, many Chinese translation companies do not have necessary native foreign language speakers to serve as target language supervisors. Without watchdogs, it is hard to guarantee translation quality. That is the reason why we see inaccurate translations on buses, product packages and road signs, etc.

 3 Lower and lower prices resulted from increasingly fierce competition. To compete for customers, who are mostly Chinese, many Chinese translation companies resort to price wars rather than winning by high quality. With narrowed profit margin, their translation quality degrades accordingly. This is a vicious cycle that interferes with a normal market order. Some Chinese translation companies suffer so badly from the adverse impact of this malpractice that they are on the verge of bankruptcy.  

4 Insufficient translation training organizations and shortage of specialized talents in scientific field translation. Chinese universities began to open translation courses in 2006, but their curriculum mostly focus on translation theory rather than a combination of theory with practical usages. Actually, translation skills should be perfected through large amount of practice. Newly graduated university students need training to gain more experience after they pick up translation as a profession. Usually it takes them two or three years of hands-on job to really grow into a qualified translator. As a consequence, Chinese translation companies should make it a priority to get their staff adequately trained by working out a long term training program and providing a workable incentive mechanism for them.  

Despite problems, Chinese translation companies have always adapted to the local environment and made adjustments accordingly. That is why many have survived from the fierce competition and come out stronger. For them to maintain sustainable development, Chinese translation companies should always value their company profile, which consists of high quality and service. It is important for them to win customers back once again, instead of making a once-for-all deal. They should better have a vision for their future development and stick to its strategy all along the way in an effort to achieve a greater and greater success. 

Author Information:

Jane Yu

Market Research of

Transhorsa translation Co.,LTD.,Shanghai

http://www.transhorsa.org

Native Translator & Proofreading

Industry News Chinese translation company, professional translation team, Shanghai translation company

Every translation blog on our shrinking planet, our treasured home, our precious blue waterworld, possesses a living soul unique to itself and to its readers.

The uniqueness of each translation blog informs a substantial part of what we call “individual character” and, together with the obvious arrangement differences, plainly differentiates one language from another one.

Critical choices are available to everyone as the new century begins to unfold. Upon the wisdom of big power hangs the fate of all life on this planet. Mutual understanding is crucial and language, not only several major languages, but all languages, holds the key, .And translation blog offers an alternative choice for international communication.

Common interests, enticements and rewards of trade, technology and cultural exchange have brought the great societies into a smaller world now named Global Village. Inevitable that as the trade barriers began to fall, the language barriers would follow. Therefore, translation blog will be a pioneer bridge between languages.

Translation bloggers are destined to be major players in the affairs of Planet Earth during the twenty-first century. They form a symbiont circle: what happens to the one will bear directly on what happens to others, and, by extension, to the entire globe.

It is an optimistic beginning. Translators and interpreters have seized the initiative with determination and good will, beginning with the hot passion for language usage. With the Internet technology, translation bloggers are building a great bridge to link all languages whose role is more crucial than the Tower of Babel. As a Chinese, I am glad to see more “Confucius Institutes” are set up around the world, and Chinese language learning is booming followed by the English language fashion.

We are all the beneficiaries of the international program to teach every child and most adults foreign language. The approachable virtual technology can fulfil every desire for language learning and cultural communication. And more and more bilingual links are from translation blogs, which exemplifies the values, thinking patterns, imagination and cultural awareness of a nation. They provide visitors a window into a unique intangible cultural heritage as a result of its long history.

Many translators or interpreters are indulging in demonstrating their language abilities on their translation blogs, which boosts the language developments and international communications. In doing so, they have put forward a challenge and clarion call for us in China to join in.

At the dawning of a new century and a new millennium, our world is at a turning point. A golden dream of deliverance, a dream of global unity, prosperity and responsibility, looms before a planet wearied of terror, wars, and environmental devastation. It is a remarkable moment fraught with opportunity, but the hour is late, very late. The dream must be realized, otherwise we will be lost. Therefore, we translation bloggers in China should find ourselves in a unique position, feel privileged and honoured to be “in the right place at the right time”. We humbly accept the challenge to contribute, in whatever way, to the realization of this dream. 

Author Information:

Albert Lau 

Marketing Manager of  Transhorsa Translation Co.,LTD.,Shanghai

http://www.transhorsa.org

Native translator & proofreading

Global Business Strategy multilingual DTP services, multilingual manual translation, multilingual translation, professional translation team, translation blog, translation outsourcing

 Once translation is considered as a kind of business, the force of commercialization will show its prowess in many ways. Translation quality has now become a hot topic. In this paper we will first cast a sight on real problems that determine the translation quality in today’s translation industry. The ISO9000 and 14000 quality standards are recommended and regulation of the translation industry needs to be launched forcefully. Finally, some personal viewpoints are suggested to formulate guidelines for translation services.

