7 Ways To Save On Legal Translations

Transcription

1 7 Ways To Save On Legal Translations

2 As the need for multilingual documents increases, so does the demand for accurate, low cost legal translation. If you re a law firm, you may be grappling with inefficiencies caused by redundant work, incomplete or inconsistent translation, delays and/or poor quality feedback. If you re an in-house legal department, those same issues might be further compounded by limited budgets and resources. This leaves the company open for risk. So, we put together the following seven tips to help you stretch your budgets and manage cross-border legal content more efficiently 2

3 1. Use in-country translator-attorney teams for the best quality and cost. Have the bulk of the content processed by a translator trained in legal content and the subject domain for the best translation results at a fraction of the cost of attorney translations. Use your in-country attorney time for final reviews only to account for country-specific content. Make sure your language service provider specializes in legal translations for the best results. 3

4 2. Use legal-specific Translation Memory for 20-50% savings. Translation Memory (TM) is the most significant way to reduce your translation costs. TM takes previous translations and stores and recycles them for future re-use, so the same sentence never needs to be translated, or paid for, twice. TM is especially useful for recurring documents such as global contracts, which carry a high percentage of similar content. Faster translation times: your multi-language content is completed 30-70% faster. Improved consistency: approved translations are re-used, improving quality and consistency. 4

5 3. Centralize your cross-border legal content management for maximum savings and control. Establishing a central system for managing your cross-border content can eliminate redundant translation and encourage sharing across regions. In addition, centralized content management improves Translation Memory (TM) savings by allowing you to build up the databank for maximum leverage. The more files that are input to a central TM system, the more the system learns about the translation decisions made in the past. 5

6 4. Establish multilingual style guides and legal specific glossaries to reduce time in review. Collaborate and get upfront buy-in from in-country reviewers to reduce iterations and costs. Getting them to signoff on terms will expedite the review process. Every hour spent establishing your guides at the beginning of a project, will save five to ten hours during the subsequent review processes, by reducing revisions and corrections. 6

7 5. Design documents with translation in mind and turn them into templates. Save money and time by simplifying document layout in common file types and standardizing style sheets, thereby decreasing the amount of formatting or desktop publishing (DTP) required during translation. Translating and modifying charts, graphs and tables for text expansion can add 25-50% to the cost of your translation, in order to adjust templates for text expansion/contraction by language. The source file is required in order to translate embedded images with text, or it will need to be recreated in order to translate it. 7

8 6. Prevent changes to your source document during the translation process. Use consistent terminology to minimize ambiguity especially when there are multiple authors involved. Provide background information to the translation team, so they can repeat your preferences. Save your final English source file in an obvious place that is easily accessible to all regions. Use a consistent tracking method for all regions. Create a clear record of when you received your various translations in the file structure. 8

9 7. Stimulate rapid workflow with a translation portal accessible by all regions. Portals help you manage cost by eliminating overhead and reducing strain on your administrative team. A cost/time effective way to handle ad-hoc translations. Maintains a secure, encrypted file transfer. Gives you more visibility into your language usage so you can track, understand and manage your total cost of translation. 9

10 Bonus Tip: Avoid the rush to eliminate fees. If your organization typically requires 24-hour turnaround on translations, set up a separate contract with your translation partner to accommodate this level of workflow in the context of your available translation budget. Consider using machine translation to get a gist of your content, to help you determine the most important material to be translated. This will help isolate the parts you need turned around quickly. 10

11 Need accurate legal translation? We can help. VIA is a trusted provider of legal translation services to leading brands around the globe including Cisco, Oracle, Google, Nike, Walmart, HP, Expedia and more. Get Started Copyright 2014, All rights reserved. info@viadelivers.com