About localization of products. Part one: where to start?
You have created your own program or game and now you want to sell it all over the world. Most likely, for this you will have to localize the graphical interface and - preferably - the documentation.
Where to start? How to choose the one who will carry out the transfer? How will the price be formed? This will be discussed in an article by our technical writer Andrei Starovoitov.
First you need to decide which markets you want to enter. The set of languages into which your product will have to be localized will depend on this. If it’s difficult to decide right away, then you can start with English - this language is taught all over the world as a universal means of communication. To expand your presence in Europe, you can also consider the main languages of the Old World - German, French, Spanish, Italian.
If you plan to enter Asia, then, first of all, you will need Japanese (many Japanese buyers directly require that the product be translated into Japanese), as well as Chinese and Korean.
After you have decided which languages you need to translate the documentation into, the following important question arises - who will do this?
There are 3 options - full-time translators, freelance, translation company. Consider the pros and cons of each of them:
1) Staff translators:
Pros:
++ such translators, as a rule, know the product well; better understand how to formulate a phrase more clearly, where it is necessary to translate shorter, and where you can leave the details so that the text is more understandable to the user;
++ you will be sure that the same person sequentially translates the texts; You will be able to more effectively manage the process - adjust the translator in case you think that something is going wrong. In short, such translations will be of the highest quality.
Cons:
- - Permanent translators must be hired, and this is a permanent salary, social package + workplace - in total it will come out very expensive.
Conclusion: if you have a large company, and constantly have texts for translation, then you need to get a full-time translator. And if not, then consider other options.
2) Freelance.
If you need to translate a little text (for example, to localize a small game for a smartphone), and you find a good specialist, then this option may suit you better than everyone else.
Pros:
++ will come out relatively inexpensively. How much was asked to transfer - for so much and paid.
Cons:
In the case of a freelance translator, you should always keep in mind the following points:
a) If there will suddenly be a peak load before the release and you need to quickly translate a lot of text at once, will the freelancer be able to?
b) If you like a specialist, and you will periodically apply to him, then at some point, having felt his demand, he can significantly raise prices for services.
c) When working with a freelancer, you must carefully draw up and discuss a contract - the price of the transfer; terms of transfer; will this specialist correct the text for free if you don’t like something in the translation, will any automated translation system be used, and if so, which one; will they give you the translation memory if you decide to change the specialist.
d) since the freelancer is not particularly familiar with your product, you will have to give detailed comments (especially for texts from the interface) - where is which phrase used, what should be translated as infinitive, and what is imperative, where should it be shorter, and where can be longer, which means or another term and so on. All this must be done, so that in the end the translation turns out to be of high quality.
Conclusion: if you translate a little and want to save money, it may make sense to contact a freelancer - see the situation.
3) Translation company.
If you have large enough volumes for translation, but with a floating peak load (sometimes a lot, sometimes medium, sometimes not enough), then it might be worthwhile to conclude an agreement with a translation company (I’ll say right away that we chose this path in Parallels.)
Pros:
++ Such companies, as a rule, have their own staff of translators.
++ You sign a non-disclosure agreement (NDA), which clearly specifies all the points: rights, obligations, prices, terms.
++ Most often, the price in the contract is prescribed for the full range of services. That is, you are assigned a personal manager who will deal only with your company. You need to translate something - send it to him. And he, in turn, will prepare files for translators (I will discuss this in more detail later), decide which of the translators will deal with your order, distribute the load, collect questions from the translators and inform them of your answers, send you the translated files. In a word, you sent something to the translation, and then everything will be decided by the translation company.
Minuses:
- Transfers through such a company will come out more expensive than through a freelancer (although cheaper than through a full-time translator).
- As in the case of freelancers, the translators of the company do not know your product and see the phrases / text in isolation from the general context. Therefore, in order to get a high-quality translation, you will also have to make detailed comments with screenshots, provide remote access, make a visual video of the product, and so on.
Since we work with a translation company, we pay special attention to this issue, but some of the following can be used if you choose a freelancer or a full-time translator.
Of course, it is good if you can recommend someone personally. If not, then in Google you can find various translation companies, make a short list, and then choose.
When choosing, pay attention to the following things:
1) Quality of the translation
Be sure to ask to translate something from your topic as a test task.
Of course, it would be nice if you had a specialist who could evaluate the quality of the translation.
In principle, you yourself can evaluate the quality of the translation into Russian (if you are creating a product in English). Or the quality of the translation into English - surely one of your friends / acquaintances / relatives knows English well.
In the case of other languages (especially Asian), you may have to turn to an outside person. You can search for it through friends or social networks. You can try contacting another translation company, but there is one caveat - you may be told that everything is bad in order to offer your own services.
2) File format for translation
Beforehand, determine in which format it will be convenient for you to send and receive files for translation, (xml, xliff, po, etc.) and specify whether such a format is supported by the translation company.