English has always been the international language as an information vehicle despite the world language had been formulated for decades. Now the translation market is broadening its horizon at an amazing speed, bringing about more opportunities as well as generating more challenges like any other booming industry. At present, the gross global translation production has reached over $13 billion dollars annually. The translation industry therefore can be called one of the hottest industries in the world.

It is ideal for any customer that the price and the quality could go with a cost- effective principle and the translation process could be an automatic plug-in one in a shortest waiting time. But the human translation working is under such a high pressure that it becomes so dear resulting in high quality. Early in the 1990’s, Lixianlin, a linguistic master deemed the translation crises are caused by many reasons; one of the most important was the increasingly declined translation quality. It is undoubted that the translation quality is a problem that we can not obviate any more.

When a translation work piece appears below the normal standard, the first idea strikes our mind is the translator is lack of required certificate or the ability of understanding a foreign language instead of pondering over something deeper.

In the second, the inadequate sense of social responsibility makes the poor translation quality. The translator should place the customers’ benefit above anything else. For example the overseas market effects of the products to be introduced in a language which is popular in the target area are largely determined by the translation quality. This is what translators or translation houses should make clear. Furthermore, a few translation companies run their business under such a situation in which the project manager himself is a layman in translation supervision!

The translation industry guideline has not been imposed to be executed by all translation service body and some illegal behaviors such as deceiving and big quote difference are making wormy sores in this industry structure, which makes the industry standardization rushing. Some ratfinks assign the projects they get and have no mind to pay for their contemporarily employed translators’ work. Some translation companies quote the lowest one can’t imagine in order to grab large amount of deals. After getting

They either employ unqualified translators or dissect the whole manuscript into small paragraphs of hundreds of word and get the free translation from hundreds of different translators in the guise for a trial. At last the customer becomes the biggest victim.

Translation Trend legal document translation, multilingual DTP services, multilingual manual translation, multilingual translation, professional translation team, translation outsourcing

Like many industries, translation industry has its own bio-system, which usually consists of translation service buyers, translation service providers, translation assistance tools, translation trade associations and translation skill-training organizations. Technical translation is becoming an ever-important part of our hi-tech business world, taking up larger share of the translation market and developing at ever-increasing speed. Let us shed some light on the first two components: the translation service buyers and translation service providers:

1. Translation Service Buyers

According to information from LISA Asia Globalization Resources Survey (2002-2003), most companies employ their own technical experts such as engineers with only mid-level target language ability to translate their product documents and also act as their only overseas market liaison communicators. Such companies could be described as technically oriented and production-cost oriented. They impose a higher responsibility on their experts to provide secondary services (language translations and communication channels) at the detriment of their actual technical duties not to mention the increased time demand on them. And only one third of these companies will entrust a third party translation institution with the target language edition and translation. However, if both an affordable quotation and professional, precise & accurate multi-language translation services are available, 50% of the companies are most likely to buy a full packaged translation service.

As to the spending on translations, the majority of companies will allocate from 2 to 5% of their gross income on project/product localization and from this, only 80% of the fund is paid for direct translations and linguistic maintenance with the rest 20% spent on electronic business services, network promotions, etc.

In terms of international languages market segment, English and Chinese are the two topmost target languages with market shares of 53% and 14% respectively, followed by Japanese of 11%, Korean of 7%, German 4% and French 3%.

2. Translation Service Providers

Currently translation language service providers can be classified into three main types: domestic translation companies, international localization institutions along with their affiliates located in the developed regions of the world and freelancers registered in a whole mass of translation platforms. The first conspicuous feature for the domestic translation companies is that a legion, supported by putting some words into the other ones, is being formed. The second feature is that most of their permanent staff although bilingual, are limited in technical knowledge and most will in turn contact and engage freelancers when a service order comes in. Their main customers are native companies who pay a moderately high bill for such hand-over service. Their target language business includes English, Chinese, Japanese, German, French, Korean and Russian and their service catalogue covers the fields of trade, legal, electronic, telecommunications, computers, machinery, the chemical industry, oil, auto industry, medicine, food, textiles and sports. As a result of strong competition and wide industries coverage, such companies are exposed to one another and the quotations they put in have a tendency to outbid one another and the corresponding service levels they provide also drop.

The total number of elite (field specific) experts who are engaged in project/product localization is not more than 1,500 persons and they are usually hired by some of the reputable language service companies such as MLV and RLV. The translators working in these companies must possess strong welding ability from source to the target language and have high level of technical knowledge with preferred career experiences in related fields. Such localization companies also rarely use freelancers. Freelancers enjoy their full scale of freedom from the price they charge to the way they work. Bypassing the language agencies, having no referrals, they are free from paying the commission but they cannot guarantee their work outputs would be professional and accurate. They seem more welcomed by those smaller firms who have limited budget allocation and one of type of work. However, it must be said that the freelancer group is flooding the market overwhelmingly at an incredible speed with little guarantee of quality and timeliness.

Industry News language translation service, multilingual DTP services, multilingual manual translation, multilingual translation, professional translation team, translation outsourcing