Writing for Translation Even If Your Company Does Not Translate

By Val Swisher

Writing for translation is a topic that I speak about, write about, and shout about. I believe that making sure your content is understood by all your audiences, in their languages, is tantamount to doing good business. Writers whose companies don’t translate may think I’m not talking to them, but I am.

In this article, I explain why you need to care about translation—at least translatability—even if your company doesn’t pay a translation company for their services (see Figure 1), and I provide some best practices that you can easily put into place today.

Content Has Become Less Translatable

Over the years that I’ve been in the content creation business, I’ve seen a significant shift in the words that we use. In essence, we have changed our relationship with readers.

Twenty years ago, most technical documentation was written in the third person. For example, "The user puts the diskette into the disk drive." Technical content was stuffy, at least by today’s standards. It was formal. We often used numbered headings: section 1, section 1.1, section 1.2, and so on.

Back then, technical writing tended to be scientific, rich in nouns, and grammatically accurate. These factors made the text fairly straightforward to understand and translate.

Fast-forward 10 years. Our relationship with our reader had become friendlier. The user became you: "Read these instructions if they are important to you." Our tone shifted from stuffy to familiar. We started to use more idioms and jargon. The translation process became more cumbersome and more prone to error when translators had to interpret the author’s intent. With scientific language, the intent is usually obvious. With colloquial language, the intent isn’t always clear.

Today’s writing is vastly different from 20 years ago. Today, we are not just friendly with our reader, we want to sound like pals. Our writing has become increasingly colloquial and idiomatic—chummy—sometimes to the point of confusing some portion of the audience.

Examples abound. Consider the fitness-bracelet company that created a smartphone app to accompany the bracelet. Among the messages the reader might see was "Rise and shine!" This phrase makes sense if you are from the United States and have a good command of English. It makes no sense in many other cultures and languages. It doesn’t translate. A more straightforward phrase, like "It’s time to wake up," would have worked for more people.

Another example comes from the gaming industry. Gaming companies frequently call me because they are struggling with translating their characters and interfaces. One company told me that their characters needed to be "cheeky" in their voice and tone. Cheeky? Cheeky is all about jargon. Cheeky is your pal. And, unfortunately, cheeky does not translate.

I have seen this trend happening in technical communication. As the line between technical and marketing content blurs, we are faced with what I call the "friendly trend." And, just like cheeky, friendly can be hard to translate.

Many Americans Don’t Read Well

Any content that is difficult to translate is also difficult to read in English. Here’s why: according to Harvard University, 27 million American adults cannot read a simple pamphlet (www.hsph.harvard.edu/wp-content/uploads/sites/135/2012/09/doakchap1-4.pdf). In fact, 40 to 44 million adults are at the lowest levels of literacy. This means they can read only extremely simple information. The average reading level in the United States is most frequently quoted at sixth or eighth grade. Yet, we continue to create content that is well above the national average.

Technical writers usually think that their reader is smarter than the national average. However, this is not necessarily the case. After all, it is a national average. By making your content clear and concise—in other words, translatable—you help reach the average readers among your customers.

Many Americans Have English as a Second Language (ESL)

According to the U.S. Census Bureau in 2011, 21 percent of the U.S. population ages five and older spoke a language other than English in their home. That’s 60.6 million people, or one in every five. In fact, 7 percent of people who speak another language at home do not speak English at all. Another 15.4 percent report that they speak English "not well" (see Figure 2 for a breakdown by population group). Clearly, not everyone in the United States speaks English, particularly as a first language.

The population of nonnative English speakers in the United States is growing. These people are undoubtedly part of your customer base, or they will be. For this reason, you must make sure that your English content is easy to read for everyone, including nonnative readers.

Your Customers Are Translating Your Content Anyway

You may think that because your company doesn’t pay a translation company for translation your content isn’t being translated. You are almost certainly wrong. Chances are, your content is being translated. Just not by you, and not in a professional manner.

Google Translate and Bing Translate provide a free and convenient way of translating content, right on your Web page. When you provide English-only content to readers who don’t speak English as their first language (or at all), they probably run your content through a free machine translation (MT) engine. The problem with relying on free MT is that you have no control over the translation and its accuracy. Once put through free MT, the content is out of your hands. Who knows what your instructions tell your non-English reader to do?

Machine translation operates using the "garbage in, garbage out" paradigm. When a machine translates nonoptimized content—content that was written without translation issues in mind—what comes out is anybody’s guess. On the other hand, when a machine translates clear, concise, translation-optimized content, readers have a better chance of getting an accurate translation. The translation will still be imperfect, but cleaner source yields better translation results.

