A Complex Project
Problem: A major SDS authoring company had work
done by another large, well-known translation agency, and
the work was not done properly. The translation project
was key to their core business and if not done correctly,
jeopardized the client’s entire business offering. This
client was certainly in distress and needed an urgent solution
to a large problem.
The Solution: GLTaC understood the requirement and
immediately began working with the client to do a proper
translation. The task put before us was not merely translation,
but also more of a review with an assurance that the translations
were done in accordance with current, applicable regulatory
requirements (this was for a highly regulated industry).
There were additional requirements, such as stating a reason
for any changes made to the existing translation, identifying
text that was incorrect in the source language, identifying
which regulations were the best to apply, identifying and
removing duplicates and so on. The requirements were extensive
to say the least.
Work began in earnest and as our translators began to
go through the files, many issues arose, necessitating
communication with the client for clarification. In a short
span of time, the project was generating roughly 120 emails
per day. The client asked us to maintain a record of all
the changes to the source file, and to help track all the
modifications to the text made by our translators as each
translator found something else to correct.
Two weeks prior to the delivery date, the client felt
there were enough issues with the source text that it needed
a thorough review. We were already up to over 60 changes
at that point, and on track to hit the delivery date. After
a weekend’s review, a spreadsheet arrived from the client
with over 200 more changes. The next day a completed spreadsheet
arrived that expanded that list to over 420 changes in
total. When we looked at the scope of changes across the
36 languages, we were tracking over 15,000 changes.
Managing this in an Excel file would be a challenge, but
doing it with an XML file required a whole new level of
file manipulation expertise. Just keeping track of all
the various changes and codes that went with each language
was a huge task. Teamwork became critical insofar as one
project manager focused on tracking changes and the other
did all the file manipulation mechanics.
Due to the XML file, automated QA techniques were not
practical, so a manual review process took place, with
multiple editors scanning every line of translation for
errors, spacing, punctuation, correct placement of special
programming codes, and proper tags for the XML formatting,
etc. for over 600,000 lines of text.
The Result: The client was very happy with the results
and timing of this project and indicated that after our
effort their client complaints dropped by 90%.