Engineering Case Study

A leading engineering company with a turnover of more than £800 million produces a vast quantity of technical documentation, ranging from 20- to 500-page manuals, all of which require regular translation into a number of European languages, as well as Japanese, Korean and Chinese.

This documentation is extremely technical and requires a very high standard of translation, each and every time. It also requires a flexible approach to the way in which we work with in-country review teams.

Writing the majority of their technical publications themselves, particular attention has to be paid to the desktop publishing part of the translation cycle, ensuring accurate referencing, indexing and formatting.

The Japanese translation work that we provide for this company demonstrates our ability to work with global organisations on a local level, providing local review cycles to increase turnaround times and ensure greater technical accuracy. This required:

Provision of desktop publishing services to include working in Adobe FrameMaker for PC and conversion from Corel Ventura to FrameMaker for PC for legacy documentation

Inclusion of a full quality assurance process, including particular point checks in the page proofing workflow

Direct work with in-country representatives to ensure terminology consistency

provision of translation work for updated versions of manuals, since product lifecycles can be up to 20 years and require technological updates

For the Japanese market, where making amendments was previously a slow process, our review team worked directly onsite at the client’s Japanese offices

Qualified technical translators providing accurate technical translation work

In-house desktop publishing team producing all FrameMaker work in preparation for page proofing

Senior project manager appointed to fully manage the account and make regular on-site visits

Working with our Translation Memory technology to reduce the amount of time needed to translate existing copy.

Approved translation work provided in good time

Improved Japanese translation turnaround times

Reduced translation costs through better management of Translation Memory

We continue to provide ongoing translation work for new product ranges

We are also providing marketing translation services for the company’s marketing communications team