How to reduce translation costs?

如何降低翻译成本?

2020-01-14 23:00 Star Transit NXT

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January can be a strange month. The new year brings a metaphorical clean slate. We feel that now is our chance to change anything we choose. Yet, at the same time, we spend a lot of our time musing on the previous year. Did we achieve everything we set out to do? Is there anything we should do differently going forward? With all this in mind, January seems to be a great time to look at your translation purchasing and look for ways to reduce translation costs. It might be easier than you think to save money on translation. Cheap is not necessarily cheapest Before you start scouring the internet for a new translation supplier in an effort to reduce translation costs, I’m here to tell you that it’s not necessary. Sure, some translators are cheaper than others, but this doesn’t give the whole picture. At the same time as looking at the invoice costs, consider the value provided by your translation supplier. In many cases, a professional translation agency offers additional services, such as proofreading and quality checks. Using a non-professional translator or a freelancer might be a way to reduce translation costs, but this could have a negative impact on the translation quality. Instead, this blog article will look at ways to reduce translation costs by optimising your text and your processes. Write less Professional translations are usually priced on a per-word basis. We touched on this in our Translation 101 and looked at it in more detail in an earlier blog post. If you are looking to reduce translation costs, reducing the number of words in your project is a simple place to start. Of course, I’m not suggesting that you omit important information in your quest to reduce translation costs. However, there are two things to look at here: Is your text repetitive or very wordy? You can reduce translation costs by removing repetitive warnings, ensuring that you use direct language wherever possible, and by using bullet point lists rather than long paragraphs of explanation. Is all of your content relevant to all markets? If you are localising your website for a new audience, you can easily reduce translation costs by being discerning about which content you choose to translate. You could choose to only translate information about certain product lines, or to be selective with case studies or blog articles. Reuse more A simple way to reduce translation costs is to increase translation memory reuse. Translation memory software stores “segments” of text so that they can be reused by translators in future projects. It looks for exact matches and partial matches from your content. Increasing the amount of pretranslated matches and reducing the amount of completely new content is a sure-fire way to reduce your translation costs. This will not be possible for every project. Information about a brand-new product is likely to be mainly new content, however, technical manuals, safety information and even marketing campaigns can include similar content. For example, every technical manual contains warnings and safety information. Any warnings or safety information that are common to multiple products can be directly copied. When it comes to translation, they will be pretranslated matches and will cost less. A simple way to reduce translation costs! To give another example, if a marketing campaign comprises web banners, print ads and point of sale collateral, the same slogan and taglines will appear on each item. Another facet of increasing leverage from translation memory in order to reduce translation costs is to restrict editing. It can be tempting to make a few tweaks to existing content to “freshen it up”. Or even to “improve” on a colleague’s work. Yet these small changes can quickly lead to considerable cost increases. Look after the pennies Changing one word in a ten-word sentence will cause the whole sentence to be considered as a partial match, rather than a complete match. Depending on the pricing structure, this could cause the cost for that one sentence to double or even triple. Although we are talking about “mere pennies” for each sentence, the costs quickly spiral if that one sentence is translated to multiple languages and similar edits appear throughout your document. Over a year, the additional (and potentially unnecessary) costs could reach hundreds of pounds. My last point in this section is to create “translation-friendly content”. My internal jargon alarm just sounded as I typed that, so I’ll explain further. You are looking to write content that is easy to translate and that is more likely to deliver translation memory matches in future projects: Shorter sentences Consistent grammatical structure Make sure there are no typos or grammar errors Use the same terminology throughout Fail to plan, plan to fail? It might not be immediately obvious how planning can help reduce translation costs. For me, there are three points to consider here. It is not always possible to avoid projects with short turnarounds. Life happens and sometimes, delays are inevitable. When you have a fixed publish deadline and limited time for translation, it is common practise for