Localization Project Management Log

I like writing about the glossary (or terminology list). It connects the soft art of translation to the hard art of business practice. I’ll use the answer I wrote for a paper called “Opening the Black Box, Part I.”

To ensure uniformity of translation throughout the product (and, as the international effort grows, throughout the company), it is a good practice to put in place a glossary, which contains approved translations of key words and phrases. A translation glossary gives the equivalent of the key terms in the target language.

Translation Glossary/Terminology List - Example

The Explanation column in the example is very important for preserving contextual information for the benefit of the translators. Note also that the glossary plays the important role of dictating what should not be translated.

Here are some key moments in the life of a glossary:

1. Client hands off early version of product to localization vendor for creation of glossary.
2. Localization vendor compiles list of key terms, with contextual comments.
3. Client conducts training session for translators and editors (optional, and too often overlooked)
4. Translator translates (or, in some cases, doesn’t translate) into target-language equivalents.
5. Vendor returns glossary draft to client.
6. Client sends glossary out for review by stakeholders most likely to complain about undesirable translations, in order to avoid these complaints once the product has been released. (This is extremely important, and should be performed by in-country partners and co-workers whose livelihood depends on the quality of the translation.)
7. Client returns glossary comments to vendor, who incorporates them.
8. Once approved, the glossary goes to translators, reviewers, editors and client for continued reference.

A typical glossary will contain a few dozen up to a few hundred terms. It’s a big piece of the translation-quality puzzle and it represents the good business sense of establishing terms up front to avoid unpleasant surprises at the end.

What’s more fun than having to rush your work? Rushing your work in multiple languages, of course!

This week, one client needed a couple of mid-length documents (totaling 5,000 words) translated from Spanish to English. Once they had read them and prepared answers, those answers (about 9,000 words) needed to be translated from English to Spanish. The turnaround was 5 workdays from first handoff to final approval, with plenty of text changes in the mix.

Are you familiar with the better-cheaper-faster triangle? Any kind of work puts you in the middle of that triangle, and the closer you get to any corner, the further you drift from the others. You can even figure out a way to get two of these qualities, but you can’t have all three at the same time. (No, really; you can’t.)

We spent a lot of time on that triangle this week, but we were the only ones who saw the “better” corner. The client was thinking only in terms of “cheaper” and “faster,” so we had the privilege of thinking “better” for them. I proofread the translations as they were handed off, and they were a long way from “better.”

Mind you, they weren’t awful – well, actually, one of them read like the English instruction manual to 1967 Datsun – but it was obvious that they hadn’t had a good scrub by a translation editor. Still, if you’re after cheaper-faster, or even just cheaper, there’s not much room for an editor.

The vendor’s project manager explained that they had had to break the job into pieces – certainly among translators and maybe even among sub-vendors – to meet the deadline, and that that might explain some terminology differences. It did indeed explain them, but I’m the one my client would have barbecued if we hadn’t introduced a bit more “better” to the mix.

Of course there were rush charges, and the clients understood why. That didn’t prevent them from sprinkling in text changes all along; it probably encouraged them, since they wanted to get their money’s worth.

So, what would you have done? Would you have delivered the translation with a caveat emptor concerning translation quality, given the time-squeeze? Have you ever done that? How did the client accept it? Which is your favorite: better, cheaper or faster?