Mounting pressure on translation projects
We have learned from our recent research into the translation industry that translation demand is continually growing, and with tighter deadlines the pressure is on to deliver high-quality translations, fast. Project managers shoulder the burden of finding ways to work with their translators and reviewers in order to meet urgent deadlines, something I remember only too well from my days working at an LSP, and teams need to adopt appropriate workflows and flexible ways of working if they are to ease the strain caused by increasing demand.
The updates coming with SDL Trados GroupShare 2017 SR1 have been specifically designed with this in mind. Project creation, resource maintenance and analysis reports have all been improved to save time for project managers, but the main focus is on helping everyone work better together as a team to meet those short deadlines.
New ways of working: greater flexibility with the Online Editor
Often in our industry, working with file-based resources on individual desktops is still the main way of working, but this falls short when the sharing of resources and project collaboration are key: translation teams really benefit from working together on a platform like GroupShare, through which they can share and update information easily.
And the new browser-based SDL Online Editor, which is the major new component that has been integrated with SDL Trados GroupShare 2017 SR1, means even more flexibility for everyone working on a translation project.
The Online Editor reduces the stress of finding appropriate translators and reviewers who have the time to work on a project, as it widens the pool of potential resources: even those who don’t have access to a CAT tool can work in the Online Editor. In this way, it’s also easier for a project manager to involve subject-matter experts in a project when needed.
Designed to be intuitive and streamlined, the Online Editor nicely complements SDL Trados Studio when more agility is required in a project – thanks to the introduction of concurrent editing. Multiple translators and reviewers can work on the same file at the same time, each locking segments as they work, which means a file can be easily split and translated or reviewed more quickly than if one translator checked the entire file out to Studio.
For example, in a long document, this means that it is now possible to start translation, and while translation is still ongoing, start the review as well at the same time – opening up exciting new ways of working. The Online Editor has also been optimized for handling large documents robustly so that splitting and distributing such documents is no longer required.
What’s more, any users collaborating on a file can easily communicate with each other in real-time via the comments function – cutting out some of the time-consuming communication via email or through the project manager. I found facilitating these conversations quite a demanding part of my job as a project manager, and I’m sure others have similar experiences, so enabling them to happen independently will no doubt be beneficial. The comments, as well as track changes, are saved and can also be viewed when opening the file in SDL Trados Studio or MS Word.
Of course, many projects will still require the full feature set provided by Studio, but the Online Editor provides the flexibility that is increasingly needed when working with varying types of projects: it allows for faster turnaround times and introduces a new way of working that project managers can utilize when faced with more urgent translation requests.
upLIFT technology boosts translator productivity when working with GroupShare-based TMs
upLIFT has been increasing translators’ productivity and translation quality since it was introduced for file-based translation memories (TMs) with Studio 2017, by increasing leverage from the TMs in two ways:
- Fragment recall provides more matches from the TM due to fine-grained alignment of the words and phrases inside a segment.
- Fuzzy repair uses fragments from the TM to automatically fix fuzzy matches, so less post-editing is required.
And now upLIFT Fragment Recall and Fuzzy Repair are also available for server-based TMs, so translators working on GroupShare projects can also benefit from these features.
Transitioning to working with upLIFT on GroupShare projects is painless – TMs will automatically be upgraded for fine-grained alignment in the background outside of working hours, so translators can benefit from this feature straight away, and no manual intervention is required.
Increasing the productivity of translators means translations will be finished and returned more swiftly, and higher quality output from the translation memory means less time spent on post-editing, review and correction. It is often on the urgent projects that quality slips, as everyone is rushing to meet the deadlines, and upLIFT allows for more time to be spent on the details, reducing the chances of errors being missed so that the quality of the final translations can be maintained.
Which brings us back to the challenge of translation projects: working together to produce high-quality translations when under pressure.
Translation project management and teamwork come with everyday complications and difficulties to overcome – it’s the nature of projects. With GroupShare 2017 SR1, we hope to help teams overcome these challenges by not just allowing, but facilitating the flexibility that is needed to work in a more agile, reactive way, and develop the workflows that work for them to deliver translation projects successfully.
We are looking forward to your feedback on what we think is a very exciting Service Release for SDL Trados GroupShare 2017!
Find out more about GroupShare 2017 SR1