3) Terms of translation
Specify how much, on average, in terms of time a translation will be done. Of course, it all depends on the volume and complexity of the text, but in any case it is necessary to discuss the time frame, for example 2-4 days.
At the same time, be sure to check whether it will be possible to accelerate in the event of force majeure, so that there are no cases when you need to translate something as quickly as possible for an urgent update, and you are told that according to the agreement, everything can be extended for up to 5 days.
4) The minimum amount of words for translation.
Specify what should be the minimum amount of words for translation, at which the price for localization will be formed “per word”, and not for “linguistic hour”. We will tell you more about the price “per word” and “per hour” a bit further.
5) Price
This is a pretty tricky question. When you ask for prices for services, you will probably be sent prices for both new words and words that fall into different categories - context match, repetitions, low fuzzy, high fuzzy ...
All of these categories, what they mean, where they come from how the price is calculated for them, we will similarly talk in the second part of this article.
In the meantime, try to assess the overall price level by your financial capabilities and the level of comfort of working with translators.
Sometimes a low price may indicate that the company is deliberately dumping, without having quality specialists on staff, and, as a result, provides low-quality translations. But it could be different - the company works in good faith and at a low price is simply trying to gain a foothold in the translation services market. Sometimes it happens that companies vary in prices for translations of different categories of words. For example, one company will offer to translate at $ 0.23 per word, and the second at $ 0.21. It would seem that the second one will be cheaper, but its translation of high fuzzy matches is more expensive than that of the first, and as a result, it will turn out the same, or even more expensive (detailed analysis of various categories - context match, repetitions, low fuzzy, high fuzzy - will be done in the second part of the article.)
6) Find out how the company calculates the price for the translation
Ask the company to estimate how much it will cost to translate the text you need, and carefully look at how quotation will be drawn up - a detailed list of the price list.
If you are sent a simple, clearly made on the knee, Excel tablet with 2 lines: “there are so many words and the price is such and such” - this is an occasion to doubt the seriousness of such a company. The fact is that translators mainly use various CAT tools - automated systems that help to make translations. This does not mean that they do machine translation. Just such systems allow you to analyze your files, determine how many new fragments of text will have to be translated, and what can be borrowed from previous translations (translation memory), how best to translate a particular term, and so on. After such an analysis, such systems break the text into categories and, depending on the number of words in each category, automatically calculate the final price for the translation.
An example of such a pricing is presented below:
In the next part of the article we will analyze in more detail how the interaction with the translation company will go, what services will be charged, what categories the text to be translated will be divided into, and how the final price for the translation will be calculated.
To be continued...
Where to start? How to choose the one who will carry out the transfer? How will the price be formed? This will be discussed in an article by our technical writer Andrei Starovoitov.
Step 1 - determine which languages you will translate into
First you need to decide which markets you want to enter. The set of languages into which your product will have to be localized will depend on this. If it’s difficult to decide right away, then you can start with English - this language is taught all over the world as a universal means of communication. To expand your presence in Europe, you can also consider the main languages of the Old World - German, French, Spanish, Italian.
If you plan to enter Asia, then, first of all, you will need Japanese (many Japanese buyers directly require that the product be translated into Japanese), as well as Chinese and Korean.
Step 2 - determine who will translate
After you have decided which languages you need to translate the documentation into, the following important question arises - who will do this?
There are 3 options - full-time translators, freelance, translation company. Consider the pros and cons of each of them:
1) Staff translators:
Pros:
++ such translators, as a rule, know the product well; better understand how to formulate a phrase more clearly, where it is necessary to translate shorter, and where you can leave the details so that the text is more understandable to the user;
++ you will be sure that the same person sequentially translates the texts; You will be able to more effectively manage the process - adjust the translator in case you think that something is going wrong. In short, such translations will be of the highest quality.
Cons:
- - Permanent translators must be hired, and this is a permanent salary, social package + workplace - in total it will come out very expensive.
Conclusion: if you have a large company, and constantly have texts for translation, then you need to get a full-time translator. And if not, then consider other options.
2) Freelance.
If you need to translate a little text (for example, to localize a small game for a smartphone), and you find a good specialist, then this option may suit you better than everyone else.
Pros:
++ will come out relatively inexpensively. How much was asked to transfer - for so much and paid.
Cons:
In the case of a freelance translator, you should always keep in mind the following points:
a) If there will suddenly be a peak load before the release and you need to quickly translate a lot of text at once, will the freelancer be able to?
b) If you like a specialist, and you will periodically apply to him, then at some point, having felt his demand, he can significantly raise prices for services.
c) When working with a freelancer, you must carefully draw up and discuss a contract - the price of the transfer; terms of transfer; will this specialist correct the text for free if you don’t like something in the translation, will any automated translation system be used, and if so, which one; will they give you the translation memory if you decide to change the specialist.
d) since the freelancer is not particularly familiar with your product, you will have to give detailed comments (especially for texts from the interface) - where is which phrase used, what should be translated as infinitive, and what is imperative, where should it be shorter, and where can be longer, which means or another term and so on. All this must be done, so that in the end the translation turns out to be of high quality.
