The need for translation and localization services is constantly growing, but with that naturally comes an increase in anxiety for the budget holder. Of course translation providers want to make their services as accessible as possible and are willing to work with you to find a cost that works for both sides. But how can this be achieved while making sure you're getting the best value for money? Well we're here to let you know that translation efficiency with a focus on working smart is key to reducing translation costs for every project.
Here are five ways you can focus on your goals of localization clarity and optimization while managing your budget effectively, ensuring your return-on-investment (ROI) stays optimal throughout the project.
1. Select your languages wisely
It pays dividends to ensure that the languages you choose to translate your content into are languages which are relevant to your target audiences. It is a great notion to be inclusive, and to make an effort to ensure that no one misses out or is left behind as a result of non-translation, however, it is quite another to try and spread your efforts too thin across such a wide global arena.
Ensuring that you are targeting the audience where your sales have the most opportunity to grow is a necessity, as this will maximize your ROI at the outset and, in the competitive global marketplace, this is the only way to be able to continually produce quality products.
In addition, make optimal use of analytics, such as web traffic and in-country sales and presence trackers, and take into consideration your most likely conversion rates. Analyzing this information will highlight where your budget will best be spent.
2. Harmonize your terminology
By maintaining clear and consistent terminology across content types, and across platforms, you will ensure quicker translation turnover with fewer queries and revisions. Developing and maintaining your ‘termbase’ and Translation Memory will give linguistic stakeholders, such as your authors and translator, a resource to support their work. This will drive a level of consistency and understanding going forward, which will continually grow and improve, enabling a much quicker turnover of work.
3. Optimize your content
Ensure the content you get translated is at its most optimal, with no errors and especially no jargon. This will help it move through the translation process much more smoothly. If the piece of content has to bounce back and forth between your business and the language service provider (LSP) numerous times with questions upon questions, well, it will take up a considerable amount of time and accrue far too many unnecessary costs.
Get it right the first time, but don’t try to get content completed in a rushed way. Content needs to be proofread, edited and sent with the maximum amount of time available before publishing. Without this efficient forward planning, multiple revisions and emergency timings can make costs soar astronomically.
Simply speaking, making sure that the content being translated is good quality and this will enable you to recoup some of the initial costs of its translation. A Content Management System (CMS) with topic-based authoring will support you in doing this, and in managing the longevity of the site.
4. Utilize the latest technologies
Using technology wherever possible and automating your translation is a great way to manage your costs. Computer-Assisted Translation (CAT) is an amazing leap forward for machine learning and businesses that need translation services. It can come with a potential decrease in quality for more complex pieces of content, however, if you are savvy about what you feed through this system, you can minimize costs by utilizing human translators and technology to your advantage while maximizing both accuracy and efficiency.
5. Stick with your language service provider
Once you have found an LSP which offers the services you need and at the costs you require, stick to them, and make sure that you work with the same consultant each time. In effect, you are training each other in the ways your respective businesses work, and, as the relationship progresses, the amount of time it takes to get projects completed should decrease dramatically.
Understanding one another's expectations and capabilities, thereby having to deal with fewer queries and revisions, are part and parcel of the ‘time = money’ equation. You are also more likely to be able to get a complimentary source language review or bulk discount if you are a regular customer. Relationship-based working pays dividends in many ways.
Conclusion
Providing a great service to customers is at the heart of all business, and to provide this we all need to ‘work smart’ to fulfill needs and manage our positions in global and localized markets. We encourage you all to try these five methods of reducing translation costs and maximizing translation efficiency. These tried and tested techniques should go far in helping you make significant savings, which you can then spend on even more fantastic content.
Andovar at your service
We provide the latest in localization services to clients across various industries, including web development, eCommerce, video game development, MarCom, television, eLearning and others. Andovar's localization experts provide customized solutions for complex localization projects to enable smooth and successful global expansion and success. Translation automation technologies, in their various forms and functions, are fundamental in the work we do in localizing content at scale into more than 80 languages for our clients.
Our international team of more than 3,000 world-class translators and over 100 localization engineers and project managers worldwide are available at our headquarters in Singapore and our international offices in India, Thailand, Hungary, China, the United States and Columbia, as well as at our new engineering and training facility in Mumbai, India.
Please feel free to contact Andovar anytime to discuss your company's unique localization needs. We look forward to hearing about your vision for your project and sharing our input for successful localization, helping you expand your international market base.