agencies to charge a rush fee for the project. Sometimes these are a flat fee, but more often, they are a percentage charge on top of the translation cost. Sending a quick heads-up to your translation agency partner to let them know about the project might help you to avoid these and thereby reduce your translation costs. Simply tell them how big the project is and when you need it for. They should be able to tell you how long they would need for translation so you can factor this into your schedule. If you already know that the turnarounds will be short, they may be able to suggest ways of working that will help you to meet these tight deadlines. Incur a minimum number of minimum fees Generally speaking, a minimum fee is incurred when the total number of chargeable words within a project is below a certain threshold. Your translator will always do a certain amount of project admin, regardless of whether the project contains 10 or 10,000 words. The minimum fee is used to cover their time for this admin work. If you send 10 words every day, then it’s possible that you will be charged a minimum fee every day. These can quickly add up, and for anyone looking to reduce translation costs, reducing minimum fees should be a priority. Planning ahead is key in this regard. If your recurring minimum fees are short social media posts, then collecting every post that you intend to publish within a month can be a simple way to avoid multiple minimum fees and reduce translation costs. Or, perhaps your recurring minimum fees are additional buttons or labels from a larger project. It is easy to overlook text, or to have additional requirements appear at last minute. At STAR UK, we’re happy to gather all of these labels into one minimum fee over a period of time. All you need to do is give us a little bit of prior warning. Use white space wisely My final point in this section is that you can reduce your translation costs by planning your document layouts carefully. What?! I hear you say. How does that work? I have touched on this in a few previous blog posts; text expands and contracts depending on the language combination. For example, a paragraph in German will take up more space than the same paragraph translated into English. By allowing space for your translations to expand into, you reduce the DTP requirement for your documents, thereby reducing your translation costs. Just one translation supplier Working with just one agency partner is a simple way to reduce your translation costs. Every translation agency builds up their own store of translation memory for their customers and they use it for each project that they receive from them. Although you might think that it is beneficial to you to use one agency for technical texts and another for marketing texts, there can be a surprising amount of overlap between the two. This feeds into my point about reusing as much as possible – agency A cannot reuse material that is stored by agency B; they don’t know it exists! Working with one agency can also reduce your translation costs over time. Long-term partnerships lead to better knowledge of your projects and your material. Your agency partner will be familiar with how you work and they might be able to suggest process improvements that you have not previously considered. Use technology to your advantage Again, I touched on this one already. Translation technology was designed with the aim of reducing translation costs by speeding up translation and aiding reuse of existing material. Using editable files allows this translation memory software to be used. You can easily build up stores of reference material for future projects that will help to reduce your translation costs in the future. It’s important when looking at your editable files to make sure that all of the text is editable. Picture labels might be embedded in images and therefore not recognised by the translation software. In these cases, there may be additional charges for DTP work, or minimum fees to deal with the missed text. Streamlined workflow My last point for this post actually relates to your own workflow as a customer, rather than ours as a supplier. Making workflow changes internally will obviously not reduce translation costs directly, yet you might be surprised at how much time you can free up with just a few small amends. So, is your internal workflow as streamlined as it could be? One key tip that I could offer at this point is to make sure that you are working in the final file type. Rather than copying your InDesign or web copy into an MS Word file for translation, try asking your agency partner to work directly in the INDD or XML files. You could save yourself many long hours of copy-pasting! The same applies for using your own multilingual staff to work on translation tasks. In many cases, they were not originally hired as a translator so they already have a full schedule of tasks to complete. If your employee is working on translation work, they are not working on their main tasks. The above points are only a few examples of cost-saving measures, but I hope they prove that your first step should not be to change supplier. In my experience, most customers can see immediate cost savings by implementing one or several of these tips.