Conclusion: if you translate a little and want to save money, it may make sense to contact a freelancer - see the situation.
3) Translation company.
If you have large enough volumes for translation, but with a floating peak load (sometimes a lot, sometimes medium, sometimes not enough), then it might be worthwhile to conclude an agreement with a translation company (I’ll say right away that we chose this path in Parallels.)
Pros:
++ Such companies, as a rule, have their own staff of translators.
++ You sign a non-disclosure agreement (NDA), which clearly specifies all the points: rights, obligations, prices, terms.
++ Most often, the price in the contract is prescribed for the full range of services. That is, you are assigned a personal manager who will deal only with your company. You need to translate something - send it to him. And he, in turn, will prepare files for translators (I will discuss this in more detail later), decide which of the translators will deal with your order, distribute the load, collect questions from the translators and inform them of your answers, send you the translated files. In a word, you sent something to the translation, and then everything will be decided by the translation company.
Minuses:
- Transfers through such a company will come out more expensive than through a freelancer (although cheaper than through a full-time translator).
- As in the case of freelancers, the translators of the company do not know your product and see the phrases / text in isolation from the general context. Therefore, in order to get a high-quality translation, you will also have to make detailed comments with screenshots, provide remote access, make a visual video of the product, and so on.
Step 3 - choose who will translate specifically
Since we work with a translation company, we pay special attention to this issue, but some of the following can be used if you choose a freelancer or a full-time translator.
Of course, it is good if you can recommend someone personally. If not, then in Google you can find various translation companies, make a short list, and then choose.
When choosing, pay attention to the following things:
1) Quality of the translation
Be sure to ask to translate something from your topic as a test task.
Of course, it would be nice if you had a specialist who could evaluate the quality of the translation.
In principle, you yourself can evaluate the quality of the translation into Russian (if you are creating a product in English). Or the quality of the translation into English - surely one of your friends / acquaintances / relatives knows English well.
In the case of other languages (especially Asian), you may have to turn to an outside person. You can search for it through friends or social networks. You can try contacting another translation company, but there is one caveat - you may be told that everything is bad in order to offer your own services.
2) File format for translation
Beforehand, determine in which format it will be convenient for you to send and receive files for translation, (xml, xliff, po, etc.) and specify whether such a format is supported by the translation company.
3) Terms of translation
Specify how much, on average, in terms of time a translation will be done. Of course, it all depends on the volume and complexity of the text, but in any case it is necessary to discuss the time frame, for example 2-4 days.
At the same time, be sure to check whether it will be possible to accelerate in the event of force majeure, so that there are no cases when you need to translate something as quickly as possible for an urgent update, and you are told that according to the agreement, everything can be extended for up to 5 days.
4) The minimum amount of words for translation.
Specify what should be the minimum amount of words for translation, at which the price for localization will be formed “per word”, and not for “linguistic hour”. We will tell you more about the price “per word” and “per hour” a bit further.
5) Price
This is a pretty tricky question. When you ask for prices for services, you will probably be sent prices for both new words and words that fall into different categories - context match, repetitions, low fuzzy, high fuzzy ...
All of these categories, what they mean, where they come from how the price is calculated for them, we will similarly talk in the second part of this article.
In the meantime, try to assess the overall price level by your financial capabilities and the level of comfort of working with translators.
Sometimes a low price may indicate that the company is deliberately dumping, without having quality specialists on staff, and, as a result, provides low-quality translations. But it could be different - the company works in good faith and at a low price is simply trying to gain a foothold in the translation services market. Sometimes it happens that companies vary in prices for translations of different categories of words. For example, one company will offer to translate at $ 0.23 per word, and the second at $ 0.21. It would seem that the second one will be cheaper, but its translation of high fuzzy matches is more expensive than that of the first, and as a result, it will turn out the same, or even more expensive (detailed analysis of various categories - context match, repetitions, low fuzzy, high fuzzy - will be done in the second part of the article.)
6) Find out how the company calculates the price for the translation
Ask the company to estimate how much it will cost to translate the text you need, and carefully look at how quotation will be drawn up - a detailed list of the price list.
If you are sent a simple, clearly made on the knee, Excel tablet with 2 lines: “there are so many words and the price is such and such” - this is an occasion to doubt the seriousness of such a company. The fact is that translators mainly use various CAT tools - automated systems that help to make translations. This does not mean that they do machine translation. Just such systems allow you to analyze your files, determine how many new fragments of text will have to be translated, and what can be borrowed from previous translations (translation memory), how best to translate a particular term, and so on. After such an analysis, such systems break the text into categories and, depending on the number of words in each category, automatically calculate the final price for the translation.
An example of such a pricing is presented below:
In the next part of the article we will analyze in more detail how the interaction with the translation company will go, what services will be charged, what categories the text to be translated will be divided into, and how the final price for the translation will be calculated.
To be continued...