Technical translation vs ordinary translation

To the uninitiated, translation may seem straightforward. A simple process of taking something from one language, and changing the words to the equivalent in a second language. As long as you have a decent grasp of both languages, the process is fairly easy to follow. Simple, right?

Unfortunately, it’s not that simple. Translation is often a complex and very detail-orientated process. There are many issues you can face with translation, such as:

• The literal translations of words or passages having different meanings in your target language. For example, the Swedish word Tandkött is literally translated to English as ‘tooth meat’, but is essentially the Swedish word for ‘gums’.
• Equivalent words not existing. For example, the word Schadenfreude in German has no equivalent in English, with the closest translation being ‘Malicious joy’. However, a more nuanced translation would describe it as ‘taking joy in another’s misfortune’.
• Regional differences between those who speak the same language can cause massive shifts in meaning. In a famous example, during the Korean War English Brigadier Tom Brodie told an American superior officer that ‘Things are a bit sticky, sir’ while close to being overrun by Communist forces, only to have the American superior think everything was under control (more about this in my colleague Elvinas’ blog on terminology management).

And it gets even more complicated when you start to factor in technical content. While translation is a complicated process, translating and localizing technical content adds more potential pitfalls and should only be undertaken by a translation partner who not only knows your industry but also how and why your technical content was created in the first place. But first, a quick clarification…

What do we mean by technical translation?

Firstly, let’s establish what technical translation means. Technical translation refers to complex technical subject matter, such as technical manuals, scientific reports and engineering specifications, where the reader may be expected to have a higher
level of understanding of the subject matter, and perhaps industry-specific terminology is used.

With me so far? Good. Let’s start.

Clear meanings

To start, with technical translation, there is no room for interpretation (pardon the pun) – your meaning must be clear and easy to understand, just as your technical content is in its original language. In other types of translation, such as marketing copy, translators are sometimes encouraged to be creative with their work to help modify and improve the translated text. For example, when translating films or TV shows, translators often have the scope to make amends, in order to improve jokes or change meanings slightly to resonate more with their target audience. Disney’s in-house translation team, to name a famous one, are allowed to create their own ‘idiomatic adaptations’ of Disney scripts. However, with a technical translation, the opposite is true.

Technical translation instead relies on the continuity of messages across each language version. Translators who have worked on these types of projects will be familiar with ‘translation memories’ – a database that stores previously translated text about a given topic, along with their original language and translation. This helps ensure a continuity of message across the multilingual versions of technical documentation. But why is this so important?

With technical content, accuracy is key. For instance, when communicating about health and safety information, processes that involve expensive equipment, or potentially dangerous situations, there is no room for error. Any deviation from the originally intended meaning could cause confusion with your end user, which could result in damage to property, legal repercussions, and even a risk to people’s safety. Certain industries, such as aviation with its use of STE (Simplified Technical English), even have their own forms of language that have been adopted to cut out any possible ambiguity. You can read more about this in our article on Simplified Technical English.

Expertise needed

Translations of many forms of content, such as marketing copy, don’t require specialist knowledge. Some cultural knowledge of the target language and region would be advantageous to stop any faux pas (such as some of the examples in our previous blog on software localization), but as a rule of thumb, with some content, if your translator has a good grasp of both languages, you are good to go.

Technical content, however, often requires that your translator not only knows your target language, but also has a comprehensive understanding of what your documentation is about. On a basic level, translators need to know how the subject matter works. If your translator doesn’t understand your product or service, what it is used for and why it is used in the way it is, how are they going to effectively communicate this to your end users?

It’s not just understanding how things work either. There are many other considerations, such as industry-specific glossaries for certain industries (Such as medical devices and aviation), as well as different compliance and legal requirements that vary from region to region. Having a translation partner with this knowledge is an asset to your translation process, helping you avoid these pitfalls and spot potential problems. Having a translation partner without this knowledge can be a liability, as you are unable to spot potential issues with your translation process.

How it’s created

While many translations can be easily carried out with source files being in common formats, such as Word documents or PDF files, technical content is often created in different formats. Technical documentation can be created in all manner of specialized Desktop publishing tools, such as MadCap Flare or Adobe Illustrator, or be managed in bespoke CMS systems. When you factor in that some technical documentation is created and managed in modular chunks, with some requiring multiple input and output formats, you can see this can get very complicated very fast.

However, if your translation partner knows the tools and processes behind creating your technical content (or better yet, wrote your technical manuals in the first place, as we have done for Raymarine, Roche and Grifols), they can easily help translate this content, and return it to you in the format you need it in. Also, if your translation partner knows your tools and processes for creating technical content, or is writing your technical content in the first place, they can easily anticipate and remedy any potential formatting issues, such as text not fitting into illustrations or graphics, currency or number formatting, and string concatenated dynamic text errors.

Summing up

So, when it comes to translating complex, technical content, it is worth finding a translation partner that has experience in your industry, understands the importance of clear communication, and knows the tools and processes used to create your documentation. This helps you by ensuring you spot and deal with translation problems before they arise, have localized documentation that your end users can easily understand, and greatly reduce the amount of errors that can occur during a translation process.

If you are looking for an end-to-end technical documentation and translation partner, 3di can handle creating and localizing many types of technical content and documentation for different industries and in any language pairs you may need. Feel free to contact us to find out more.