Translation memories have been an important tool for language service providers (LSPs) for many years now, helping linguists maintain consistency across translation projects and protect brand voices. Problems relating to translation memories can have profound impacts on the quality of final deliverables, which it’s so important that LSPs have robust translation memory management systems in place.
Some of the main benefits of translation memory systems are as follows:
- Improve consistency: For companies requiring large amounts of content to be translated, it’s inevitable that a number of linguists will be involved in their projects. Translation memory saves vocabulary and phrases that have been used by one linguists, allowing other linguists to use them when those segments reappear in other projects.
- Reduce time: Instead of having to translate everything from scratch every time, linguists are able to see translations that have previously been used for content involving the same phrases. This means translation takes less time, enabling companies to release their content to market faster.
Of course, these benefits assume that translation memories are well managed and maintained to a high standard.
Effective translation memory management: things to consider
- Quality: it’s important to ensure that TMs don’t contain segments that have not been reviewed. This can lead to poor translation being repeated across projects, or inconsistencies. Make sure that TMs are kept up-to-date as well, to ensure that deprecated terminology doesn’t creep into new projects.
- Establish working and master TMs: Working TMs are live, and allow linguists working on a single project to share information. This can help ensure consistency inside one project, but linguists have to be aware of the chances that typos, inaccurate translations or incorrect terminology appearing here. Once the lead linguist has approved these sections, they can be shared with the master TM, to ensure that future projects remain consistent.
- TM penalties: If there is any doubt as to the quality of a TM, consider adding a penalty to it. This means that 100% matches will, for example, appear as a 95% fuzzy match requiring further review from a linguist.
- Multiple TMs: If using multiple TMs on a project, make sure that they are prioritized. This means that the match from the most relevant TM will be used, even if another TM also has a 100% match.
Alpha CRC has extensive experience working with TMs and providing clients with translation memory management services. This includes helping clients with interoperability issues, reviewing TMs against multilingual glossaries, and updating TMs to match client style guides.
