Translation Archives - International Multilingual Translation Agency in Belgium

Sep 30 2022

4 free quality translation tools to boost Quality and Productivity of your translations

The goal we have in this article is to talk about translation quality and productivity. Therefore here’s a list of 4 free quality translation tools that will help you produce better translations more efficiently.

1. Xbench

Xbench is a free Quality Assurance (QA) software that allows you to adjust the settings to your needs and generate a report that will let you edit your work until it is immaculate. This way, you save time by not having to manually find every error like inconsistencies, spelling mistakes, typos… catching them can be difficult and time consuming.

By using Xbench your quality is significantly improved. As a bonus, Xbench also reads translation memories. There are multiple versions available. Try looking for the older ones as they are free.

PDFescape

Use PDFescape to convert PDF to editable formats, to merge PDFs together, insert or change text, use the freehand drawing tool, add images, insert new pages, sign forms, etc. We love the notes and comments feature when editing translations. Moreover, you can improve your file’s security by adding electronic signatures and watermarks. With this tool say goodbye to spending hours on end transcribing your client’s PDFs into a text editor!

Grammarly

Grammarly is amazing for proofreading what you write online —be it an e-mail, a social media post, cloud-based translations, etc.—, and is also a writer’s best friend. You can easily integrate this tool into your web browser as an extension. Among all the tools for translators available online, Grammarly is one of the most comprehensive ones: it detects grammar, syntax, and punctuation errors, poor style, homonyms, and even plagiarism. Even though the paid version includes more features, the free version is useful as well. Take advantage of Grammarly to produce spotless texts and to work more efficiently by having a virtual assistant at hand.

StayFocusd

How many times have you started working on a translation and ended up watching cute cat videos on YouTube? StayFocusd is a simple Chrome extension that allows you monitor your idle browsing. This way, you can work efficiently and remain focused on giving your best to the task you need to complete. Simply set the maximum amount of time you would like to be on a certain website before it becomes blocked, and you are done.

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Sep 30 2020

5 Factors that Affect Translation Turnaround Time

The translation turnaround time is affected by a complex mix of factors, where the speed of the translator is only one piece of the puzzle, but that doesn’t mean that your translation will take weeks to complete. In fact, there are plenty of things that you can do when ordering a translation to ensure that your project is completed both quickly and to a high standard.

In this article, we’ll share with you some of the major factors that influence turnaround time, and also some advice for how to avoid delays. Keep reading !

WHAT CAN INFLUENCE A TRANSLATION PROJECT AND THE TIME TO BE DONE?

Size of Project: It should come as very little surprise that the larger your volume, the longer it will take to complete your project. As the size and scope of a project increases, the need for multiple translators also becomes more likely. This in turn makes rigorous quality checks necessary. Ensuring that multiple translators have a consistent output could have an additional impact on your timeline.
Complexity of Project: Some documents require a greater level of expertise to translate than others. If your project contains a lot of technical words, abbreviations, or in-depth explanations, your translator will need time to research them. Similarly, medical or legal documents often demand an extended timeline.
Specialism: Different agencies have different strengths. A mismatch between project and translator can cause significant delays. To give an extreme example, asking a single freelancer to translate an entire ecommerce website would take months longer than asking a crowdsourcing agency to do the same thing. Similarly, translators who specialize in certain types of projects will be able to complete them at a faster rate.
Level of Repetition: If a document frequently uses the same words or phrases, it will require less effort and time to translate that document. In fact, there is a whole range of software available to translators that is built around recognizing these repetitions. If an effort is made to ensure consistency of terminology, a high level of repetition can result in a quick turnaround time.
Access to Translation Tools: Certain agencies will employ translation tools or other forms of technology to reduce the amount of work that a translator has to do. For example, access to approved glossaries or spellcheck can significantly reduce a translator’s workload, as well as ensuring a greater level of consistency across longer projects. All of these mechanisms can knock valuable hours off your project’s timeline.

How to Reduce your Translation Turnaround Time ?

A detailed explanation can save you time in multiple ways. From simply including relevant pictures to supplying a glossary of specific translations, there is a lot that you can do in the preparation stage to make your content easier to comprehend, and ensure that crucial pieces of the text are translated right first time.

Questions ? Contact us for more information.

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Mar 30 2020

5 online free translation tools recommended by translators

The translation process can sometimes cover a multitude of topics, requiring extensive research and contextual knowledge. Fortunately, the digital revolution triggered the creation of tools, software and resources that helps ease the burden of translation and improve efficiency, consistency and quality. Below we share with you 5 online free translation tools that are recommended by translators.

The Free Dictionary

Available in a wide variety of languages, this comprehensive site is a dictionary, thesaurus and encyclopedia in one. Get free access to medical, financial and legal dictionaries, an extensive collection of idioms, acronyms, quotes, and several languages besides English, such as Spanish, French, Portuguese and Japanese. The encyclopedia also has sections updated regularly, providing users a word or article of the day. The free mobile application is compatible with iOS and Android devices.

OmegaT

A free translation memory tool, OmegaT is an open-source software that allows translators to work more efficiently through fuzzy matching (computer-assisted translation) and automatic match propagation. This translation tool also uses multiple translation memories simultaneously and allows users to process multiple file projects at the same time. Its powerful tools include the Unicode (UTF-8) support that can be used with non-Latin alphabets; an integral spell checker, and compatibility with other translation memory applications.

Website Word Count

This is a free online translation tool that you can use to calculate repetitions and new words on the websites which are built on WordPress platform. From the developer of Website Word Count herself, Hanna Sles: “I receive many requests daily for English to Russian translation, mostly for website localization. To make it easier to count repetitions and new words on my website, I developed this tool to help translators and customers save their time and efforts. At the end of this year, I am planning to upgrade my tool so that it can also get word counts for websites on other platforms.”

Microsoft Language Portal

For translators specializing in IT and software, the Microsoft Language Portal lets users search translations of key Microsoft terms and general IT terminology. The term base contains approximately 25,000 defined terms, including English definitions, translated in up to 100 languages. Users can also download the Microsoft Terminology Collection featuring standard terminology terms used across Microsoft products, as well as UI translations, Microsoft Style Guides, and the Microsoft Terminology Service API.

Magic Search

For quicker terminology searches, Magic Search is a multilingual search engine that provides one-page search results of multiple dictionaries and other sources for different language pairs. It searches multiple sources such as Word Reference, TAUS, IETA, EUdict, and more. Users may also install a Google Chrome extension in their browser and customize the list of dictionaries and sources they’d like to search.

Questions ? Feel free to contact us or request a free quote!

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Category Archives: Translation