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Producing content for your company is a time-consuming, meticulous process of critical importance. You devote a significant amount of time and effort to developing content that is both relevant and memorable to your target audience.
You may be ready to have your material translated once you've perfected it. Deciding to translate your content into one or more foreign languages is a significant step toward reaching a larger audience – and it has the potential to transform your business! When you're ready, you'll want to make sure your translations match the quality of the English text you so carefully crafted. Translation errors will make a bad impression and demean the purpose of translation.
Categories of errors: Objective & Subjective
Objective:
These include items like misspellings and text omissions. There can be no disagreement regarding whether a translation lacks a header or whether a term is spelt correctly. These mistakes are regarded as objective.
Subjective:
When it comes to subjective errors, there may be as many viewpoints on the "proper way" to do something as there are reviewers. Choosing between synonyms is an example of one area of difficulty. For example, both "car" and "automobile" exist in English. They both signify the same thing, so deciding between the two is a matter of preference – or style.
Below are ten common mistakes in translation that can wreak havoc on your content:
Mistranslations
This type of miscalculation has the most severe repercussions. Language is incredibly versatile, and there are numerous ways to represent the same idea. However, a translator may occasionally mistake a sentence, resulting in a mistranslation. Such an action can occur due to a translator's lack of subject expertise, homographs (words that are spelt the same but have distinct meanings) that are misread, or basic human error. These mistakes can be prevented by having the translations proofread by a second (or even third) linguist.
Type of Error: Objective
Reference Materials Not Been Examined
Suppose you've been working with the same translation company for a long time. In that case, they're likely to have a significant Translation Memory (TM) database for you, which the linguists will refer to while translating. Other available resources are glossaries, style guides, dictionaries, product information, and corporate background. It might be painfully obvious when a translator fails to check the reference materials. The translators will be less familiar with the original text, and their translations will not sound as professional or as consistent as it should be.
Type of Error: Subjective
The Style Guide Isn't Being Followed
Style decisions such as professional vs informal tone, whether to translate proper names or not and how to treat measures (metric or imperial) are all crucial in addition to reading level. Before delivering your content to your translation vendor, it's critical to consider these factors.
Type of Error: Subjective
Errors in spelling, grammar, and syntax
Whether or not the reader has expertise with the original English content will stand out as translation errors. Spelling, syntax issues and grammatical problems in translation will make your content appear amateurish and sloppy, probably not the image you want to be associated with your company.
Type of Error: Objective
Inconsistencies in the Glossary and Terminology
Your company has its own culture. Whether you intentionally choose specific terminology or evolve spontaneously, you most likely have a unique way of referring to items related to your company. It can stand out, give the wrong brand message, and even make people uncomfortable if that precise, recognized vocabulary isn't used.
Error Type: Both Subjective and Objective
Errors in the Table of Contents, Index, and Footnotes
Internal references such as tables of contents, indexes, and footnotes are typically necessary for comprehending your document. Readers must refer to them inside the document to locate the information they are looking for.
Type of Error: Objective
Line Breaks & Incorrect Hyphenation
Justified text is a formatting option that uniformly distributes the content throughout the page's margins. Such a move frequently results in hyphenated words that span two lines in English. There are several restrictions on where the term can be broken; for example, the hyphen should ideally not be placed in the middle of a syllable, making it difficult to read the text!
Type of Error: Objective
Capitalization is incorrect
The capitalization rules differ significantly from one language to the next. Proper names and titles must always be capitalized in English for example. On the other hand, German is an example of a language with very different capitalization rules: all nouns must be capitalized in German. Not capitalizing the first letter of a word can ultimately affect its meaning!
Type of Error: Objective
Typos and incorrect spacing
Flying fingers are prone to making blunders. Sometimes a space between words is missed, or an extra space is introduced where it isn't needed in document translation services. These mistakes are simple to catch with spellcheck, but not all languages have this facility! Somali, for example, lacks a standardized dictionary. This implies there is no spellcheck, allowing more of these kinds of errors to slip through the cracks.
Type of Error: Objective
Names spelt incorrectly
Your identity is inextricably linked to the way you spell your name, and it can feel like a personal insult when someone misspells your name. Name spelling is complicated in translations where the source and target languages do not share an alphabet.
Type of Error: Both Objective and Subjective
Irregularities (text not translated)
Everything in your English materials was included for a reason — taking something out could radically affect the message! Keep an eye out for omissions in translation services to ensure that your message is conveyed correctly and effectively.
Type of Error: Objective
Everything your company communicates with its target audience – in English and other languages – should match your brand message and image.
By working with certified translation services, ensuring that your materials are checked, and being aware of the specific ways translations can be challenging, you can avoid your translations being impacted by the usual translation pitfalls outlined above.
Looking for a reliable translation service provider? Look no further. Lingual Consultancy provides you with the best quality translations. We provide you quality in return to your trust! With a pool of more than 16000 translators/interpreters/voice artists/transcribers across the globe, we provide localization services in the industry in more than 250 languages.