一月可能是一个奇怪的月份.新的一年带来了一个隐喻的干净的板岩。我们认为现在是我们改变任何选择的机会。 然而,与此同时,我们花了大量时间思考前一年。我们有没有达到我们所要做的一切?有什么事情我们应该做不同的未来? 考虑到所有这些,一月似乎是一个伟大的时刻,看看您的翻译购买和寻找方法,以减少翻译成本。这可能比你认为节省翻译费用要容易。 价格低未必就是最便宜的 当你为了降低翻译成本而开始在互联网上寻找新的翻译供应商时,我想说这是不必要的。 的确,有些译者的报价比其他人低一些,但这并不能代表全部实情。 在查看发票成本的同时,考虑您的翻译供应商提供的价值。 在许多情况下,一个专业的翻译机构提供额外的服务,如校对和质量检查。 使用非专业翻译或自由撰稿人可能是一种降低翻译成本的方法,但这可能对翻译质量产生负面影响。 相反,本博客文章将探讨如何通过优化文本和过程来降低翻译成本。 写得少一些 专业翻译通常按每字定价。我们在翻译101中提到了这一点,并在早期的博客文章中更详细地讨论了这一点。 如果你想降低翻译成本,减少项目中的单词数量是一个简单的开始。 当然,我并不是建议你在寻求降低翻译成本的过程中忽略重要信息。然而,这里有两件事要看: 你的文本是重复的还是非常冗长的? 您可以通过删除重复警告、确保尽可能使用直接语言、使用要点列表而不是冗长的解释段落来降低翻译成本。 您的所有内容是否与所有市场相关? 如果您正在为新的受众本地化网站,您可以通过了解您选择翻译的内容来轻松降低翻译成本。 您可以选择只翻译某些产品线的信息,或选择案例研究或博客文章。 再使用更多 降低翻译成本的一个简单方法是增加翻译内存的重用。 翻译存储软件存储文本的“段”,以便在将来的项目中由翻译人员重用它们。它从内容中寻找准确的匹配和部分匹配。 增加翻译前匹配的数量,减少全新内容的数量,是降低翻译成本的可靠方法。 这对每个项目都是不可能的。关于新产品的信息可能主要是新的内容,但是,技术手册、安全信息,甚至营销活动都可以包含类似的内容。 例如,每个技术手册都包含警告和安全信息。可以直接复制多个产品常见的任何警告或安全信息。当谈到翻译时,他们将被预先翻译匹配,并将花费更少。降低翻译成本的简单方法! 举个例子,如果营销活动包括网页横幅、印刷广告和销售点宣传资料,那么每个项目上都会出现相同的口号和标语。 为了降低翻译成本,提高翻译内存的利用率的另一个方面是限制编辑。 对现有内容进行一些调整以“更新内容”可能很诱人。或者甚至对同事的工作进行“改进”。然而,这些小的变化会很快导致成本的大幅增加。 看着硬币 在一个十个字句中改变一个词将使整个句子被认为是部分匹配,而不是完全匹配。根据定价结构,这可能导致这一句话的成本增加一倍甚至三倍。 尽管我们讨论的是每一句话的“一分钱”,但如果一句话被翻译成多种语言并在整个文档中出现类似的编辑,成本就会迅速上升。 一年多后,额外的(可能是不必要的)成本可能会达到数百英镑。 我在这一部分的最后一点是创建“翻译友好的内容”。我的内部行话警报就在我输入时响起,所以我会进一步解释。 您希望编写易于翻译的内容,并且更有可能在未来的项目中提供翻译内存匹配: 较短的句子 一致的语法结构 确保没有拼写或语法错误 在整个过程中使用相同的术语 没有计划,计划失败? 规划如何有助于降低翻译成本,可能不会立即显现出来。对我来说,这里有三点要考虑。 总不可能避免项目短期周转。生活会发生,有时,延误是不可避免的。当你有一个固定的出版期限和有限的翻译时间,这是常见的做法,机构收取项目的急诊费。 有时这些费用是固定的,但更常见的是,它们是在翻译成本的基础上收取的百分比费用。 向您的翻译代理合作伙伴发送快速通知,让他们知道项目可能有助于您避免这些,从而降低您的翻译成本。简单地告诉他们项目有多大,何时需要它。 