What Is The Key Challenge In Technical Translation?

Last updated January 8, 2025

Rishi Anand
technical translation

The Challenges:

The solution: terminology management and subject-matter expertise

How localization technology can streamline technical translation

Make the most of technical translation with the Phrase Localization Platform

Common Technical Document Translation Materials

  • Patents
  • User Manuals
  • Software Strings
  • Scientific, Engineering, and Technical Articles

Do you know that just one mistranslated technical document can cost a company over $100,000 in lost potential and damage control? The stakes are higher now than ever in the global marketplace. And as companies expand across international borders, they are posed with the daunting challenge of communicating their message in other languages and cultures.

Technical translation is one of the most important processes in which technical information can be translated into another language in such a manner that complicated technical information can be communicated well. It forms part of the entire translation process into myriad and complicated steps.

Ironically but technically extremely challenging — it is technical translation that forms a consideration fraught with pitfalls which could threaten a company’s reputation and profitability.

In this article, we are going to discuss key problems within technical translation: solutions and how technology can make these processes easier and faster and so assure businesses in dealing with the global environment.

The Challenges

Technical translation involves translating special texts that contain very detailed information, terminologies, and jargon, all into another language. The challenges mainly lie in the following areas:

  1. Complex Terminology: Technical documents use technical industry terms and acronyms largely without commonly recognized equivalent terms in other languages. A single mistranslation may go astray and, in the worst case, cause damage. Imagine a poor translation of a safety instruction that may be misused and thereby potentially harm the consumer.
  2. Subject-Matter Expertise: A translator needs to have both linguistic skills and knowledge related to a specific field about which the document has been written. That is essential to ensure that the translation doesn’t only right but also contextual. Without this expertise, meaning a translator might not capture the subtle implications of technical content, final output may go wrong.
  3. Regulatory Compliance: For instance, dissimilar regions have different regulatory standards. Therefore, translated documents should conform to the local laws and regulations for business organizations to avoid legal actions and their respective reputations. For example, a mistranslated patent may be used to steal intellectual property or cause a problem in court.
  4. Quality: One of the major challenges in maintaining consistency and quality in translation is large projects often require large teams of translators, which can introduce variations in terminology and style. Hence, these quality assurance processes are very important to assure that this problem is minimized properly.
  5. Time Pressure: With a thrust to launch in new markets, the time for technical translation projects is very tight. The urgency aspect of timely access to markets makes quality more susceptible to the compromise of translation. Such compromised quality then impacts user experience and customer satisfaction.

The Solution

To overcome time pressure, businesses have to focus on terminology management and utilize subject matter expertise.

Terminology Management

There is such a thing as effective management of terminology, especially for industry terms and their respective translations. This glossary is used as a reference by translators, so the work has to appear uniform everywhere. It must contain:

  • Technical terms and terminologies applicable in that specific industry.
  • Acronyms and abbreviations most often applied in the field.
  • Preferred and forbidden terms, which guarantees the integrity of the brand and compliance to requirements.

By creating a shared database, businesses can even reduce the risk of error and ensure that voice is essentially homogeneous in all markets.

Subject-Matter Expertise

Engage professional translators that relate to the subject matter. This will also ensure accuracy but proper context to the translation. Working with experts such as engineers, scientists, or lawyers can bring about a higher quality translation. These experts may be able to enlighten things that would have otherwise confused a translator, and a way is made for more precise and efficient translations.

How Localization Technology Can Streamline Technical Translation

Literally, localization technology has transformed the technical translation process with the boom of digital tools. Here’s how this is done:

  1. Translation Management Systems (TMS): These systems do two things that bring an edge to the workflow in terms of speed and efficiency, namely: “it automates several tasks that otherwise depend on the strength of the human mind to do such as content extraction, translation, and quality assurance. All these save manual effort on the part of a project manager and hasten the cycle overall.”.
  2. Translation Memory: This application stores already translated segments, and translators may use them in further projects. This way, it enhances consistency and also reduces the cost of translation as well as accelerates turnaround time.
  3. Automated Quality Assurance: Localization technology can be run through automatic error checking for inconsistencies. The final output will be to the required quality standards, and it picks out issues likely to arise before delivery of translation.
  4. MT: While MT is certainly never a replacement for human translators, it does, however, a great deal in aiding the process if used with humans. Coupled with human translation, it can produce fast draft translations which can be read over and then edited, thus proving to be a cost-efficient and effective tool when dealing with massive projects.
  5. Collaboration Tools: The cloud-based platforms allow real-time collaboration among translators, subject matter experts, and project managers. This ensures feedback and revisions in the translation project so that all stakeholders are perfectly aligned with their objectives.

Make the Most of Technical Translation with Awtomated

Awtomated is able to simplify technical translation and bring further depth in business expansion and user engagement. It will help your business through the following:

  1. Automation of translation workflows: Here Awtomated automatically scans for new content and activates translations, which reduces human intervention and speeds up the time to market.
  2. Strong Terminology Management: The term base in the platform is very advanced. With this, terminology can be defined and managed to the best preferences in order to ensure perfect consistency throughout the translation work. Quality checks can even be incorporated to keep it on a high level.
  3. Access to Subject-Matter Experts: Awtomated TMS enables you to create templates with vetted translation providers. This means you will always work with the specialists who know what the content and context mean.
  4. Integration with Machine Translation: With large volumes of content, machine translation will prove cost-effective to source. With Awtomated TMS, the proper MT engine for each language pair is intelligently selected for a mix of speed and quality.
  5. Quality Assurance and Consistency: Automated error and inconsistency checks assure high-quality standards. It assures that the translated materials meet the expectations of both the users’ needs and regulatory requirements.

Further reading: Top 6 best Services and tools for managing product localization

Common Technical Document Translation Materials

Some of the common types of technical translation documents include:

  1. Patents: Technical translation of patents is critical for intellectual property protection in foreign markets. If the patent is mistranslated, then it can result in patent rejection or legal wrangles. It is therefore important to find translators with a good background in patent law and in its technical terms.
  2. User Manuals: User manuals are guidelines offered to the user on how to operate products or software. Proper technical translation of user manuals enhances the effective understanding of how to use and troubleshoot the products; it increases experience in using the products.
  3. Software Strings: Translating software strings that include user interface elements, buttons, error messages amongst others plays an important role in localizing software products. Proper technical translation makes the application look natural in the user’s native language.
  4. Scientific, Engineering, and Technical Articles: These papers contain complex ideas and vocabulary that demand one to be very conversant with the specialized knowledge. Accurate translation is necessary in order to disseminate information correctly and retain credibility in scientific and technical fields.

Conclusion

In a nutshell, technical translation plays an important role in sound global business strategies, but it poses unique challenges that must be managed with care and proper knowledge. Basing one’s business strategy on terminology management and localization technology can streamline translations and expand more deeply into the market.

Contact our team today to discuss how we can assist you with technical translation services to enhance user engagement and increase market reach. You can follow us on LinkedIn and X to get the latest insights.

Related Articles:

What Is Technical Translation?

10 Types of Technical Translation You Need to Know

Contact our team today to discuss how we can assist you with Technical Translation Services to enhance user engagement and increase market reach. You can follow us on Linkedin and X to get the latest insights.

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