Translation question (risks and costs)

[Grant Hogarth]

Hey Gillian -- 
I'd add an additional cost and risk factor into the mix 
(sorry for piling on ... )

Unless you set things up correctly (with the right investment in tools
and services) 
You will end up without any "translation memory", which means that you
will end up translating the same phrases and sequences as individual
items, rather than instances of a class, which has a significant risk of
"will this phrase get translated the same way in each of the 125
different locations", and a significant workload hit, in that it will
have to be translated (and QA'd) 125 times.

One way to mitigate this is to use a professional translation house to
do the translation, but have your trainers-to-be do the QA/Local usage
review.  You'll still need someone to referee/arbitrage the differences,
but you can then be fairly certain what is being presented to the end
user of the document is what you intend, and that the trainers are
familiar with what is in the document.  (An added plus: they don't go
off writing their own, or deprecating the existing document as useless
-- both of which I have seen happen in English, as well as in other
languages.)

Grant

-----Original Message-----
From: framers-bounces+grant.hogarth=reuters.com at lists.frameusers.com
[mailto:framers-bounces+grant.hogarth=reuters.com at lists.frameusers.com]
On Behalf Of Whites
Sent: Friday, March 16, 2007 11:54 PM
To: Gillian Flato
Cc: framers at FrameUsers.com
Subject: Re: Translation question

I count about 2 1/2 people for each language -not counting the training.

The 1/2 is the type who has experience with translation projects and
knows the technology who dejargonizes the English original to ease the
translation process..

Then there is the translator in the home country (Korea) who has been
educated in Korean in the technology. (Thus, no literature grads
translating electronics docs.)

Finally, the American-based counterpart who reads Korean and who can
verify that everything is in place.

My experience is that local "resources" who know the technology but
haven't been educated in the home country generally suffer from severe
linguistic corruption (Chinglish, Spanglish, or whatever the equivalent
would be for Korean and Japanese).  And the people who know the
technology but who are not professional translators just let too much
slip through the cracks.

Sorry for your VP - but if it's going to be done right, it'll cost some
serious bucks - especially for the first few docs.

will white

On Mar 16, 2007, at 3:19 PM, Gillian Flato wrote:

> Guys,
>
> A VP at my company wants to hire a person whose main job functions are

> the following:
>
> Translate technical writing docs to Korean Train the Korean FSE's on 
> the procedures in the docs.
>
> He also wants the same position for Japanese.
>
> Any idea the type of salary this person would command? Know anyone who

> qualifies?
>
> He thinks this would be cheaper than using a translation house since 
> we have thousands of procedures that need translation and more 
> efficient since the person would also be a trainer.
>
>
> Thank you,