Translation 101
From My Wiki
Intro to Translation
$15 billion industry. Highly fragmented industry - translation companies function as brokers between freelance translators and companies. Every piece of software that Microsoft releases get localized into 42 different languages. All of those translations are done by Lionbridge. [1]
Translators' Workflow:
Freelance translators are paid by word. Most translators translate from their second language into their native language. Most translators focus on a single topic (eg. health care, computer guides, poetry.) Most translations are done in teams of three. (TEP)
TEP: Translator > Editor > Proofreader
Most freelance translators typically use Microsoft Word. From Word they are then sent to 'translation engineers' who insert the translated sentences into final products (HTML, video subtitles, print layouts, etc.)
Glossary of Translation Terms:
- Localize - technology related. (ie. you localize a piece of software)
- Translate - content related
- Internationalization - preparing something (ie. a platform) to be translated/localized into other languages.
- Interpreting - verbal translation.
- "Computer Aided Translator" (CAT) - includes translation memory, which offers suggestions for sentences that have already been translated in the past. Most used translation memory software is Trados
- "Machine Translation" - (MT) - Google Translate, etc.
- Source language - language you're translating from
- Target language - language you're translating too
- Source format - original format that the text is composed in (ie. HTML, Word, PDF)
- XLIFF is a standard specification to separate text from formatting. (For example, if you're translating an HTML document, you don't want the translator to translate the code into another language because it changes the formatting.
- PO - A file format that includes both the source language and the target language so that your website or document is available in both languages.
- MO - PO files that are compiled in a way that machines can read them.
- TMX - translation memory exchange (so that different translation memory datasets can interact)
- TBX - Term base exchange - allows you to share your glossaries
Tools to edit PO files:
