CONTENT TRANSLATIONS: WHEN YOU NEED QUALITY

Translation agencies are a crucial partner to companies and individuals alike who strive to reach new markets and partnerships. For 25 years now, Content Translations has provided top quality translation services to and from a growing number of languages. Achieving this is no small feat. We talked to owner, Tonya Traykova, to learn the secret of the outstanding quality offered by Content Translations.

What is the recapitulation for you, as owner of Content Translations, after 25 years on the market?

In these years we became one of the most respected translation agencies in Bulgaria and we gained serious professional experience in different fields of translation. Now we offer translation services on all European languages, plus a number of rarer tongues. We partner with translation agencies and direct customers from Germany, Austria, the US, Canada and others.

We are a client-oriented company. This is part of our corporate identity and is based on individual approach towards each client, mutual trust, honesty, reliability and quality services.

In this respect, our clients and their loyalty through the years are our greatest achievement.

Continuity is one of our greatest advantages. As a small family company, we have unique resources such as human, social and financial capital, shared goals, personal involvement, mutual trust and loyalty. For almost 20 years, in Content Translations has worked the second generation of our family – my daughter Gergana Kovacheva is office manager, key account manager and partner.

Will AI replace human translators, in your opinion?

We, in the translation industry, increasingly ponder this. Tech experts say that machines will replace a number of professions, including translation. Indeed, AI is finding new applications in all fields of industries by the day.

However, I believe that machine translation is far from the moment when it will fully replace true translators. It is still incapable of true intelligence like understanding a text and translating its true meaning. For now, it is just a tool.

This is why we should be careful when using such tools and should always check the internal connections between the words in the sentence, the use of proper terminology according to the context, the word order, phrasing, punctuation, consistency of used terminology etc. Otherwise the result will be a disaster.

Of course, we are open to new technologies, such as the use of AI systems in translation. This is why our portfolio includes Machine Translation Post Editing.

Content Translations works with diverse and sometimes exotic languages. How do you find professional translators?

We have built long-term relations of trust and friendship with most of our translators, but we constantly need to expand our base of professionals. Our selection procedure has a two-stage evaluation. First we check the candidate's credentials, experience, field of competence and references. Test translation is the second step. Things are different with exotic languages because the pool of authorised translators is considerably smaller.

How do you guarantee the quality of translation?

Having a team of highly qualified linguists is a must, but not enough. We are proud of a well organised internal Translation Quality Assurance process, that is ISO optimised and oriented towards a wide spectrum of needs and strict requirements.

Our internal procedures for Translation Quality Assurance (TQA) and Linguistic Quality Control (LQC) guarantee high standards of execution coordinated by project managers, editors, proofreaders and language experts in different fields, as well as translation memories, dictionaries, instructions for stylistic and desktop publishing formatting of the translation. Computer-Assisted Translation tools (CAT Tools), such as SDL Trados Studio, memoQ and Across, make a significant part of this process. They integrate configurable QA functions in regard of consistency of the used terminology, formatting, punctuation, missing or incomplete translation and conformity with local standards, and independent software tools for quality assurance such as Xbench.

An integral part of our internal system for quality control is our online platform for project management, LSP.expert. It helps us to track the projects and to provide full transparency.

Our translation services are ISO 17100 certified.

Content Translation offers services in several specialised fields. What are the differences in translating technical, law, medical, financial, IT and marketing texts?

Translation in all of these fields requires in-depth knowledge and being fluent in the professional lingo. The translated text should match fully the source.

However, marketing translations have their own specifics and ask for special skills. Translators should be able to not only translate the text correctly, but also to convey to the target audience and the clients the underlying concept and message.

Here is the place to mention transcreation, or creative translation. This is a type of marketing translation that adapts a creative text for another language or culture not necessarily literally, but by preserving the original goal, style and tone while paying attention to local traditions and the target audience's cultural specificities. This is a translation at an exceptionally high level.

ISO 17100:2015 certified!

Sofia, 1 Pop Bogomil St, EVROTUR 2 Business Center, floor 3, office 13

phones: +359 2 488 48 08, 0882 98 2020

www.content-translations.com