tips for translation clients

[Guest post]

Translation is now a part of effective marketing. This is very true in a digitally emerging world, which contributed to the pressure to reach customers worldwide. While we know that it is tempting to use your favorite poetical grammar structure and idioms, putting them will become a great hindrance to achieving quality translations. The last thing you want is an inefficient translation, which could cause a huge mess for your business.

Here are three tips on how to write a translation-friendly content:

• Keep Your Sentences Short

Do you believe in the famous saying that “Simplicity is the key?”. Well, this applies as the first step towards writing a translation-friendly content. You must keep your sentences short as the longer sentences are much more challenging to translate. You don’t want to have clunky and unnatural translations, right? If yes, then keep your sentences into having a maximum of 20 words. Doing so will increase the clarity of your sentences.  

Keep in mind that sentence length is one of the most critical factors for readability. Furthermore, writing simpler sentences with highfalutin words ensures that your content is more easily understood across all languages. So, you must keep your sentences short and sweet!

• Be Consistent

We know that you may think that the shorter the sentences you used, the more consistent it is already. However, there are more techniques to write more consistently than this. First and foremost: do not fluff! Avoid the use of recurring sentences, especially if you have a target number of words to meet. But, if it is unavoidable, make use of transition sentences and keep the wording and grammatical structure as uniform as possible. The familiar format will make it easier for your audience to read it better and faster. 

Moreover, by being consistent, the translation will be cheaper on your part! Most global translation services incentive this by using translation memories. Just so you know, this is a tool that automatically searches and reuses words, sentences, and entire texts that it has already translated. Smaller portions or segments are easier to match and translate so it can save you money!

• Make Sure That Your Content is Error-Proof

The content that you created should be reviewed by yourself first. Check for any errors or possible revisions that can take your content to the best version it can be before sending it to translators. 

This will guarantee that the translation done on your content will not have any errors. You must always remember to check your work first, even if your deadline is coming soon. 

If you want your work to be translated so that it will not compromise the meaning of the message you want to convey, you should always review your original content. Include proofreading in your workflow to ensure the correctness of your content. 

Something to Think About

Writing a translation-friendly content will be very helpful, especially if you are establishing your brand for another market. This ensures that your brand will be well-known through understandable and easy-to-read content!

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