Save Money on Content Translation With High-Quality Source Content

Content translation plays a vital role in connecting with a global audience. However, many businesses often ignore how the quality of their source content affects translation costs. When content is poorly structured or unclear, it leads to higher expenses, delays, and inconsistencies in different languages. By focusing on creating high-quality source content, businesses make the translation process smoother. This approach helps them cut costs and boost efficiency.

A quick intro to high-quality content translation

Content translation — what does that mean?

Content translation means converting written material from one language to another while maintaining its meaning, tone, and intent. It typically goes beyond simple word-for-word substitution. Instead, it considers cultural nuances, audience expectations, and industry-specific terminology. Content translation involves human translation, machine translation, or a combination of both.

What’s high-quality source content?

High-quality source content serves as the foundation for an efficient translation process. It provides clarity, consistency, and accuracy, reducing the need for extensive revisions in translated content. Here’s an overview of the most important characteristics of great source content:

Clarity

Clear content prevents confusion and reduces translation errors. When language is vague or too complex, it causes misunderstandings. These misunderstandings often lead to expensive rework of the translated content.

Consistent terminology

Using consistent terminology across documents is essential for maintaining message integrity in multilingual content. A translation management system with a well-defined terminology and translation memory helps improve uniformity.

Conciseness

Concise content simplifies the translation process. Why? Because shorter, well-structured sentences are easier to translate accurately. Lengthy or convoluted sentences increase the risk of errors and additional costs.

Accuracy

Accurate source content minimizes the need for corrections post-translation. Errors in the original language compound across translations, leading to confusion and higher expenses.

The hidden costs of poor source content

Poor source content directly influences the quality of the translated content. Often, people use the phrase “garbage in, garbage out” to refer to the negative effects of bad source content.

Poor-quality source content is often unclear and uses terms inconsistently. This leads to a cascade of hidden costs around content translation. Poor-quality source documents:

• Require additional time and resources due to excessive revisions.
• Lower turnaround times and create potential inconsistencies across different levels of the translation process.
• Increase translation expenses due to inefficient processes with excessive revisions.
• Cause bigger delays in content translation, leading to missed opportunities in new markets.
• Lead to mistranslations, causing reputational damage and customer dissatisfaction.
• Reduce visibility and engagement in target markets as search engines struggle to index low-quality translated content.

The solution: High-quality source content decreases translation costs

Overcoming the challenges associated with poor source content starts with a strong content strategy. Developing high-quality, structured source content has many benefits. Businesses significantly reduce translation costs and improve efficiency, publishing high-quality multilingual content.

Clear, concise writing eliminates ambiguity. Instead of spending time deciphering unclear messages, translators have more time to focus on accurate and efficient content translation instead. 

High-quality source content also improves the effectiveness of translation memory usage and machine translation. Reusing high-quality translated content reduces costs associated with redundant translations. This shortens turnaround times, streamlining the entire content translation process.

Another thing is, optimized source content improves search engine visibility and engagement. This way, translated content is effectively indexed and easy to find by search engines in new markets. With structured, high-quality content, businesses maximize the impact of their highest-converting landing pages across different languages, ultimately expanding their global reach and engaging new audiences.

With high-quality source content, companies work more efficiently and avoid costly revisions. And even better, they increase customer trust and brand reputation in multilingual markets. Investing in well-structured content from the start enables businesses to enter new markets faster, attract potential customers, and maintain consistency across various content types and target audiences.

How to build high-quality source content

Use plain language to minimize ambiguity

Plain language improves readability and comprehension, making it easier for translators to work efficiently. Avoiding jargon and overly complex sentences makes content accessible across different levels of language proficiency.

Follow established content standards or style guides

Following content standards or a style guide helps maintain consistency in structure, tone, and terminology. This standardization simplifies the translation process and improves content quality across various content types.

Avoid idioms that are hard to translate

Culturally specific expressions don’t have direct translations and lead to confusion in different markets. Using universally understood language helps maintain clarity and effectiveness.

Structure content logically for better understanding

Organizing content with clear headings, bullet points, and concise paragraphs improves readability and comprehension. A well-structured document helps translators work more efficiently and makes sure the content flows logically for different language adaptations.

Use active voice instead of passive voice

Active voice makes sentences clearer and more direct, reducing ambiguity in translation. Passive voice introduces complexity and doesn’t translate well into other languages. Writing in an active voice helps maintain clarity and precision across multilingual content.

Tools to support better content translation

Many tools help create high-quality source content. These include authoring software, terminology management systems, and content quality assessment tools. A translation management system (TMS) organizes and streamlines the translation workflow, ensuring consistency across different languages. Also, terminology management tools centralize approved terms and help translators maintain accuracy and uniformity.

Content governance software for source content optimization

Content governance solutions like Acrolinx play a vital role in optimizing source content for translation.

Acrolinx helps organizations maintain clarity, consistency, and compliance with content standards. This leads to high-quality content that facilitates efficient translations.

AI-powered support for writers

Acrolinx provides helpful insights and recommendations for improving readability, terminology consistency, and style. Writers use Acrolinx directly in their own tools, via the Acrolinx Sidebar. Clickable, AI-powered correction suggestions help them fix content issues and helps optimize their content for the following translation.

Automation features

Acrolinx not only integrates with authoring tools via the Acrolinx Sidebar, but also offers automation capabilities. This means it’s possible to integrate it into workflows like content publication, or to regularly batch-check whole content repositories. This way, it helps make sure that all content is ready for translation. Even published content stays aligned with your content quality standards.

Translatability-related metrics

Acrolinx evaluates the quality of source content and provides metrics like clarity, which relate to translatability. Content teams measure these metrics over-time, allowing them to make data-based decisions around source content creation, refining text for optimal machine and human translation outcomes. And of course, it’s also possible to monitor translated content with Acrolinx for content quality assurance along the content supply chain.

Various integrations

Acrolinx integrates with existing authoring environments, making it easy for writers to align content with predefined quality benchmarks before translation begins. And more, Acrolinx also integrates with translation tools, like terminology systems, to synchronize your source content terminology and your translation terminology to maintain terminological consistency.

These capabilities improve your content strategy, streamline content translation processes, and reduce costs associated with revisions and misinterpretations.

Create high-quality source content with Acrolinx

Acrolinx offers AI-powered content governance, helping businesses improve terminology management, style consistency, and readability. By integrating Acrolinx with a translation management system, organizations streamline their content strategy and localization strategy. This leads to significant cost savings and improved audience engagement.

By prioritizing high-quality content, businesses can effectively manage their content translation process, reduce costs, and improve their global reach.