How to Translate Technical Documents

How to Translate Technical Documents or Datasheets

Technical documents are any manual or guide which provides guidance to end-users on installation, processes, and/or how to perform various tasks. Usually, such documents are intended to inform users how a product or machine works, what to expect, and how to use it. So, it is clearly important for organisations to have up-to-date, accurate manuals. Translate technical documents professionally to ensure accuracy and clarity.

It’s especially important to translate technical documents to a high standard when entering a new market — user guides play an essential role in shaping user experience and establishing your brand. Plus, an inaccurate technical manual could lead to your company being liable for damages if people experience problems caused by a mistranslation.

A poor quality translation could slip-up on issues such as a decimal point or a decimal comma, or the conversion of metric to imperial measurements. QuickSilver’s specialised translators will ensure that your technical information is absolutely accurate, in terms of language and of figures.

In this article, we will be highlighting some of the best practices you should follow when translating a technical document:

Before Translation

Copywriting

Always follow technical writing best practices. Write short, concise, one-idea sentences. Try to avoid the use of idiomatic expressions, and making cultural references, as these can be open to misinterpretation.

Images and graphics

The best way to handle graphics and images is to place them inline, within the text. This way, they will move with the text (ie. up or down if the paragraph above is longer/shorter). Make sure captions are editable, ie. not within the image file.

Design and Layout

If you’re translating from English to any of the Romance languages — Italian, Spanish, French, etc — the translation will tend to be longer than the original. So leave some space in your page layout to accommodate a longer word count. In fact, different languages take up different amounts of space — often very different amounts, as is the case with English and Chinese.

If you’ll be producing your technical document in two or more languages, it is cost-efficient to consider this from the start. If your design accommodates only one language, you will have to adapt, maybe even re-design it, when you translate. For example, imagine you have a two page spread in Spanish, but the English translation only takes up one page. Or, even worse, the other way round, and you need to insert an extra page to accommodate the Spanish text.

Consider whether your design/layout is relatively adaptable, or rigid and inflexible. Often graphic designers are unaware of the challenges involved in setting up and maintaining multilingual documentation. And don’t forget that designers generally charge by the hour! So retroactively adapting your technical document could generate significant expenses.

For these reasons, we believe that the language service provider (LSP) should be involved in the DTP process from the outset. We are able to offer considerable savings to our customers by managing the DTP, as well as the translation(s) of a document.

One of the techniques we use is to pay close attention to the early stages of design work. For instance, it is important that the text ‘flows’; that the format accepts text segments of varying length; and that you avoid the use of manual line breaks within paragraphs.

Benefits to you

• Reduced Time-to-market — as soon as the translations are ready, you can deploy your document. No more to-ing and fro-ing between designers, translators and project managers.
• Reduced Costs — you do not need to pay a graphic design team.
• Considerably reduced hassle! All you need to do is send us the document, and we’ll send it back… finished!

Find out more: Preparing Layouts for Translation (desktop publishing / DTP)

Use a Specialist — Find the Right Technical Translator

Technical documentation usually contains specific terminology relating to your product, machinery or technology. Your translator must be familiar with your field, and the appropriate terms, in order to translate them correctly. As a result of the precision needed, many technical translators usually study technical writing. They should also have several years of hands-on experience.

A high degree of accuracy and precision are essential for technical translations. A technical translator is expected to:

• Have native-level proficiency in the target language
• Have professional-level expertise in the source language
• Be able to deliver concise, error-free translations that retain the original meaning
• Have experience in the relevant field (ie. engineering, pharmaceutical, etc)

Translating Technical Content for the First Time

You may want to start by compiling a glossary. A glossary is a list of all the technical terms you often use, and their translations. Some glossaries feature many languages, some are just bilingual.

Ideally, a translation agency should create a glossary for every customer — at QuickSilver Translate, we do! After creating it, an internal reviewer (the client) should validate it. At this point, they can make any changes they like. Once the glossary has been approved, it is in use and on-going. It is important to keep the glossary up to date — for example, to include new products or services your company are offering.

Find out more: How to create a Glossary or Terminology Database

Post-Translation — Ask for Feedback from Users!

Remember, the whole point of translating any technical document is to walk users through how to use your product. So, you will want to find out from real customers how useful the manual actually is! With their feedback, you can improve the document when you update.

The hallmark of a quality technical translation is that there is no ambiguity, the text is short and concise, and there is consistency in terminologies used across the document. In addition, there should be consistent spelling, grammar and semantic structure; but above all, the translated technical manual should be super-helpful to users!

Updates

Our translation software ensures that when you need to update the document, it will be easy! We understand that producing a ‘new’ version of a technical document often doesn’t involve very much actual revision. We use (client-specific) translation memories and termbases. This means, we only translate text that has actually changed — rather than translating the whole thing from scratch. This, of course, saves you both time, and money.

Find out more: Technical translation

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Examples of documents that might need technical translation