First there’s 90% of in-country reviews are a waste of time, from the Medical Translation Blog where, after a somehow provocative title, the author explains the difference between theoretical, ideal situations and the hard facts of in-country reviews, which are often marred by the following problems:
- Lack of information sharing (e.g., no reference materials)
- Lack of understanding regarding brand
- Review schedules that are “black holes”
- Clarity of review changes is lacking (ever try reading a French doctor’s handwriting?)
- Mechanics fail (file exchanges don’t work, changes are entered inconsistently)
- Quality of review changes (linguistic, technical errors are introduced)
Then there’s Quality translation dictates a collaborative effort, from the Translation and Software Localization Blog, which can be considered as some sort of retort to the previous post. The author adopts concepts from control theory to explain how in-country review is in fact an essential step of the translation process.
I think that the two articles complement each other and really support the idea that quality control, when done properly, can make a huge difference for the final quality of any translated or localized product. In conclusion, two interesting reads.
Yesterday Alchemy announced PUBLISHER 2.0, its advanced translation memory solution. The product contains three modules:
- Analysis Expert: allows to re-use previously translated content by analyzing different types of translation memory formats (Catalyst TTK; Wordfast, SDL Trados, SDL TM Server, SDL Idiom TM, and TMX)
- Translate Expert: matches previously translated content to new content, in order to (guess what?) reduce the number of words being sent to translators
- Clean Up Expert: creates the localized version of the translated content and updates the translation memories
PUBLISHER 2.0 supports several source formats, among which FrameMaker, Word, XPress, InDesign, several Help authoring systems and Web and “tagged” formats (HTML, XML, PHP, JSP, etc.)
This is one of the major announcements from Alchemy since its acquisition by Translations.com last spring.
For the full announcement text and trial download:
Alchemy Publisher 2.0
