Optimising Efficiency and Consistency in all Translation Projects Personal | Professional | Precise
Translation memories are a powerful tool that can be utilised by linguists to substantially improve the quality and consistency of translations.
They are essentially databases of previous translations, which linguists leverage using computer-aided translation (CAT) tools to ensure that new translations follow the style and terminology used in previous projects.
What is a Translation Memory?
In the simplest terms, a translation memory is a database of translations. Each ‘translation unit’ within the memory consists of one ‘segment’ – usually a sentence – in both the original language and its translation. A translation memory usually only has one source language but may have multiple target languages. When a translator is working in a computer-aided translation (CAT) tool, the system will analyse the new text segment-by-segment against the translation memory and identify any exact or partial matches.
Exact matches can be inserted directly into the translation, as the source sentence in the memory is identical to the one in the current text. Partial matches can also be inserted directly, but the translation will need to be edited to reflect the differences in the source text. In most CAT tools, the translator can also manually search for words and phrases in the translation memory, in effect using it as a customised bilingual dictionary or glossary.
Benefits of Working With Translation Memories
Using translation memories brings many benefits, the clearest of which is consistency. This is most evident for projects and clients whose content often contains the same phrases and terminology, such as boilerplate text in a press release or questions in a form. Once these have been translated once, they are stored in the memory, ensuring that the translation is the same in all subsequent projects and that you do not pay to have it translated multiple times.
A second major advantage of using translation memories is efficiency. In addition to exact matches, CAT tools also provide translators with partial matches from translation memories. These are when most of the sentence is the same, but some words may have been changed. Most systems will highlight the differences between the source text in the memory compared to the current text, allowing the translator to quickly and easily make the necessary changes to the translation without needing to retranslate the entire sentence. This is particularly common in situations where a standard sentence contains variable numbers or dates, such as page headers and footers, and form responses that appear in the same line as the question.
These two advantages combine to bring a further benefit for clients – cost savings. Translation memories eliminate unnecessary duplication of work, meaning that we are usually able to apply a percentage discount to the cost of your translation, to reflect the reduction in our translators’ workload. This discount will likely increase as we complete more projects for you, since we are more likely to find matches in the translation memory if it contains more translations.
Data Security and Confidentiality
A common concern that clients may have with the use of translation memories concerns confidentiality.
This is of utmost importance, so we always keep a separate translation memory for each of our clients, and we never use translation memories from one client when working on projects for another client.
You can therefore be confident that all the text stored in our translation memories will remain strictly confidential and will only ever be reused in your projects.
To find out more about how we can help you, speak to one of the team today by phone on +44 (0)1952 288 230 or by email to info@dixon-associates.co.uk
