The demand for multilingual content is skyrocketing in today's global market. You're facing increasing pressure to produce content in multiple languages while staying within budget. Now, controlling translation costs becomes critical.
This comprehensive guide will show you proven strategies to manage translation costs effectively while scaling your content.
Understanding What Drives Translation Costs
Before implementing cost control measures, it's essential to know your key cost factors. The most common are:
- Internal costs: The time and effort you invest in managing projects, preparing files, and formatting translations. Every hour you and your team spend on a task – done manually or inefficiently – is an hour you're paying for.
- External costs: Translation agency fees, per-word rates, rush charges. These fees may also become more inflated when you outsource to agencies that do not know your company terminology well and submit work that you still need to review and edit.
Common Inefficiencies in Translation Processes
Identifying inefficiencies in your current translation processes is the first step towards cost control. Common issues include:
- Manual Tasks: Time-consuming tasks, like extracting text from documents and reformatting translation, can be automated.
- Content Quality Issues: Inconsistent terminology use and repeated translations of similar content can inflate costs.
- Coordination Challenges: Lack of visibility into project progress and inefficient communication methods can lead to delays and increased expenses.
- Asset Management Problems: Difficulty in storing and retrieving previously translated documents and version control issues can add to costs.
Key Strategies to Control Translation Costs
1. Implement a Translation Management System (TMS)
A TMS like Redokun centralizes your translation projects, reduces manual tasks, and help your team collaborate more efficiently, no matter who is involved in the translation process.
You'll typically find a wide range of features bundled into a TMS, which is specifically designed for you to run your document translation projects easily from start to finish.
Look for features such as Translation Memory, glossary management, and automatic document formatting for translations.
2. Maintain Speed and Quality with Translation Memory and Glossaries
So how can built-in TMS tools like Translation Memory and glossary help you keep costs down?
Translation Memories
Translation Memories (TM) reduce the need for repetitive work by automatically storing your team's previously translated content so you can reuse or repurpose them in new projects. When your team gets assigned to a new piece of content, they'll get 100% accurate translation suggestions for text that is repeated from previous projects.
Alternatively, you can also pre-translate a document before handing it over to your team. This means running it through AI translation, which also takes into account the translation memories you have in your database, to produce a first draft to work with.
The more you translate, the more you add to your TM database, training the AI to become smarter at suggesting high quality translations in your company's context.
Glossaries
On the other hand, online glossaries ensure there is consistency across translations, no matter who is assigned to a document. This will drastically reduce the need for costly revisions and constant back-and-forth.
On Redokun, your glossary terms will be highlighted to the translator when they're working in the Online Editor, along with the translation your company prefers for those terms. If they're translated any differently than what your glossary indicates, they'll receive an alert when trying to submit the final version for your review.
3. Automate Repetitive Tasks
You save time and reduce errors when you automate those tedious administrative tasks that must be done at the start of every translation project.
They include:
- Prepping your source document for the translators, making sure it's in a file format that everyone can access and use
- Sending out project assignments and relevant attachments via email or chat, repeating the process for every language you cover
- Reformatting the document in each target language, because the original content lost its shape during the translation process
Using a TMS like Redokun, you only need to upload your original document once, without manually preparing the text for translation, then add the target languages and their assigned team - all from one place.
When you don't need to jump through hoops at the non-critical stages of your content localization process, you have more time to focus on the critical parts like go-to-market and distribution. Every minute you can save is a valuable resource.
Maximize Savings with ourTranslation Budget Planning Worksheet
Now that you've explored strategies to manage translation expenses, let's talk numbers. Try using this resource to map out your current translation costs and uncover potential savings for your stakeholders.
Our Translation Budget Planning Worksheet offers a detailed overview of your translation expenses, aiding in future planning. It allows you to:
- Break down fixed and variable costs, such as software fees and translator hours.
- Estimate the frequency of translation needs and calculate associated costs.
- Identify opportunities for cost reduction, like reusing translations or automating file preparation.
- Monitor your budget over time, comparing planned expenses to actual costs to avoid overspending.
Choosing the Right Translation Setup: Redokun vs. Traditional Agencies
Not sure if you really need a translation management system when you can just continue partnering with traditional agencies?
A TMS like Redokun actually helps you work better with your translation vendors, because it introduces automation, consistency, and information into your current process.
Considering these factors, your partnerships with external translators will become faster, smoother, and cheaper to maintain as more content gets translated in Redokun.
Summary
As your content demand grows, embracing efficient translation management practices is crucial for global growth. By implementing the strategies outlined above, you can control translation costs while maintaining quality and speed. Redokun is here to support you in this journey, offering tools and solutions tailored to your needs.
For more insights and tools to optimize your translation processes, explore Redokun's resources and start your free trial today.
