Velior's Corporate Blog about Translation and Translation Industry

I am a great believer in free and open-source software as it lends itself to empowering people with the technology they need to be more efficient. The ability to use a free alternative instead of a commercial product can be of great value to any person or company, especially a small business like ours, which has to run a very lean operation in order to maintain competitive edge. When a major production tool in an industry is available for free, it is arguably a blessing to many people engaged in this industry. One of such tools in the translation industry is OmegaT.

Sometimes Intuition May Be Misleading

I first got my hands on OmegaT in 2009 and I must confess I wasn’t too impressed. I fell victim of what I now know was a snap judgment—the simplistic GUI and the philosophy that didn’t align with my previous experience with other translation environment tools (TEnTs) required a degree of flexibility I couldn’t come up with at that time.

A year later, I revisited OmegaT to actually rediscover it in a way that now makes me feel bad about the previous snap judgment. In this post, I want to share a few general thoughts based on my recent experience. What I mention here is just a tip of the iceberg, and I hope to be blogging more about this tool in the future as Velior continues using it in our translation projects.

How You Can Benefit from OmegaT

1. Packing all essential TEnT features, including project management, translation memories, and glossaries, into a single tool, OmegaT is a full-fledged translation environment software that provides a viable alternative to similar commercial products.
2. For a freelance translator who is just embarking on a journey to a career in this industry and doesn’t have the knowledge and/or money necessary to buy a commercial TEnT, OmegaT gives a strong helping hand. For instance, it might be a good starting point for those English to Russian translators who are building their translation business from the ground up or seeking cost-efficient ways to improve productivity and quality.
3. For an in-house translator, OmegaT gives the freedom of choice, making it possible to continue working on a project at home or using a laptop on the go just as easy as in the office.
4. Although SDL essentially discontinued development and support of the TTX format, it remains among the most common in the industry. This means that you need the commercial SDL Trados package to accept TTX-based projects and may be a potential roadblock limiting your availability to translation agencies. OmegaT, however, eliminates this barrier by allowing you to handle the TTX format, and many others for that matter.
5. Personally, I also enjoy the feeling of the community-based development process that is open to requests concerning bugs and new features. You can watch the software maturing and may even feel a sense of ownership in case you are somehow involved in the process.

What Limitations Need to Be Considered

Just as many other open-source initiatives, OmegaT carries a certain amount of limitations. Similarly, OpenOffice.org is arguably less sophisticated than Microsoft Office, and Ubuntu is less mature than Windows. Probably inherent to free software, such limitations are often minor in the sense that you can live with them if you make up your mind to do so. What matters most is your mindset—if your chief aim is to save wherever possible or you support free software philosophy in general, you are likely to be okay with the limitations, finding and using a temporary walkaround until they are fixed by the developers.

I am not exactly advocating for using OmegaT, because it is just one of the options available on the market, and it has its limitations. My point is that OmegaT is a valuable alternative to commercial products that can be considered by many translators, and I am happy with the freedom of choice it adds to our industry. Hats off to this project’s team for their enthusiasm!

Which free tools do you consider to be of great value in your work? Is OmegaT among them?

In a recent English to Russian translation project, we worked on a file with all internal repetitions extracted (received like this from our client). As this is a relatively uncommon practice, I decided to use this opportunity and explain my thoughts on this subject.

Example of a Repetition

Let’s take a look at this example to illustrate the main challenge associated with extracting the repetitions:

“Note:“ can occur in at least three different situations, and, as plain as it seems, may cause problems:

1. Below a paragraph. The colon is often replaced by a dot. (Примечание. Обратите…)
2. In the middle of a paragraph. I prefer to keep the colon and begin the actual note with a lower-case letter. (… кнопку. Примечание: обратите…)
3. As a subheading. The colon is often deleted. (Примечание)

In this example, the identical source requires three different translations. Imagine what happens when the identical translation “Note.” is used across all three situations instead. For instance, a standalone sentence “Note.” appearing in the middle of a paragraph may look weird. In a subheading, it wouldn’t be that bad, but might still be inconsistent with punctuation in other subheadings, so why let it happen at all?

Does it mean that extracting the repetitions is evil? No, of course not. In some situations, the benefits derived from such extraction may outweigh any potential problems. Consequently, you need to consider applying this approach on a case-by-case basis and exercise caution, making sure you understand the implications.

Pros

1. A significant, if not the main, gain is the possibility of savings. This is especially true when many thousands of repetitions are considered for extraction. The client’s willingness to reduce the costs through extraction is perfectly reasonable in such situations.
2. Extraction might be vital when two or more translators work on the same project simultaneously. Otherwise, they will likely translate repetitions in two or more different ways. This means double work, hence a plain waste of money. An arguably better solution might be to extract the repetitions into a separate file and have it translated by one linguist and then checked by another and/or the editor.
3. Extraction also helps eliminate or at least reduce inconsistent translations of the repetitions. Although many translation environment tools ensure consistency by automatically changing all occurrences when you edit any single repetition (auto-propagation feature), there is always room for human error in this area.

Cons

1. Extracting the repetitions means that you don’t get a final file from your translator. What you get is an intermediate file, which you then need to process to create the final file, e.g. by creating a translation memory and applying it to a source file. Before you go for extraction, you may want to compare these additional management costs against the expected benefits of extraction.
2. As a translator, I prefer to work on a copy that retains its original look, rather than an intermediate “censored” file. With the repetitions extracted, you cannot see the whole picture, which may decrease your understanding of the source text and the sense of ownership. The pain can be somewhat eased if you have the original copy (with all repetitions) at hand for reference. For this reason, I believe that providing such file is a must in most extraction scenarios. Aside from taking the guesswork out of the translation process, it is also important for understanding more technical things such as tags.
3. I believe that in most extraction scenarios the repetitions must be checked in the final file. In practice, however, this step is sometimes skipped, as it seems unimportant. This approach may backfire in various forms of damage, from minor slips to weird mistranslations. Unless you are prepared for substandard quality, I advise to keep this step in your process, perhaps in a form of a quick proofreading.

