This four-part series looks at IT in the translation industry or, more specifically, what is known as translation engineering. Part I (IT Solutions for Your Translated Materials) considers the growing field of translation engineering against the backdrop of the industry as a whole, and looks at exactly what translation engineers do. Part II (How can a translation engineer help me?) looks at the work of translation engineers in more detail and what solutions they can offer beyond translation. Part III (Things to know when ordering a translation with InDesign) looks at practical advices on preparing your materials for a translation that requires desktop publishing work.
And today we will meet one of our translation engineers at EVS Translations who talks about his workload, creating animation videos and speaking four languages.
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What led you to working in the translation industry? I grew up in a multilingual household, and by the age of 13 was fluent in four languages. As such, from a young age, I would translate simple song lyrics for fellow students etc… Using these skills later in life seemed natural and that’s how I came into the translation industry, where both my language and my IT skills are greatly appreciated and valued.
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What can Translation Service Providers offer beyond translation? We offer a whole lot more than just translations! Firstly, we can create reference materials, by aligning already translated files or working with materials you provide. We also offer document formatting services, such as creating a Word file from a pdf, or arranging a document so that both the source and the target language are displayed side by side, and so much more. Moreover, we work with audiovisual material, creating subtitles and voiceovers for client video materials. We also manage all client TMs (Translation Memories) to ensure they are up to date and accurate. If any client queries come back with preferential changes etc., we can ensure that these will be incorporated into all future translations.
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Have you been working on any interesting projects recently? Recently we’ve been subtitling an animation, which is always fun, as it aims itself at a younger audience, with plenty of humour. Also, we’ve translated comic strips which require specific preparations.
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EVS Translations has in-house IT teams at each of its offices. How does this benefit the client? This has several benefits. Firstly, it means we can work almost around the clock. Something in late? Not a problem, EVS Translations can handle it with its in-house staff based in different time zones. Also, between our translation engineers there is a lot of language diversity—our experts don’t just have IT skills but the linguistic skills to check problems with formatting, line breaks and so on, in texts. We can communicate with our colleagues directly, offer technical support to our translators whenever they need it, and respond to any changing client requirements straight away.
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Do you have any advice for clients who want to have their website translated? We can work with content management systems and website exports. If you can tell us what you are using, we can make sure that your website is handled in an appropriate way to ensure top-quality website localisation.
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What languages do you speak and how did you come to learn them? English, German, French and Luxembourgish. I grew up in a bilingual household in Luxembourg. I first learned to speak English and Luxembourgish from my mother and father. Then later my education at school in Luxembourg was in both German and French. I suppose it was kind of odd to spend so much time in my life learning how to speak with so many different people. But it gave me a great outlook on life—watching the news in all these different languages meant I understood issues from a lot of different perspectives.
