Technical Translations

One of interlanguage’s largest areas of business is the translation of technical documentation: manuals, AutoCAD drawings, technical specifications, catalogues, instructions and specific software packages.

With the exponential growth in the volume of information, and the need to deliver technical documentation in all the languages of export market countries imposed by globalisation and EU directives, the rational, swift, efficient management of their multilingual documents is becoming an increasing headache for firms.

It is now quite usual for manuals to be issued in as many as 25 or even 30 languages. Obviously, if the documentation is not well structured even the tiniest amendment can take as long and cost as much as translating a 50-page manual into just English.

Writing
The rational management of a firm’s technical documentation starts from the writing process. A clearly written, well structured text, free from ambiguities and using strictly controlled, relatively limited vocabulary will definitely be easier to translate than one drawn up without reference to the rules of good technical writing.

A well-organised flow throughout the technical document production cycle and the coordination of the writing and translation stages are fundamental in ensuring that documents of this kind are produced efficiently and to a high standard.

interlanguage is a member of COM&TEC, the Italian Technical Communications Association (Associazione italiana per la Comunicazione Tecnica). Association membership enables us to keep constantly up-to-date with the latest tools and trends in technical communications and to make our contribution, as translators, to the exchange of information and ideas with the world of technical writing.

Content Management Systems (CMS)
If technical documentation is intended for translation, this must be borne in mind to allow the use of the computer-aided writing tools or, if possible, the CMS systems, best suited to the client’s needs. The many systems of this kind available are used to organise and store technical information to allow the maximum possible reuse of existing contents when documents are created, published or updated.

A CMS text is subdivided into quite short blocks and sent for translation without any layout prerequisites. The translator is free to concentrate solely on the translation, since the text will not regain its original formatting until it is re-imported into the system.

The only manual procedure required is checking on the final formatting once the document has been re-paginated prior to publication.

CMS tools are essential when managing huge volumes of documentation with a high percentage of content reuse. For a firm, introducing a CMS means industrialising the technical documentation creation process, once and for all. However, this does mean reducing the flexibility of the work flow: once a translation block has been entered in the system it undergoes no further changes or checks.

To ensure that the end result is not a mish-mash of small blocks with no consistency of style and terminology, translators must be provided with glossaries, style guides and computer-aided translation tools.

Computer-Aided Translation (CAT)
interlanguage has the latest Computer-Aided Translation (CAT) tools, enabling it to create and maintain individual electronic translation memories for all its clients.

CAT tools are essential for the management of projects involving the creation of multilingual technical documentation and the localisation of software and websites. Their use allows the uniformity of documentation to be ensured, with the recovery of identical or similar texts, generating savings in translation times and costs. What’s more, several translators can share the same translation memory when deadlines are particularly short.

interlanguage has impressive experience in the use of the most widespread CAT tools:

SDL Trados
STAR Transit
Kilgray MemoQ

We have also developed and adopted interfaces for any other CAT systems used by customers and translators, such as SDLX, Déjàvu, Wordfast and Across. We also apply Quality Assurance (QA) technologies to aid the professionals who perform proofreading on translations.

CAT tools are able to handle files in HTML, SGML, XML, XLIFF and other formats, thus assisting in all translation tasks relating to software and website localisation projects.

The use of these tools enables interlanguage to guarantee absolute consistency of terminology and contents throughout the client’s corporate documentation while facilitating the rapid turnover of large volumes, cutting costs and assuring delivery of a quality end product.

Our translation service is certified in compliance with European standard UNI EN 10538:2006.

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