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Cost saving: translation memory on drafts

USING TRANSLATION MEMORY TO WORK ON DRAFTS:

A Translation Memory (TM) can greatly reduce the time-to-market of a translated document by enabling the translator to go to work on it before it has been officially finalised. Traditionally, a company would wait until the relevant manager had signed off on a document before passing it on to the translator.

Imagine we are talking about an Annual Report: after all the drafting and fact-checking had been done, the report would have been checked by the relevant manager, and only then passed on to be translated. Given the lengthy, pitfall-fraught process to be gone through before final clearance is given, the translator often ended up with an expensively tight deadline.

With a TM, however, all this changes: someone in the appropriate department can hand the document to the translator while it is still in draft stage. The translator can then work on it without having to wait for the final changes to be made and approval to be given; when the document is finally ready, all the translator has to do is input the final version into the TM and only the changes made will show up.

Clearly, this gives both the translator and client much greater flexibility, as it enables the translator to take the project at a less demanding pace – a time saving which the client also enjoys, in the form of reduced translation costs.

 

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