What are the best ways to translate multi-page documents?

What is a multipage document?

A multipage document is high volume translation document that can include tens of thousands of words or hundreds of pages. The international translation community has no regulation on the description of a large document, and it is often defined in their own way by translation companies. At AM Vietnam, we consider large documents are those with 50,000 words or higher. Hence, it is possible that some conventional translation methods will be ineffective. Therefore, it may be necessary to have a different method for this type of documents.

What are the difficulties in translating multi-page documents?

We will bring up some of the typical challenges that we had encountered in our translation service provision process. However, you can also share your problems with us so that we can advise you on your work.

• Formatting documents can be difficult and time-consuming
• Difficulties in finding a uniform translation method due to the involvement of many translators
• Difficulties in proofreading the entire text
• Difficulties in achieving the expected stylistics
• Strict deadlines often lead to risks concerning quality and completeness
• Customer requests for translation outputs are often not under control
• Without much experience, it will be difficult to complete on schedule

(** We will always update when there are new findings for your reference)

How do we translate our multipage documents?

Develop a dedicated process for large documents

Developing a process requires experience and the process must be subject to tests and improvement. Developing workers need to be careful right from desktop publishing and typesetting to the final step which is product delivery to the clients.

Establish a reliable team of associates

You need to know the competencies of each person in the team, ask them to follow an agreed translation process and, preferably, divide them into separate groups for each step in the process.

Understanding each person’s abilities will help you calculate important milestones such as: When is the translation finished? How long does it take to revise? or How long does it take to format the translation to be same as the original?

From there you can build project workflows and control them meticulously.

Apply computer assisted translation (CAT) tools

You may be interested in Trados, MemoQ or other software that can help you translate in groups. Of course, you will have to pay a certain amount for the license, but if you decide to use it for a long time then it would be worth the cost.

According to our statistics, the speed of translating a large project using CAT tools will be twice as that using traditional translation method. You will save time in various stages such as translation control, quality control, work division and actual volume determination.

Should we apply machine translation to a multipage translation project?

Machine translation may turn out a concern when there is yet a handling process. To have a machine generated text of good quality, you need to understand and train the mechanism to work as you want. You can also refer to certain free online translators like Google translate or Bing Translator for use. We believe we can help you process your translation faster.

*** What is machine translation? 

Pre-translation tasks

• Some of the following tasks can be time-consuming. But rest assured, if you do all this well before translating, your translation will definitely be much better
• Glossary should be created as soon as possible, it will help your team carry out the work more smoothly
• You will need someone who can read all the documents to determine the actual content, helping to divide the work with the right people for the right job
• Communicating with the client is an important interacting protocol in a translation project
• DTP and typesetting should be carried out as much as possible so that CAT tools can be used and time for translation delivery reduced