In the translation services industry, global English has been established as the preferred style for human translators and machine technology. Besides writing clearly and concisely without resorting to jargon, details also matter when it comes to preparing a document to be translated.
In most cases, it is necessary to adjust your tone and writing style to make it more accessible to your readers. By following the basic rules for global English writing, you are already off to a good start to ensure your message will speak to a larger global audience.
For companies that seek the help of translation services, however, there are additional conventions one should follow to make sure your manuscript will be completed faster and cost less.
Follow these tips to make your writing more global and faster to translate. These might not be conventions that one necessarily thinks of at first, but it is worth knowing how you can make the translation process easier.
Avoid Unnecessary Punctuation
Translators are often tripped up by parentheses, especially those within a sentence. When there is machine or software-assisted translation involved, never break words at the ends of lines. Like human translators, automatic translators are also put off by dashes and underscored words.
For most translators, they prefer the traditional one space after a comma and two spaces after a period or other end punctuation. In many cases, translation agencies will strip the em- and en-dashes, along with any hyphenated terms from the documents that are sent their way.
Before sending a manuscript to a translator, make sure to disable automatic hyphenation in the prose text, including the spacing after punctuation marks. Word documents often have these automations programmed in, so it is important to carefully look out for them because these can be glossed over quickly.
Besides correctly formatting the document, leaving sufficient white space, and considering other file types you should use, following these spacing and punctuation conventions will help speed up the translation process.
Pay Attention to Symbols
Symbols and abbreviations are distracting to translators and machine technology. In addition to using tricky acronyms and abbreviations in your writing, use symbols sparingly and only when it is absolutely necessary.
The goal when it comes to global English is to be as transparent as possible, and symbols are often different from the normal flow of words. Here are a few examples you might run into in more technical writing:
- @ – at
- = – equal
- $ – dollar
- ” – feet
- ’ – inch(es)
This is by no means an exhaustive list, but just a small sample of what one might expect. A general rule of thumb for global English writing is avoid using symbols as much as possible, and rather just spell out the abbreviation or word.
Although most symbols could be programmed into the translation software and human translators, in most cases, have no trouble deciphering what they might mean, the usage of symbols in writing for translation is unnecessarily and highly discouraged.
Global English Matters
The global English writing style is recommended not only for clarity purposes, but also for the overall ‘feel’ and voice of the document. Localized translations must pay small attention to details to make it a more efficient process for translation services.
These conventions are more or less “unspoken” rules in the translation industry. While concise language and short sentences are important to keep in mind, paying attention to these often-overlooked rules will improve your end result.
The nice thing about some of these conventions is that they do not require you to be a native speaker of that language to revise the document.
For example, anyone can easily delete all the hyphens or related punctuations in a document in the finishing stages. For international teams that have global members where English is not their native tongue, this would be an easy task to them work on and finish.
Doing so makes communication and translation projects clearer, faster, and more cost-effective.
