Website translation isn’t always a finished job. Whilst it’s true you can get a translated website up and running instantly, it’s what happens afterwards where you might feel it’s right for your brand to take more time and resources to fine-tune your translations.
We’ve discussed the concept of combining machine, manual and professional translation before, and naturally, companies will decide what’s best for them. For those using this method of translation, team collaboration is key. But it’s not just limited to working with professional translators.
With companies more diverse than ever, the possibility of having a multilingual team is pretty likely. So, whether you’re collaborating with teammates or a trusted professional translator, we thought we’d shed light on a few of our top translation collaboration tips and how you can communicate better throughout the process.
#1 Determine team roles
Seems like an obvious one, but a website translation project can quickly get out of hand if you don’t give certain people certain roles. Whether you’re handling translations in-house or outsourcing, you need a project manager to handle things.
Having one project manager who can oversee the whole website translation project from start to finish ensures there’ll be consistency and someone accountable for delivering the project on time.
#2 Provide guidelines
Style guide
It’s more than likely you have a content style guide at your company to ensure that you and your teammates are following the same standards in terms of writing, formatting and style for brand consistency.
Whilst you’ve followed this meticulously don’t forget to also share this with your professional translator or wider team! This way they can understand how to edit your website translations to best convey the same energy and messaging displayed on the original version of your website.
Glossary
Keeping a glossary of terms that you never want to be translated on your website is important as it will save you time as you won’t need to manually edit certain words or short phrases.
One of the ways to gather this information is to create an excel where you can ask different teammates from different departments what absolutely shouldn’t be translated. Sometimes it’s more than just brand names that need to be left out of translation as product names, other sub-brands or even legal terms often need to remain in the original language.
Compiling an approved glossary is a great way to save time and is helpful for everyone involved with the website translation project.
#3 Set realistic time scales
If you’re using a professional translator you’ll need to be mindful from the start as to the start and end time of your project. This is usually pretty straightforward as the professional translator will schedule in your website translation project. And, in particular, if you’re using machine translation to kickstart the project, then post-editing should be pretty quick.
However, if you’re collaborating with your team to edit your website translations then you’ll need to be mindful that your teammates are also handling a full-time job alongside your translation project. Be realistic when considering the end date for having certain pages ready to go live.
#4 Ongoing communication
Ensuring there’s an ongoing dialogue between you, your team and your translators will make the flow of the project all the better. Continuous communication helps ensure that the project remains on target and if there are any issues, they’ve been cleared up before the projected end of the project.
Keeping everyone in an open dialogue also helps people feel more connected to the project and in turn allows people the opportunity to reach out for help when needed.
Real-time communication allows translators or teammates to ask questions without wasting time and gives you the chance to provide your feedback.
Start your website translation collaboration
Website translation doesn’t need to be hard. With the right team behind a project, collaboration can be simple. Let’s quickly recap our collaboration tips:
- Determine team roles
- Provide relevant guidelines
- Set realistic time scales
- Keep ongoing communication
Source: https://weglot.com/blog/4-tips-for-translation-collaboration/
