Use of Puns – They do NOT translate well

It is important that you look at your English writing techniques to ensure understanding globally.  When is an NFL football or American sports pun not effective? When you use it in your marketing or documents outside of the United States. this goes for any local sayings and understandings.  Examine your original English documentation from the perspective of an international reader, and eliminate regional colloquialisms and other informal vocabulary.  This will ensure that you don’t leave your international customers, distributors and employees lost in translation.

Telephone numbers – a worry in translation

Did you know that 1-800 numbers do not work outside of North America?  You should provide an alternative telephone number or other customer service options for your overseas customers. 

If you have a regular telephone number you should start it with a +1 then the, area code, followed by the actual phone number (example +1(248) 239-1144) so that your customers know what the country code is for your telephone number. 

You would regret putting all the work into your translation and then having your contact information backfire.  Happy dialing. 

Writing for Translation

A good translation starts out with a well written source document. 

Often times our translators are presented with poorly written material. 

Source documents that have serious readability issues can cause our team confusion and can easily be avoided. 

The following issues can cause delays, mis-translations and errors in your final products:

• Simple grammatical mistakes,
• Use of gerunds, qualifying nouns and pronouns
• Ambiguities and homographs
• Inappropriate terminology
• Abbreviations, Acronyms, jargon, idioms and colloquial words
• Long and complex sentence structures
• Text heavy art that will need to be completely redrawn

There are some simple rules to follow when writing for translation. 

1. Simple, clear, concise and grammatically correct sentences

2. Illustrations that show more than written text could

3. Using call outs instead of using text in art

4. Globally appropriate symbols, metaphors, icons and colors

5. Consistent format and structure with a style guide to share with the translation team

6. Create a glossary of important or industry specific terminology with illustrations when possible

7.  Use of controlled authoring, terminology and tools (like Iterotext’s Authoring Coach)

All of these writing tips will help translators produce better translations of your documents.

Resources and Additional information:

Klein, F. (1997) International Technical Communication. keyword, A journal for technical and scientific communicators. Vol 7, No 2, P17-18.

McGregor, H. (1997) International Documentation. keyword, A journal for technical and scientific communicators. Vol 7, No 2, P5-11.

Ring, P. (1997) Translation of manuals and multilingual manuals. keyword, A journal for technical and scientific communicators. Vol 7, No 2, P14-16.

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