Japanese Earthquake-Tsunami Relief

After the 9.0 earthquake that was followed by a tsunami that wiped out many large coastal communities in Japan and has left a toll of more than 10,000 people dead, it is clearly the largest disaster that the country has faced since WWII. Our partners and translator friends in Japan, as well as the staff at PLG, have been effected in one way or another. The northwest suburbs of Chicago have one of the largest Japanese-American communities in the United States.

We urge our business partners and friends to consider giving a small donation to their local chapter of the American Red Cross. We send our prayers and wishes to Japan. "Fall seven times and stand up eight." - Japanese Proverb

A few local chapters of major U.S. cities can be found below. If you do not see your local chapter, please visit the national American Red Cross at http://www.redcross.org/

Chicago
http://www.chicagoredcross.org/

New York City
http://www.nyredcross.org/

San Francisco Bay Area
http://www.redcrossbayarea.org

Boston and Massachusetts Bay Area
http://www.bostonredcross.org

Miami and South Florida Region
http://www.southfloridaredcross.org/

Los Angeles Region
http://redcrossla.org/

Houston Area
http://www.houstonredcross.org/

Atlanta Metropolitan Area
http://www.georgiaredcross.org

How Translation Memory has helped PLG Clients

The Precision Language & Graphics, Inc. Project Highlight for March is going to include more than just one company. It will represent a multitude of benefits of Translation Memory (TM) by highlighting a variety of client cases. Below you will find the benefits of TM that are listed in this month's Featured Article, as well as the clients that benefited the most from each attribute.

Consistency: While accuracy of translation is of the utmost importance for Walmart Stores, Inc., maintaining consistency is equally important. The Walmart brand name is vital to the success of the organization, and company-wide consistency is apparent through all of their retail locations. The translation services that Precision Language & Graphics, Inc. provides are no different. PLG prides itself on being one of the Approved Translation Vendors for Wal-Mart Stores, Inc., and the uniformity of the translation quality is one of the reasons that the business relationship has stayed strong since 2008. Spanish and French are such diverse languages that the TM allows for consistency among translators and product lines.

Faster turnaround: Speed of service is always a key component of translation. Nexgrill Industries, Inc. has certainly benefited from decreased turnaround time, due to a help from increased productivity that Translation Memory offers. The nature of the projects for Nexgrill is very technical, and the materials themselves are often high in volume. It is because of this technical nature and amount of words that we were able to decrease the turnaround time by about 20%. When you have projects that are breaching month-long time tables, 20% can be a substantial amount.

Cost-saving: It is always important for service providers as well as clients to save on cost while maintaining quality. As a long-term translation partner, Precision Language & Graphics, Inc. has worked hand in hand with HydraForce, Inc. to translate their website and manuals which generally exceeded 5,000 words. These projects were of a very technical nature and had a high percentage of repeated words. The TM software identifies fuzzy matches (similar words) and exact matches. PLG is able to provide each at a discounted rate, but the major cost savings come from Exact Matches on high-volume projects. The combination of a large-volume text, exact matches and Translation Memory software led to significant savings.

Multilingual Versatility: The client that enjoyed this feature the most is… everyone! The Translation Memory software is extremely adaptable, in that it supports an unlimited number of languages. This enormous support comes from the fact that all of the translations that develop the TM database are human made. The human capacity for translation is limitless, so the software is, in essence, limitless for language capacity.


All in all, the pros of Translation Memory are vast. Explore how Translation Memory-Assisted Translations can supplement your business by visiting http://www.plg-online.com/translation.html  

Amazon Kindle Sweepstakes Business Card Promotion

 We would like to extend our thanks to each and every one of our valued customers! This month we will be running a sweepstakes for all business card translations.

All Translated Business Card Orders, from now through April, will automatically be entered for a chance to win the All-New Amazon Kindle WI-FI!

(Offer ends April 30, 2011. Limit one entry per customer. Winner agrees to have first name and company name published in the PLG Newsletter and social media sites. Amazon Kindle a $139 value.)

For more information about our multilingual business card services, please visit http://www.plg-online.com/business_cards.html

The Benefits of Translation Memory and its Misconceptions

 Let us begin with the basic question - What is Translation Memory? Translation Memory is a software application that serves as a linguistic database. The core concept of Translation Memory, or simply known as TM, is to store all of your translated words and phrases in a database that can be accessed for future projects. When starting a new project, the software recognizes these terms and phrases so you can maintain consistency throughout your documents.


The main benefits of using a TM are:

• Consistency: The use of a TM provides the translator with the original translation of a unique word or phrase to help prevent them from using a different translation in the future. This is especially helpful for phrases that do not have a parallel translation, or those terms that are culturally unique to a language. The TM can also be transferred from one translator to the other, which ensures consistency among colleagues. This improved consistency is extremely beneficial for highly technical documents, repeat clients, and organizations whose brand image is sustained by consistency.

• Faster turnaround: Another major benefit to utilizing a TM is a shortened project turnaround time. Translating highly technical words can be a cumbersome task, but thanks to the utilization of a TM, it only needs to be a challenge once. The art of translation is more than translating text. It is also about maintaining context as the TM manager needs to be diligent in “recycling” terms that are appropriate.

• Cost-saving: Translation Memory can serve as a cost-saving tool on high-volume projects. The TM software can recognize terms that are exact matches or close matches throughout a given document. Cost savings can be particularly substantial for a highly technical manual, the size of a book, with many repeated words. Please note, due to factors such as file processing, pre-job analysis, advanced training and software investment, the cost-saving feature of TM technology diminishes for small projects.

• Multilingual Versatility: Translation Memory serves as a linguistic support mechanism for every language in the World. Regardless of the language being translated, the TM can serve as a database for any translated text. This is a tool that is not restricted by the commonality of a language, because all of its contents are derived from human translations.

Common Misconceptions about Translation Memory:

• While assisted by a computer, Translation Memory is generated by a computer. Machine Translations, like Google Translate, are computer automated translations. Translation Memory is NOT synonymous with Machine Translation. Machine Translations are computer generated translations that are quick but are often inaccurate and of poor quality. On the other hand, Translation Memory stems from human translators and is screened by a TM Manager. Only the most fitting and appropriate translations are used.

• “Exact Matches” for TM are not free and they still do take some time to review. There are still costs incurred in this process, including the minimum charge (if it is a small project), the time to review the generated translation, the efforts of the manager to determine if the “recycled” translation is applicable and the actual cost of the technology.