Get A Great Price For Straightening Out The Lingo

Having been an Engineering Manager in the field of consumer electronics for some years I have seen some major gaffes both in the field of engineering itself and also in relation to botched attempts at translating electronics concepts into other languages.

Most Consumer Electronics companies now are foreign in origin, with the British office being just a division of the main headquarters abroad and that was certainly the case with a very well known Japanese corporation where I worked for many years.

My role there was to head up the 'in warranty' repairs section of the company's particularly well known consumer product. My section was always busy but we were always held back from reaching our full potential due to language barriers.

The problem basically lay in the translation of technical concepts from Japanese into English. This is actually still a very common problem throughout the electronics industry.

Before a new or updated product is launched, all divisions of an electronics company receive a full set of circuit diagrams in order for the engineers to fully understand the technicalities of the product and to be able to repair it.

These diagrams, of course, need no translation, as the language of circuitry is universal. The problem usually occurs with the accompanying explanatory notes. These notes contain information on the most important components and their operation, and vitally, workshop setup and alignment information such as default settings, reset procedures and optical alignments.

Most originating headquarters seem to translate these notes in house and the result is usually disastrous. The translations tend to have been done verbatim and so fail to convey the actual intent behind the original text.

Usually the receiving engineering team then have to spend time and resources attempting to make sense out of the notes, using a combination of guesswork, engineering knowledge and the garbled translation.

This whole problem continues down the line as further technical updates are received. These updates usually contain vital information gleaned from the product as time progresses. They contain information such as: generic faults, common faults, revised setup and optical alignment procedures...and the remedies to these problems.

Once again this vital information is seldom received in an easily comprehensible linguistic format, leading to delays in the implementation of these new procedures and also to an unnecessary drain on engineer's time, in trying to decipher the updated notes.

Considering that this is a very common situation industry wide, I am amazed that the problem is allowed to persist when there is a simple remedy easily at hand.

Engaging the services of a professional translation company, at a stroke eliminates the confusion and waste of engineer's time associated with botched technical translations.

Take care though; all professional translation companies are not equal and the very best of them, when engaging upon a technical translation, will engage a linguist with a thorough knowledge of, if not an actual qualification in engineering.

They will usually offer a translation quote online, so that you can price up the project in advance and when you finally wish to proceed, you can upload your source document and you will receive a prompt completed translation in short order.

It makes no sense to put up with language barriers in this day and age. Expert translators are just a mouse click away...so if you can't make sense out of foreign lingo...let a linguist straighten out your problem for you!
by Merriam
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