However, growing content demands often lead to skyrocketing translation costs and maybe even a decline in content quality. 💸 Whether you rely on your internal team or a translation agency for translations, every new document that needs translating would add additional hours or dollar signs to your plate.
So how can companies effectively scale their translations, all while preserving the content quality across all markets? Here are three practical tips to help you with just that — no matter how much content is waiting to be translated, your team can handle them quickly, precisely, and happily. 😉
- Set up an organized process to streamline & automate translations
- Start using previously approved translations & machine translation
- Leverage your internal team’s expertise
(1) Set up an organized process to streamline & automate translations
The good news is that you’ve already started this step by looking into translation management software or, better yet, trying Redokun!
Most teams that feel like they can’t keep up with translation demands share the same problem: a translation process that’s far too manual, repetitive, and slow.
This happens when you’re copy-pasting lines of text, then translating them inside spreadsheets, or liaising with different translators using separate email threads and chatrooms. And what’s probably the worst of all… having to repeat the same steps of copy-pasting text to recreate the translation in the same style and design as your original document.
So what’s the first step to a more organized, streamlined, and automated translation process? Trying a translation management system like Redokun. This is a tool that’s already set up for your next translation project — all you need to do is upload your first document to see how the new flow will go.
Doing this today can help you…
- Spend significantly less time on manual copy-paste work by uploading your documents to a translation management platform that extracts the text for you.
- Gain better visibility and control over ongoing translations in multiple languages, across multiple documents at one go.
- Automatically apply your original document’s formatting to all the translations so that little intervention is needed from your design team. Go straight to market after a quick review.
Overall, these will bring down the time and money your team has to spend on these projects, freeing up time to take care of growing content demands.
(2) Start using previously approved translations & machine translation
Here’s another reason why teams struggle to fulfill translation demands on schedule: they’re always translating everything from scratch. They need to be in an “intense concentration” mode all the time to come up with new and original translations, which would then prolong the project.
And if you hire an external vendor or agency to do this “intense concentration” translation work, you’ll get a massive translation bill at the end of the day. 🥲
But here’s the thing: your company doesn’t need new and original translations all the time, especially with the high volume of content you need to prepare for multiple markets. What’s more, most of your content may be repetitive anyway.
What you really need is translations that are:
- ✅ Consistent and accurate across all content.
- ✅ On brand, done according to the style and voice of your company.
- ✅ Done and delivered quickly.
So what’s the solution? That would be using Translation Memories and Machine Translation — both of which are usually features that are built into translation management systems like Redokun.
Since you’ve already translated a lot of content, why not put them to use in upcoming projects?
Every time you finish a translation project, Redokun saves the work into a kind of database, known as Translation Memories, so that you and your team can automatically track what you’ve already translated before, and which translations you can reuse or repurpose in other documents.
Then, what about the texts your team has never translated before? They can simply rely on the help of Machine Translation services like DeepL or Google Translate. This way, they could basically go on “autopilot” while translating new content as they will have the option to select (and edit) translations suggested by the tool.
Doing this today can help you…
- Significantly reduce the time your team needs to translate a single document, even if it’s a huge or complex one.
- The less time your team or vendor spends in that “intense concentration” mode of translating, the less you’re charged for the work (in terms of money AND effort).
(3) Leverage your internal team’s expertise
It’s absolutely normal to outsource your projects to vendors or agencies. However, it’s often extremely difficult to find external translators who are also subject matter experts in your specific industry.
As a result, you may be paying a lot of money for translations that ultimately do not meet your company’s standards and require fixing.
This often happens when your content falls into a niche or industry that uses technical terms or unique terminology.
Another strategy to reduce translation costs is to leverage your internal team's knowledge and expertise, even if they are not professional translators.
Your colleagues and partners most likely already have a deep understanding of your industry and know the common terminology your business uses. And they also probably speak the language of one of the markets you’re targeting.
In these cases, you can equip them with the right tools to do the translations themselves easily. By translating on a platform like Redokun, they can leverage Machine Translation and Translation Memories — all while tapping into their own knowledge about the industry — to produce high-quality content in way less time than professional translators.
Doing this today can help you…
- Cut down the costs of hiring professional translators who often present subpar work because they are not familiar with your company’s jargon and terminology.
- Quickly produce content quality that doesn’t require multiple rounds of review and correction; time saved is money saved for your business.
Summary
As content demand grows for mid to large-sized businesses, managing translation costs becomes crucial. Embracing these strategies will not only save resources but also improve the overall efficiency and quality of translations.
Even with all the different technologies and strategies we discussed above, you only really need one tool to start implementing them today, and that is a translation management system. Do give Redokun a try with your team today — translate up to 10,000 words free of charge today.
