How Acrolinx Makes Translation Compliant, Cost-Effective, and Accurate
Improve translation quality, cut costs, and keep content compliant with Acrolinx’s AI-powered content governance.
Why you need translation and localization governance
Customers prefer content in their native language
Translating content is inevitable for global business success. In our globalized world, many people speak English as a first or second language. Yet, 76% of customers prefer products that come with documentation in their native language.
High-quality content means translation at scale
And it isn’t just about getting your message into other languages. It's about doing it accurately, cost-effectively, and at scale while meeting local regulatory compliance. To be able to do so, your source content needs to be high quality.
Inconsistencies hinder successful translation
When the source text is hard to read and understand, or you have three different words to describe the same part of your product, the translation of the technical documentation will lead to inconsistencies. What does this mean for your business? Higher costs and longer review cycles.
How Acrolinx makes translation easier
As a content governance software, Acrolinx makes your content easier to translate:
Guidance for writers and reviewers
Acrolinx offers guidance on how to write short, clear, and readable sentences. This reduces the likelihood of translation errors and cost-intensive review loops.
Terminology check
Acrolinx checks that terminology is used consistently, which is important for rapid translation and localization that doesn’t cost a fortune.
Guardrails for translatable content — no matter who creates it
AI-generated source text is also governed, as Acrolinx’s generative AI feature comes with AI guardrails for your writing standards. This means that all of your texts are aligned with your corporate writing standards and regulations.
Regulatory compliance
Most countries and the industries within them have strict regulations on terminology, sentence phrasing, claims, disclosures, clarity requirements, and more. Acrolinx checks content for these nuances for each locale you serve.
Terminology features for consistent translation
The consistent use of terminology is crucial for successful translation and localization – across all types of text, from technical documentation to marketing collateral. Acrolinx supports terminology managers and users, like writers and reviewers.
Terminology management
How Acrolinx helps with terminology management:
- Manage and update your terminology in multiple languages and apply the changes instantly across your entire enterprise.
- Connect the Acrolinx terminology database to your external database (e. g SDL MultiTerm) to check terms.
- Review terminology in the Terminology dashboard and set preferences for how and when to use certain terms.
The terminology dashboard
In the terminology dashboard, administrators configure how Acrolinx checks terminology. For every term, you’ll set the status of how it should — or shouldn’t — be used. Some terms are overused, and you want to avoid using language customers find boring. Sometimes it depends on the context, so you can afford to be specific with how certain words are used. The dashboard is also a place where:
- Managers and Acrolinx administrators can review contributed terms. They also get an overview of how many terms exist in each language.
- Administrators can import and export terms, and customize your terminology to include duplicate terms or create custom fields and lists.
Terminology during writing and reviewing
Make your terminology accessible to everyone in your organization. In the Acrolinx Sidebar, users:
- See whether they used the correct term.
- Receive guidance on correcting deprecated terms.
- Discover new terms and submit them for review.
Also, they can look up information on term usage through a link in the scorecard, which leads to the terminology dashboard.
How to boost translatability with Acrolinx
Importing your terminology
Do you already manage your terminology in a terminology database? Like:
- SDL WorldServer
- Kaleidoscope
- XTM International
- GlobalLink Term Manager
- Smartling
- MemoQ
- Across (crossTerm)
- TermWeb
Connect Acrolinx to your terminology database to be able to check terminology in the Acrolinx Sidebar.
Configuring guidance for writers and reviewers
Next, configure the kind of guidance your writers receive. Make sure your guidance includes relevant characteristics of translation-optimized content. Let’s examine these characteristics and explore why they are crucial for successful translation.
Writing that lacks clarity isn’t only confusing for readers, but also for translators, leading to longer feedback loops and, in the worst case, wrong translations. Clear content minimizes ambiguity, making it easier for translators to convey the original meaning accurately.
Each of these factors helps reduce translation complexity, making sure that the translated text is accurate and reliable.
Checking content in the Acrolinx sidebar
The Sidebar guides writers to use your organization’s preferred terms, by highlighting the place in the text the word appears and suggesting the preferred variant.
It also offers suggestions on other aspects of translatable content. For example, it identifies overly complicated sentences and offers clickable suggestions based on linguistics and generative AI as well.
Discovering new terms in the Acrolinx sidebar
Acrolinx users can access the Terminology Tab in
the Sidebar. There, they can view a list of discovered terms and opt to contribute discovered terms to the company’s terminology database. These terms then
need to be reviewed by your terminologists to become
an official term.
Ready for content success?
Want more information on how Acrolinx helps with creating translatable content at scale?
