Four Tips to Reduce Your Translation Costs

We’ve outlined four tips you can take when planning your next translation project that can help you reduce program costs and improve returns. ?

1. Prioritize Content

Here are some questions to ask yourself when determining what to translate first:?

• Which product or service generates the most revenue??
• What are the most viewed pages on your website??
• What is the most important information your customers need to know??
• Are there legal or regulatory requirements you need to communicate??

2. Provide Source Files

Send source files, fonts, and graphics from your publishing software application to your language service provider (LSP). This simplifies and accelerates the file preparation process and enables the LSP to:?

• Detect and repair any potential issues upfront??
• Identify reusable content for future projects ?
• Provide a more accurate project proposal and schedule?

3. Consider AI Translation with Post-Editing

AI translation is not appropriate in all cases, so you should consider when to use machine translation, but it may be a viable option if: ?

• You have a large-scale project with vast amounts of content?
• You’re working with a limited budget and/or a tight deadline ?
• You need to translate materials not directly tied to your core product/website/app,? e.g. user documentation, technical manuals, and help systems?

MT should always be followed by post-editing to ensure that it meets the agreed-upon level of publishable quality requested by the client.???

4. Use Cost Calculators

Online calculators? can estimate the initial translation and subsequent monthly maintenance costs – and expected ROI – for your localization project based on the following inputs:?

• Total initial and updated monthly word count?
• Number of target languages?
• Translation method/quality (human translation, MT, etc.) ?