One Hour Translation Blog

As discussed in an early blog, translation quality assurance (QA) tools are useful in improving the overall productivity in large translation projects. There are many QA tools commercially available in the market mostly for a price while XBench is available for free. Though they have their own limitations, they can certainly assist translators in saving time particularly when the volumes are huge. We discuss 3 of the more popular QA tools in detail here below.

ApSIC’s XBench:

This is a free utility created by a Spanish localization company called ApSIC. This is a handy program that can check … Continue Reading

Even the best of translators are likely to commit errors in translation some time or the other particularly when the volume of translation is large. Translation being a subjective process even the evaluation was the same until recently. Hence the review or proofreading process used to be time consuming impeding the workflow process. But nowadays translation QA tools are available which can speed up evaluation and save time.

Some of the common error categories that these tools can identify in translation include omissions, inconsistencies, formatting problems, and terminology errors. Omission includes empty or … Continue Reading

With so many translators around, how do you choose a particular translator? What are the qualifications required of a translator? How do you go about assessing the performance of a translator before hiring? This article gives some pointers to these questions.

As is well known, translation is the technique of transferring a sentence or words from one language into another. It is an intricate job requiring many abilities though it is not easily apparent to an outsider. Hence great care must be taken before hiring translators. If not, the hirer runs the risk of inaccurate information being conveyed in the … Continue Reading

As any professional translation agency or freelance translation service would attest to, disambiguation and human translation are intrinsically connected. Without word sense disambiguation, searching for translation equivalence would be extremely difficult, cultural gaffes would occur more often, accommodation would muddle the original more instead of clarifying it for the sake of the target audience, and the underlying message of the source text would ultimately be lost in a bilingual pile of gobbledygook.

Then again, integrating disambiguation into the human translation process has its difficulties as well. For example, one problem with disambiguation is … Continue Reading

Those who do not want to be ‘lost in translation’ have various options. For one, they can choose between free online translation service, which is usually aided by software and machines and professional translation service, which is powered by human translators. Between the two, there is no question why professional translation is preferred. While the former is convenient, it cannot offer the same standard of quality that the latter can.

After deciding to go for human translation, there’s that choice between traditional translation agencies and online translation service. In this article, … Continue Reading

The Internet has opened so many doors to people wherever they may be in the world. It has served such a big purpose, especially to marketers like me, who are geared toward global business expansion. With more and more Internet users looking for a localized kind of service, it is no longer sufficient to provide a website that is speaking in universal language or English. Good thing, there are translators out to offer efficient translation service available 24/7.

Website translation is an important service that many marketers are looking into to help them reach out to their target audience easily. By … Continue Reading

Quality matters a lot. It can make or break a business goal. If you want to keep your business afloat and be in the thick of the competition, you should NEVER sacrifice quality for anything.

But some people do overlook the importance of quality, especially in translation. The common mistake is that they make the wrong impression. Different languages have different ways to tell many different things. It is safe to say that translation is not as easy as it may appear. Doing it word-for-word may just keep you off-track rather than on it.

For the most part, communication (misuse or lack … Continue Reading