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Translation Services: Dialogues 3 Web Localization

a) content relevance to each market

From a marketing perspective, if your website starts to include newsletters relevant to your industry new content may be required to be more relevant to each individual market. Also you may want to consider posting not only US events but international ones that are of interest to your foreign based target audience as well.

b) text expansion and image dimensions

On average, 15%-25% of text expansion is expected for translation from English to Spanish. If graphics of the site are sliced very close to English words, this would not allow for text expansion. All possible efforts would be made to preserve the original image dimension by reducing the line spacing or font size; however, it may become absolutely necessary to change the image dimensions in order to fit the translated text into the image. These image dimension changes are checked and verified at our QA phase to make sure that the table layout and visual elements are not shifted due to the dimension change.

c) font selection for Japanese language

Unless the client provides their corporate-specific Japanese font, a sans-serif style Japanese font will be proposed to the client with corresponding font size and will be used to create the localized images for the Japanese version of the site (in order to convey the same visual messages as the original English).

d) linguistic considerations

i. Depending on client's goals and budget as well as the nature of the source text our Premium translation level would be recommended. If due to budget limitations spending does not allow for Premium the second best would be our Business translation level.

Description of recommended service:

PREMIUM

The document is first translated, then reviewed by an editor, and finally double-checked by a third language professional to ensure the highest standards of quality. Recommended for websites, complex documents, marketing, advertising and other high profile materials.

BUSINESS

The original document is translated by a professional translator and then passed on to a qualified editor for quality control. Recommended for contracts, intranet and low traffic websites, reports, and all materials meant for limited exposure.

ii. Recruitment and Selection

Translators/revisors need to be native speakers (or equivalent) of target language, familiarity with fitness is considered a plus. In addition, members of team will need to be familiar with web localization and use of translation software. The selected team of linguists will be a combination of the above. For each language the translator and one revisor will be residing incountry, whereas the second revisor (Premium level) will be located in U.S.

iii. Target markets

Languages have been indicated Spanish (LA), Spanish (IB).

iv. Fusional versus agglutinative word count

When translating from English into foreign languages the translations can have approximately the same, more or less words then the English wordcount. Spanish: word count can expand 15%-25% (referred to as fusional languages) Japanese: NA (word count is from source) (character set)

j) Technical Requirements for Localization:

Japanese localization requires various additional steps to ensure its success and it is critical to choose a vendor with experienced team in Japanese web site localization.

There are several additional steps required for a proper Japanese localization. First, like any other double-byte character languages, an appropriate character set needs to be selected from multiple options. The proper character set needs to be declared in meta tag of each html files, and the Japanese text and the entire file needs to be saved in a right character encoding. Double byte characters require additional codes to search functions or email functions because text parsing mechanism for Western European languages is not sufficient to preserve the integrity of characters. Or, one could work around that problem by converting the double-byte characters to entities. All of which should be assessed by the experienced engineer with thorough knowledge of double-byte characters in programming language.

Additionally, because of the difference in character composition and appearance, CSS font size declaration often needs to be changed to allow legibility as well. Font names do not have to be changed because of language-font detection systems in most browsers.

In web graphic production, Japanese character will not be displayed correctly using Western European fonts. In Japanese localization production, choosing the right font is a key to its success. It goes beyond a distinction between sans type and sans-serif types. (Or, use OSbundled fonts for highly sophisticated website graphics) In other words, a Japanese web user can easily tell a website that is developed for the Japanese audience from non-sophisticatedly translated websites. The choice of right font and the right usage of type specs determine this user perception, which is critical to success to any highly visible consumer product website for Japanese markets. The key here is how Japanese typography communicates as the original English typography, or corporate brand communicates.

The value of the website will be diminished if the site does not function right, characters are not displayed correctly or typography used in the website does not represent a brand image for the company/product; therefore it is very essential to choose the right partner who has experience and understands the importance of subtleness when it comes to localization.

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Project Management (Project Manager, Project Coordinator) Project Manager Ownership, management and co-ordination of all aspects of the project, including scheduling and resource selection. Main client contact, responsible for monitoring the performance of the project and providing up to date status reporting, issue resolution and maintenance of style guides and glossaries. Project Coordinator Assists Project Manager in co-ordination of project. Language (Terminologist, Translators, Revisors) Terminologist Extraction of specific and specialized terminology from the website and source materials to create an English glossary which will be translated into each language. Translators Translate all HTML and graphic text. Revisors Perform quality checks on translations for omissions, proper terminology, possible spelling and typographical errors, correct syntax and idiomatic expressions and punctuation. Engineering team (Tech Lead, Graphic producer(s) and HTML Coder(s)) Tech Lead Oversee the engineering portion of localization process. Responsible for pre-production analysis and file preparation. Make sure that all technical questions by clients and linguists are answered. Coordinates Graphic producers and HTML Coders. Graphic prod. Localize web graphics at post-translation engineering phase. Responsible for localized graphics. HTML Coder Responsible for source file modification (source file modification phase) and code/graphic integration (post-translation engineering phase). Responsible for localized html files (character encoding, character display, links and functions).

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