How we managed to save half of the planned translation costs

The goal and needs of the customer

The company contacted us with the aim of translating its catalogue of hand-operated tools. More specifically, it involved translating individual tool categories and subcategories, product descriptions, and accompanying texts.

With our help, the client is now ready to implement a new method for reaching customers and can broaden its geographic coverage to include people of multiple nationalities.

6 translation teams in 6 language combinations worked on this assignment. We translated from English into Slovak, Czech, Hungarian, Romanian, Slovenian, and Polish.

7 steps to completing the challenge

1. We started off with an analysis of the documents and then extracted the first occurrences of repetitive expressions in the text. This made it easier for the translators to work with the text and also saved them time.
2. Each translation was then completed by a team of experienced translators with professional knowledge who we had previously been cooperating with on a long-term basis for similar, technically oriented translations.
3. During the content creation process, we received questions from the translators, which we carefully recorded and summarised in a shared document that everyone had access to.
4. The client gradually commented on any ambiguities so that the translators could continue to incorporate the client’s feedback into a coherent form.
5. The prepared texts were then sent off for proofreading, where we caught all the mistakes. After our proofreaders delivered the corrected texts, the files were stored into translation memories and the final files were generated in their original format.
6. After an internal, multi-stage check, the translations were sent to the client for approval and for any final comments.
7. In the end, we fine-tuned the little things and the client could enjoy an increase in visibility and awareness of the quality of their products in several different languages. At Translata, we made sure to store all changes in terminology into translation memories for the sake of consistency on future projects so that we can produce even better and faster results further down the line.

Benefits

• The client received a rather extensive and terminologically challenging translation under advantageous conditions.
• With the help of CAT tools, we managed to reduce the cost of the translation by more than one half and also reduced the time needed for its delivery, which ended up being just two months.
• The methods we chose combined with the translation team’s expertise means that future translations will require much less time and feedback from the client.

Problems – how did we resolve them?

• The client did not have a glossary or reference materials available, which made our work difficult.-
• Only incomplete, in-house translations were available, which partially helped us out, but we relied primarily on our team of experts.
• Since this was the first translation we did for this client, we did not have translation memories created that
• We helped ourselves to some CAT tools, which allowed us to reduce translation costs, thereby shortening our delivery time.