Cleaner in, cleaner out.

How Can You Optimize Your Writing Starting Today?

There are plenty of things that you can do to make your content easier to read, cheaper to translate, and faster to market. I can’t address them all here, but I can pass on a few that you can start doing immediately.

Write Shorter Sentences

If you do only one thing to make your content global-ready, let it be this: shorten sentences. Long sentences can be difficult to understand in the original language and even more difficult to translate. While any sentence-length guideline is somewhat arbitrary, and while long sentences are sometimes warranted, many businesses find a limit helpful. Here’s a common recommendation: if you use human translators, limit your sentences to 26 words. If you use machine translation, keep sentences to 24 words.

In case you wonder what a sentence of this length looks like, this sentence that you are reading right now contains exactly 24 words.

Write Less Content

When it comes to localization, keep not just your sentences but also your content in general as short as possible. Translation companies charge by the word. To make your content less expensive to translate, remove all needless words. A needless word is any word that does not affect the meaning of the sentence. Examples:

• This software is very easy to install. (Cut very.)
• First, create a new form. (Cut new.)

Another place to trim your copy is to substitute single, simple words for phrases. Example:

• Our software works on a variety of platforms. (Replace a variety of with various.)

When writers eliminate needless words, readers have an easier time understanding the content.

Say the Same Thing, the Same Way, Every Time

When I was growing up, I was taught to be creative when I wrote. Even in science reports (the equivalent of technical writing for a nine year old, the rule was, never say the same thing the same way twice. Always use different words, and use a lot of words. Using a lot of words shows off your vocabulary. I think that many of the writers I know took these instructions to heart, too.

This approach may make sense for some kinds of writing, but when you create business content for a global marketplace, you need to say the same thing, the same way, every time you say it. Here’s why:

• Variation is expensive.
• Variation is confusing.
• Variation is time-consuming.
• Variation is annoying.

Consistent writing has additional positive effects:

• It’s easier to read.
• It tells the same story.
• It lends itself to easier reuse.
• It facilitates structured authoring.
• It’s easier to update.

There Is No Magic Bullet

Idioms, jargon, and clichés sneak into our writing without us even noticing. Here are a few examples:

• Due diligence
• Bang for the buck
• Fine tune
• Back to the drawing board
• Pros and cons

Eliminate idioms and jargon when you are making your content clear and concise. It takes practice.

Use Consistent Terminology

Consistent terminology is critical for many reasons:

• It makes your content much easier to read for people of all reading levels.
• It preserves your company trademarks, service marks, copyrights, and so on.
• It safeguards your product and company branding.
• It ensures that everyone in your organization uses the same words to describe the same things.
• It allows you to use different XML chunks in a structured environment without having to rewrite for consistency.
• It reduces the price and the amount of time it takes to translate the content into multiple languages.
• It helps ensure the quality and consistency of the translations.

Make sure that you and your colleagues use the same terminology in a consistent way.

Grammar Counts

Some people act as if grammar no longer matters. At least, they speak that way. But grammar is important. Here are a few examples:

• Fewer vs. less: The situation of young people with less opportunities concerns many American cities. (Should be fewer opportunities.)
• Passive vs. active voice: Emails are blocked by the mail server. (Active: The mail server blocked the emails.)
• Nouns followed by an "-ing" verb: Go to the folder containing the files that you want to include in the group. (Better: Go to the folder that contains the files…)

In order to make your content as readable as it can be, watch your grammar.

Summary

Whether or not your company pays for professional translation, creating global-ready content is important for everyone. When you write for translation, your content ends up being easier to understand in all languages, including English. This is important for people who have an average U.S. reading level or who have English as a second language.

Your international readers and many of your ESL readers are going to translate your content, even if you do not. That means your content will be run through free machine translation engines, such as Google Translate or Bing Translate. Free MT engines are typically unreliable. By optimizing your English content first, the quality of the translation is likely to be better.

It’s not difficult to write global-ready content. By following the guidelines in this article, you can easily make a difference in your outcome.

And yes, I’m talking to you.

Val Swisher, CEO of Content Rules, is an expert in global content strategy, content development, and terminology management. Val helps companies solve complex content problems by analyzing their content and the way it is created. Val thinks that content should be easy to read, cost-effective to translate, and efficient to manage. Her customers include industry giants Google, Cisco, Illumina, Facebook, and Rockwell Automation. Her third book, Global Content Strategy: A Primer, was recently published by XMLPress. When not working with customers, Val can be found sitting behind her sewing machine working on her latest quilt. She also makes a mean hummus.