If you have documents that need to be translated, coordination between translators has a big – and direct – impact on the quality of the final product. If you have one large assignment that needs to be translated from one source language into one target language, your translation agency will often split up the work between a number of translators to ensure that the assignment gets completed in a timely manner. Typically, the translation agency will assign your project to one reviewer to ensure that all terminology and text are consistent and that the work of all the translators is coordinated into one cohesive whole. As well, translation agencies will sometimes have teams of translators work together to develop a common agreement about meanings of the source text.
When one document has to be translated into several different languages, a team is usually assigned to the project, but few translation agencies coordinate their efforts. Instead, typically one translator is assigned to the project for every target language. This can be a big problem, as it can mean inconsistencies in style, terminology, and layout. If your document is being translated from English into Chinese, Japanese, Spanish, and French, for example, four translators with very different backgrounds and understandings could be looking at your document and the resulting translations could be very different from one another. A simple phrase or idiom could be understood equally accurately – but differently – by each translator, so that you end up with four translations that have very different connotations.
To combat this problem, Vedia Translations has adopted a unique approach: when a large assignment requires multiple translators, Vedia Translations arranges for an online conference between all translators to work out a common terminology and a common understanding of idioms. This ensures that translations of phrases such as “silver lining” are translated accurately – and not literally – into the intended languages. This online coordination ensures a clearer, more consistent final product for you.