6 Ways To Make Your Technical Documents Easier To Translate

If you have a technical document that you need to translate from English to another language, such as French, you need to be careful with how you write the technical document to begin with. The right formatting can make it easier to translate a technical publication or document.

Compress the File

When you have a big file that you need to translate, you will want to compress the file before you send it. Compressing the file will help protect against corruption with different fonts and styling methods you may have used in your document. Additionally, compressing the document will allow it to be sent, downloaded, and worked on faster.

Work with Editable Files

When you are creating a file to be translated, you will want to ensure that everything can be editable. You want to ensure that everything in the document can be edited, including images. The translation may take up more space than the original words, and things may need to be reformatted during the translation process to preserve the document's integrity. By providing an editable file, the translator will be able to format the file so that it can come back to you properly formatted.

Be Careful with Returns

You will want to be careful with both hard and soft returns in your document. Hard and soft returns can increase the time for the translator to create text that properly aligns with the document.

Write Clearly & Concisely

You want to write in sentences that are short and clear. You want to avoid using dependent clauses. Limit your writing so that there is a single thought in each sentence. Concise writing is easier for the translator to work with and will help the translator to stick to the original meaning of your text.

Avoid Cultural References

With technical documents, cultural references can still sneak into the document. Cultural references do not translate well, even if the words are translated perfectly, as the audience reading those words will not have the same cultural experience to interpret those words. That is why you will want to keep cultural references out of any technical work that needs to be translated into multiple languages.

Be Careful with Symbols

Finally, you need to be careful with using symbols in your technical work. Not all symbols that seem to have international meaning actually do. Make sure that the symbols you use in your work can be translated into the target language.

Reach out to a translation service like Translation Services Canada for more information.