Translation Services
Six Windows Translations offers translation services exclusively for
German as source language
and
English as target language
The main reason behind this specialisation in one language direction is a generally applicable principle that is widespread though unfortunately not always adhered to in the worldwide translation sector, namely that a translator should only translate into his or her native language.
Compliance with this principle - which allows only a few exceptions in the form of truly bilingual or multilingual individuals - is what ensures the consistent high quality of all work that is completed.
Another major factor in quality assurance is narrow specialisation in specific industrial sectors. For Six Windows Translations, this leads to competitive advantages in the following fields:
Information Technology & Telecommunications
Automotive Engineering
Mechanical and Electrical Engineering
Marketing & Business Administration
By remaining rigorously within these fields and thus
restricting the range of terminology required for translation work,
Six Windows Translations is able to deliver accurate and
up-to-date
translations where confusion of terms is avoided.
Machine Translation, Translation Memory and Terminology Management Tools
The major (software) tool deployed at Six Windows Translations is Transit / Termstar, developed and marketed by the STAR Group.
Transit (in the versions 2.7, XV or NXT)
is a powerful translation memory tool that greatly assists translation using fuzzy
logic to scan existing pairs of sentences (known as segments) and determine
whether a specific sentence, or one similar to it, has been translated
before. If a match is found, this is presented to the translator and it can
be quickly adopted into the
current translation.
A simple example: German sentence # 1 - Das Auto ist blau.
The translator translates and the result is ...
English sentence # 1 - The car is blue.
The translator saves this sentence and moves on to the
next.
Now a similar sentence occurs later in the text ...
German sentence # 2 - Das Auto ist rot.
Transit now scans all stored language pairs (files), including the one currently in progress, to find a match for German sentence # 2. It then offers up a "fuzzy" match, as it only finds German sentence # 1 (with "blau"), but the match is approx. 75%.
Suggested English sentence # 2 - The car is ... .
The translator only needs to translate the word "rot" into "red" and can then save this sentence and move on to the next, and so on ... If you apply this principle to larger segments, it is quite obvious that Transit can accelerate translation quite extensively, and if the principle is applied to entire documents, for example the Owner's Handbooks for a Mercedes A-Class and a Mercedes B-Class, huge tracts of text can be translated automatically in seconds.
Termstar is the terminology management (dictionary) tool that is integrated into Transit. It provides enormous assistance in ensuring that translators consistently use the same terms for the same things. Double-language entries (terms) in Termstar are highlighted in the working text (usually) in red and can be adopted into the text with a simple key combination (Alt + t).
Another major advantage of Transit is that it perfectly preserves the formats of the original documents which, in many cases, can be extremely complicated, making it practically impossible to simply "overwrite" the source text. Transit "imports" the orginal documents, be they from MS Office, the Lotus Symphony, Adobe DTP software or many other word processors, or be they XML, HTML or text-only files, and saves the original formatting information in separate files. The translator works with a so-called "language pair" in which both the source and target language are presented in a fairly simple text-only format in a very manageable user interface. On completion of the translation, including spellcheck and terminology check, Transit "exports" the files, thus piecing together the text and formats in exactly the same way as they originally were. Rework by DTP specialists may be required, but Transit keeps this overhead to a minimum.
In that it accurately counts the number of characters, words and lines in a translation text, Transit also ensures that billing for services is based strictly on a correct assessment of the volume of work performed.
There are many other translation and terminology tools on the market, for example Across and Trados. These tools may well be equally as powerful as Transit, but they are not used at Six Windows Translations for various reasons, high costs and a certain sense of loyalty to STAR as a former employer and current client being among them. A number of translation projects, especially in the early years of the firm, have been completed using the IBM Translation Manager, whereby this tool comes across as slightly obsolete and overly complicated, which is why it is not recommended here (it also appears to have been taken off the market at the moment).
It is our view that a translator who does not use advanced translation memory and terminology tools is not really a translator at all in the modern sense of the word, though translators of literature and other non-technical material are likely to be notable exceptions.
For more information on Transit / Termstar, visit the website of the STAR Group. The company is also one of the leading translation agencies in Europe, and maintains a global network of branch offices, so if you are interested in translations into a large number of languages, STAR will be able to provide the necessary professional resources.
Speed
Speed
Speed
Reliability
Reliability
Reliability
Quality
Quality
Quality