By the way, Velior provides discounts for the repetitions in our quotes, making it quite affordable to let us handle the repetitions. And how do you approach the repetitions in your translation business? Do you accept work with any unpaid repetitions?

An ongoing (long-term) translation project is a large job from the same client that comes in smaller portions on a regular basis over an extended period of time. To illustrate, an automotive company can produce user manuals, service manuals, software, and marketing content that all need translation into various languages. After initial translation, their updated versions may become available, and new materials can be also added in each category. All these types of content are sent for translation in subsequent batches that represent different parts of a single ongoing translation project.

As a translation company, we enjoy such projects for many reasons. First and foremost, this is an indirect sign of your client’s satisfaction. Even if a regular client never provides any direct feedback, you can assume they are satisfied with your services, judging by a steady workload.

Another positive aspect of ongoing projects is the stability they bring in terms of revenue and schedule. Just as any other repeat business, they represent a steady source of income, which is essential in translator’s profession that is prone to periods of little or no work (e.g. see this post by Serena Dorey). In addition to financial stability, such projects also increase your confidence in terms of your schedule. Your client often informs you in advance about any expected portions of their project, making it possible for you to plan ahead and balance your overall workload. You can therefore enjoy a piece of mind that comes with a well-planned schedule.

What I like about ongoing projects from a project manager’s perspective is their tendency to be more flexible deadline-wise. Because there is normally a streamlined, already optimized process in place, everyone is aware of how fast others can work, and files move around with little delay. Your client may be also willing to provide you with more time, instead of reserving that time for tackling any unforeseen problems, simply because little or no trouble is expected.

From a translator’s perspective, most ongoing projects are attractive too, because the longer you work on them, the better you know them. By gradually accumulating project-specific knowledge and expertise, you increase your understanding of this project’s subject matter and translate more efficiently. You can benefit from the accumulated knowledge even more by saving all information in a fashion that allows easy access in the future. For example, you can save previous source and reference files as PDF, merge them, and use the resulting single file to search for context or explanations. You can also maintain a translation memory and benefit from the ability to access older translations, resulting in increased speed and consistency. Therefore, with each new portion of a project, a translator’s job often becomes easier.

Could there be any drawbacks associated with ongoing projects? Hardly any. The only “downside” I can think of is the management challenges resulting from the requirement to always assign the same translator to a specific project, because otherwise quality and consistency may be reduced. First, no translator can be available at all times, because anyone can get sick, work on another project, go on vacation, etc. Second, an ongoing project places additional responsibility with any translator, as their client comes to depend on their availability. For example, if such translator is planning to go on vacation, they are expected to warn the client. The client might also have different plans and ask the translator to postpone vacation. Not everyone wants this kind of additional responsibility. Finally, when a new member such as an editor or proofreader is added to a project team, it’s not always easy to get them up to speed. Before fully understanding specifics and context of this project, they might be less efficient, e.g. make unnecessary or incorrect changes, resulting in additional rework time or even client’s complaints. But of course, these management challenges are minor as compared to advantages associated with ongoing large projects.

And what is your experience with this type of projects? We will be delighted to hear from you on this topic.

This post discusses Velior’s policy on the translation memories created by someone else. It applies to the situations where a translation job comes together with an existing TM, i.e. another translator worked on it previously, and it is new to us. In such cases, we prefer to calculate all words as new despite the TM leverage, or at least increase the standard 100% and fuzzy match rate. Here is why:

1. Most importantly, we cannot be sure about the quality of the existing translations. This represents a risk of spending uncompensated time on reviewing and correcting them. We cannot afford to take such risk free-of-charge.
2. Our opinion of the external TMs is largely influenced by Velior’s internal quality policy. For example, in our own work, we minimize the risk of mistranslations and omissions by using an independent editor in each job and eliminate the risk of terminology inconsistency through an automated QA. Because of this policy, we expect the same level of quality from the external TMs, and where they fail to meet these expectations, we have to spend additional time on editing them.
3. While considering a job involving an external TM, you also need to evaluate the TM quality. This means spending additional uncompensated time. If the job is assigned to us after all, I don’t have any objection to this. If the job is however placed somewhere else, I personally feel disappointed because of the time wasted in such an unproductive way. Reading someone else’s irrelevant old translations, that is.
4. Whenever you re-use a fuzzy match in a new segment, you have to review or at least read the existing portion of the translation. The typical TM-related rates are however geared towards paying for translating the new text only. With the external TMs, the effort invested in reviewing the existing portion is therefore either not compensated at all or compensated only partially.
5. If you encounter any inconsistency issues in the provided TM, you have to check the entire current job for such issues, including the 100% matches. This additional work is not covered by the typical TM-related rates. Simply put, you are paid to only review the existing translations briefly, but not to correct any errors. The provided TM is naturally expected to be correct, otherwise why provide it all?
6. Quite a few external TMs we worked with included translations that were completely unusable due to the technical issues such as a wrong encoding, damaged special characters, or incorrectly aligned translations (probably aligned by a non-native speaker). Such problems normally don’t surface until you delve deeper into the TM in the course of translation—already after accepting the job. You end up re-translating them at your expense.
7. The writing style used in the previous translations is often different from your own, but you are expected to follow that style to maintain consistency. This normally requires an additional effort, e.g. you need to specifically check that you did not use your own style unconsciously. Again, this is not compensated by the standard TM-related rates.