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What is it?

Leverage means re-using (parts of) a given text, both in content creation and content localization.

Why is it important?

The main goal for all localized content should be to achieve the highest quality, in the shortest time, at the lowest cost. Leverage can help make content more consistent. This increases the quality and makes localization efforts more cost-efficient.

...continue reading "Term of the Week: Leverage"

What is it?

In localization, a language pair identifies the combination of one unique source language variant with one unique target language variant.

Why is it important?

Language pairs are a basic unit of translation. The source contains original content, which is then translated into a target language. The pairs are generally expressed with implied translation direction: source before target.

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What is it?

The act of converting verbal (spoken or signed) communication from one language into another.

Why is it important?

Written translation and spoken or signed language interpreting are two very different, but related, professions. Localization specialists source solutions for diverse needs, usually for people who are not specialists in the fields of translation and interpreting. When a requesting party asks for translation services, they might actually need interpreting services instead. For example, a marketer organizing a company event might request translation for the CEO’s presentation. A localization specialist might assume this means translation of written slides, but later finds out the person requesting the service actually needs spoken language interpreters. Because these requests are frequently confused, it’s important to know how to handle them when they occur.

...continue reading "Term of the Week: Interpreting"

What is it?

A process by which content – online, in print, in software, or in other types of media – is made world ready, so it can be localized with minimal rewriting, redesigning, or re-engineering.

Why is it important?

Helps organizations save significant time and resources by creating world-ready architecture and content before moving on to localization and translation.

...continue reading "Term of the Week: Internationalization (i18n)"

What is it?

A step in the content workflow, after translation and prior to publishing, where the content is reviewed by a person who is intimately familiar with the target audience – usually a person who lives and works for the client in the target market and often a person who is not a translator, for example, a member of the marketing team.

Why is it important?

The ICR finds final issues and is often the final approval before publishing. It can be a bottleneck in the localization process. Particularly in regulated industries, it is critical to have a local market expert review translated, localized, and transcreated content for correctness, quality, and appropriateness.

...continue reading "Term of the Week: In-country Review"

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What is it?

The art and science of analyzing, planning, and aligning the corporate strategies, product design, content, marketing, packaging, and support materials required to support a business in all its markets worldwide.

Why is it important?

Globalization allows companies to increase their reach by skillfully guiding the process of taking a product, service, idea, system, and project to multiple markets. It must be an integral part of the corporate strategy to enable growth in global markets and to effectively reach global audiences.

...continue reading "Term of the Week: Globalization"

What is it?

The ability to speak or write a foreign language easily and accurately and to comprehend most communication.

Why is it important?

Fluency enables the user of a language to focus on making connections among ideas. By making connections, the reader can focus his/her attention on comprehension. For most languages, fluency means having a minimum of 15,000 to 20,000 words in your vocabulary and being able to use them correctly in context[Liedel 2014].

...continue reading "Term of the Week: Fluency"

What is it?

The sum total of worldview, expectations, manners, activities, traditions, language, dress, and belief systems, including thoughts, feelings, and actions that distinguish one group from another.

Why is it important?

Culture provides a reference point, with cultural differences and assumptions often fueling conflict. More positively, culture also connects people and sets a society’s rhythm of life.

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What is it?

A collection (usually electronic) of texts in two languages that can be considered translations of each other and that are aligned at the sentence or paragraph level.

Why is it important?

A bitext is one of the most basic results of translation. It can be used in the language industry for training, revision, and quality control. Bitexts also serve as training data for statistical machine translation.

...continue reading "Term of the Week: Bitext"