Technical Translation and Localization

Technical translation is a type of activity wherein translators are employed to translate texts to suit the growing need of many industries to localize or sometimes internationalize the content of their publications and communications. Most translation agencies provide the following services: the internationalization of materials and texts, the localization of software or other forms of print media, systematic documentation, materials for training, sheets for data collection and storage and web sites.

Technical translations may also involve medical translation, which is today a quite specialized field in itself, because medical translation especially in large volumes are difficult to handle without the prior training and expertise in that particular area. Localization, on the other hand, is a different ballgame altogether.

Localization differs from simply direct translation, because it involves a significant amount of research before its effective implementation. Take a commercial website as a case in point. If this website had spent the last ten years catering to a specifically British audience, and then it wants to break into the Malaysian market, then it has to localize itself first before it can make any conceivable impact with the newly perceived market. One can say that localization is one huge paradigm shift that involves a lot of time and labor before its finalization.

Software localization, on the other hand, follows the logic of localization in the same way. Software is localized to fit the needs and the linguistic and cultural peculiarities of a particular region. This will allow the software to become more user-friendly to the new target market. In effect, localization and software localization is one sure way to increase the revenues of a particular entrepreneurial endeavor because it allows you to draw within the folds of your business new markets and potentially new needs. By revealing the needs of a new target market, by literally making your product more “palatable”, then you are sending a message to the new market that you are professional, and you are there to stay, to provide the specific services that you can to make the market satisfied with your goods and services. For large companies, software localization takes place even before the finalized version of the software is released. Usually, the localization takes place during the very early versions of the product, so that the localized content would be able to evolve with the final product as well. If all is well, the software would be truly localized.