Project Background:
TalkingChina undertook the work of translating the official website for Jingan District in 2016 and the work of proofreading its foreign versions in 2018.
The needs are quite demanding, so its final translation provider, who will be responsible for translating the Chinese content into English, Japanese and Frech, is decided by bidding to ensure the best quality.
Needs Analysis:
The language pairs of the website translation are Chinese-English, Chinese-Japanese, and Chinese-French. The translation project has limited time, heavy workload and a very high standard in translator selection, terminology management, process management, quality control, delivery time and project management.
1. Requirements for timeliness
Received content document which have less than 5,000 words will be finished translating in 24 hours; if they have more than 5,000 words, the timeframe will be 72 hours. For urgent translation, if the documents have less than 1,000 words and are received before 10, we will definitely complete translation before 17:00.
There are contents need to be translated almost every day, which are not large in amount but have a short time limit and tend to be scattered pieces. We need to follow the daily updates of the websites, check and access the updated information and submit translations on time.
2. Requirements for quality
1）Accuracy：Be true to the source; no omissions or errors; choose the accurate words and use the right expressions; conforms to common uses, idiomatic and fluent, and use standard terminologies;
2）Consistency：Standardize the maintenance of translation corpus for long-term management;
3. Other requirements
1）Propose suggestions for better foreign versions of www.jingan.gov.com;
2）Create specialized terminology base for the project;
3）When the first-hand corpus is not available, how can we make good use of CAT tools when work as an independent proofreading service provider for Jingan District official website? How to build up corpuses?
TalkingChina’s solutions:
1.“AE+PM” service team to manage all the workflows; strong and stable “translator team for Jingan District official website”
Before project
•Confirm “the production specifications of the project”;
•Select and build a fixed” translator team for Jingan District official website”;
•Summit a detailed schedule, if the project is a big one;
During project:
•Communicate with client readily to seek clarification for confusing expressions and terminologies in Chinese;
After Project:
•Seek feedbacks from client within 3 days after submitting translations;
•Manage terminology base and corpus database
2.Solutions to sudden occurrences:
Our foremost principle for urgent projects is timely response, full communications and coordination by all means! We can respond within 10-20 minutes, visit client if needed, and arrange a face-to-face meeting within 2 hours. 2.1) Translators are flexible:
1)The formation of the translator team is decided by client’s need, and we can enlarge the team by 50% during need peak;
2) If the contents to be translated are of great priority and the designated translator is already occupied, we will find back-up translators for an on-time delivery; 2.2) Adjustment of production workflow： For urgent projects, we sometimes adjust production workflows on the condition of quality guarantee:
a.When the document is non-editable or in special format and cannot fit into CAT tools, the extraction of texts is too time-consuming, and we choose the regular method of sending documents directly to translators;
b.When documents need a lot of DTP work, it is suggestible to submit the plain text and save the DTP work time;
c.For some contents of little corpus-value, we will choose the regular method of sending documents directly to translators;
d.When the documents are of lesser importance, it is suggestible to save the last proofreading step in the workflow;
e. Use the synchronous translation and proofreading features of online CAT tools to maximally synchronize translation and proofreading and improve efficiency.
3. Quality control methods
Create and maintain the specialized corpus for the official website of Jingan District
3.1) The importance of tools
Essential to consistent and good translation, CAT tools and corpuses are widely used in translation industry.
3.2) The format of corpuses
The corpuses are stored at TalkingChina in .tmx, the universal format for CAT tools.
3.3) The creation of corpuses is transparent and under inspection
After the completion of a project or at the end of a quarter, TalkingChina will regularly report to client about the updating and management of corpus;
3.4)cooperation with client
Before the project, we will sort the new terminologies and confirm their translations with client;
During the project, we will need client to clarify and confirm the important but confusing words;
After the project, we will need client to confirm the submitted translation, which is followed by corpus and terminology updating.
3.5) Build an error rate system
3.6) Subdivide error types
3.7) Draft exclusive customized style guideline
Solutions to independent third-party proofreading work
TalkingChina proofreads the translated documents by other providers as an independent third party. To guarantee the consistency of the terminologies, translation providers in general use CAT tools during translation process, which includes translating and proofreading. But the special part about the Jiangan District website translation project is we only get the original text and the translated text, but not the CAT files. We can create our own CAT files using technical tool and the texts, but it is time-consuming.
Facing this dilemma, our IT group nimbly adopts some tools which highlight the corresponding translations of the terminologies for our proofreaders and improved their efficiency.
Summary of the project:
From November 18, 2016 to November 17, 2017, TalkingChina won the bid and was the translation service (Target languages: English, Japanese, French) provider for the official website of Jingan District, Shanghai. During this period, we completed a translation volume of 800,000 words (including English, Japanese, French translations, with each language accounting for 260,000 words on average), with a daily news translation of 3,000 words (English/Japanese/French all included). In fulfilling the task, we had a professional service team to oversee the whole process and make quality assurance, which included account executives, project managers and QA managers, controlling the error rate under one-thousandth.
In the service year starting from November 18, 2018, TalkingChina won again the bid and became the preferred proofreading service (English/Japanese/French) provider.