他们应该能够告诉你他们需要多长时间的翻译,所以你可以把这纳入你的时间表。如果你已经知道,周转将是短暂的,他们可能能够建议的工作方式,将帮助你满足这些紧张的最后期限。 收取最低金额的最低费用 一般来说,当项目中可收费字的总数低于某一阈值时,会产生最低费用。不管项目是否包含10个或10,000个单词,您的翻译总是会执行一定数量的项目管理。最低费用用来支付他们的时间为这个管理工作。 如果你每天发送10个单词,那么你有可能每天被收取最低费用。这些可以迅速增加,对于任何希望降低翻译成本的人来说,降低最低费用应该是一个优先事项。 在这方面,提前规划是关键。 如果您的经常性最低费用是简短的社交媒体帖子,那么收集每个你打算在一个月内发布的帖子可能是一个简单的方法,以避免多重最低费用和降低翻译成本。 或者,您的经常性最低费用可能是来自较大项目的附加按钮或标签。很容易忽略文本,或者在最后一刻出现额外的需求。在英国 STAR ,我们很高兴在一段时间内将所有这些标签收集成一个最低费用。你需要做的就是给我们一些预先警告。 明智地使用白色空间 本节的最后一点是,您可以通过仔细规划文档布局来降低翻译成本。 什么?!我听你说。这是如何起作用的? 我在之前的几篇博客文章中已经谈到了这一点;文本扩展和合同取决于语言组合。例如,德语中的一个段落将比翻译成英语的同一段落占用更多的空间。 通过为您的翻译提供扩展空间,您可以降低文档的 DTP 需求,从而降低翻译成本。 只有一个翻译供应商 只与一个代理合作伙伴合作是降低翻译成本的简单方法。 每个翻译机构都为他们的客户建立自己的翻译记忆库,并将其用于他们收到的每个项目。虽然您可能认为,使用一个代理机构的技术文本和另一个营销文本是有益的,但两者之间可能存在惊人的重叠。 这就引出了我关于尽可能重用的观点——代理 A 不能重用代理 B 存储的材料,他们不知道它是否存在! 与一个机构合作也可以减少你的翻译成本随着时间的推移。长期的合作伙伴关系可以使您更好地了解您的项目和材料。您的代理合作伙伴将熟悉您的工作方式,他们可能会建议您以前没有考虑的流程改进。 利用技术优势 再次,我已经谈到了这个问题。翻译技术的设计目的是通过加快翻译速度和帮助现有材料的重用来降低翻译成本。 使用可编辑文件允许使用此翻译内存软件。您可以轻松地为将来的项目建立参考资料的存储,这将有助于降低您未来的翻译成本。 在查看可编辑文件时,确保所有文本都是可编辑的,这一点很重要。图片标签可能嵌入图像,因此不被翻译软件识别。在这些情况下,可能会对 DTP 工作收取额外费用,或处理遗漏文本的最低费用。 流线型工作流程 我这篇文章的最后一点实际上与您作为客户而不是我们作为供应商的工作流程有关。在内部进行工作流更改显然不会直接降低翻译成本,但是您可能会惊讶于只需几个小修改就可以腾出多少时间。 那么,您的内部工作流程是否尽可能精简? 在这一点上,我可以提供的一个关键提示是确保您正在处理最终文件类型。不要将 InDesign 或 Web 副本复制到 MSWord 文件中进行翻译,请尝试要求您的代理合作伙伴直接在 IND 或 XML 文件中工作。 你可以节省很多长时间的复制粘贴! 同样的情况也适用于使用您自己的多语言员工来完成翻译任务。在许多情况下,他们最初并不是作为翻译雇用的,所以他们已经有了一个完整的任务时间表来完成。如果你的员工从事翻译工作,他们就不会从事他们的主要工作。 以上几点只是成本节约措施的几个例子,但我希望他们能证明你的第一步不应该改变供应商。根据我的经验,大多数客户都可以通过实施其中的一个或几个技巧立即节省成本。

以上中文文本为机器翻译,存在不同程度偏差和错误,请理解并参考英文原文阅读。

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