Technology in the last few decades has advanced at an astounding pace. But in translation, especially when it involves specific marketing or technical terminology, only dedicated, highly skilled people can do the job properly. No machine or computer program can capture the nuances that every language offers, nor the subtle – and sometimes not so subtle – differences between one language and the next. If you need to be certain the words your company uses in your native language are being conveyed correctly in another, contact us.
At Teck Language Solutions, we work exclusively with native translation professionals with years of experience. We adhere strictly to ATA and other European standards to deliver exceptional accuracy. Our streamlined process and high-tech tools allow us to deliver in a timely manner and at a price that fits your budget. Teck Language Solutions also understands the importance of confidentiality, and we have safeguards in place to maintain it. Regardless of what you want translated – whether it’s technical data, a marketing brochure or a corporate policy manual – we’ll ensure that it says exactly the same thing in the target language.
What Quality Translation Means to Us
Since everyone chooses words differently, the style of a translation depends on the translator. But regardless of the translator’s personal style, the end result must be high-quality work. That’s why we use internationally accepted standards to define and ensure our work’s quality. These standards encompass field-specific, technical and ethical criteria.
Our workflows conform to standards set by the directives of the American Translators Association and the European standard EN 15038. These include:
- Working exclusively with translation professionals with native and expert knowledge of the target language
- The translators have many years of experience in their specific field
- Final translations are proofread for correct wording, uniform terminology, orthography and completeness
- At the end of the workflow, the layout is checked. If we have not received source documents in an editable format (e.g. a picture file, a PDF or a hard copy) the layout is reproduced as accurately as possible.
How We Ensure Quality Translation Services
Our translation agency is committed to delivering high-quality translations and to satisfying our clients, therefore we are:
- Tailoring our activities to consistently meet customer requirements.
- Managing our activities so that our customers can rely on our professional service and timely deliveries.
- We comply with all applicable laws, regulations, standards and codes of practice.
- We ensure that any translator who we are cooperating with in any way understands and upholds our quality policy.
- We don't resell translations from other agencies. Our customers always receive their translations directly from our translators. With this approach, we have full control over the quality management of your translation project.
Confidentiality
We’re committed to total confidentiality in every project. To assure this we’ve taken technical steps to ensure the security of your data. We will not forward documents or contact data to third parties without your permission.
Glossary
Terms You Need to Know When Talking About Translation Quality Management
Some terms you need to be familiar with when talking about Quality Management in connection with professional translations:
CAT: Computer Assisted Translation is probably the most common means employed by every professional translator today, but it is far more complex than Google Translate might lead you to think. Since the first early online dictionaries, CAT has developed in leaps and bounds, particularly in areas such as drafting for the European Union protocols, where identical information needs to be produced simultaneously in a plethora of different languages.
Term Banks: Term banks, or termbases (terminology databases), are one of the tools now making the life of a professional translator very much more streamlined in such areas, particularly when translating into two or more languages at the same time. Technical, specialist and legal terminology can all be made available with the text on screen, ensuring that the same standards are applied across languages for terms applicable to every country. Term banks ensure uniformity and speed of translation, but they also allow for constant updating, replacing outdated terms with new information at a much more rapid rate than was ever envisaged in the days of the paper-based dictionary.
There are many term banks now operating in the cyber universe, and they can be divided into concept-orientated categories, in which entries are filed with translations in a number of different languages. Say, for example, you want to translate a document relating to agricultural practices; you can go to the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations term portal and search over 80,000 entries for terms in the six official languages of the UN. The European Parliament even has its own database covering all EU institutions, known as IATE (InterActive Terminology for Europe).
Customization: Term banks are an invaluable tool for professional translators, as they allow everyone to be on the same page when translating technical terms, while at the same time keeping up to date with new and revised terminology. Furthermore, fields can be incorporated in each entry which offer additional searchable information, such as the subject area, domain or particular industry it relates to, the source or original context of the term and its meaning, grammatical classification and common usage (e.g. formal, figurative, UK or US English, etc.). Term banks can be customized for individual clients or companies, making each job linguistically consistent with previous work and branding the output with the client's own particular vocabulary.
Translation Memory Systems: Building on these many varied banks are the more advanced translation memory (TM) systems, utilizing ever more complex algorithms to build and store translation segments from documents previously produced. These can include phrases, sentences, paragraphs, and units like subject headings or descriptions, which may be of use to subsequent translators. These segments are stored on a searchable database which can find either exact or fuzzy matches for the subject, saving the later translator the groundwork put in to the original documentation. TMs are particularly useful in user manuals and legal disclaimers, for example.
Global Translation: Major CAT providers like SDL Trados now use the most advanced software, which can be imported by translators into their own system and run concurrently with any text. Here, the option windows will automatically supply translations as you work, every time a word of phrase is encountered in your original text for which a term is already stored. Additional terms can also be entered and stored as you go along, and updates or modifications (with administrator verification) entered for next time. With tools such as this, the ever-increasing demand for translation in a global market can be met by translators instantly able to call on multilingual resources.