Translation Begins!

It’s a new week! Today, the draft to our wonderful translators is due. I managed to finish both an English instructions document and French instructions document late last night. I experienced many different issues trying to convert the files to PDF format because of a problem with my OneDrive storage, so it took a lot longer than I had anticipated. Since Guillaume and Anissa will now begin tranlsating, I figured I would look at some additional requirements for preparing a document for translating. I found a few good sources on the web, like this link: https://content.lionbridge.com/writing-for-translation-10-expert-tips-to-boost-content-quality/

It’s Stefanie Frischknecht’s 10 Translation Tips to Boost Content Quality. One of the main things she points out is to choose your words properly. Looking at our instructions, I believe we’ve gracefully avoided using specific terminology that might require additional definition. Our sentences are as brief and as cut-down as possible. I find the Enlgish language to be very slang-heavy, and there are many words or phrases that simply would not work when translated to another language. I also explored a little bit about French linguistcs and I’m finding that noun-adverb-adjective relationships differ quite a bit; their sentence structures might be a bit more complex as well. More prepositions are used, more conjugations exist, so French sentences tend to be longer. I am excited to see what our French teammates end up with after this translation period. They’ve looked over the document and seem to find it sufficient, so I hope they don’t have any troubles!