In-Country Review: Reviewing Translations in the Branch Offices of a Company

Imagine the following situation: An internationally established company centrally handles its translations. This means that its foreign branch offices receive the translated material from the company’s head office. In these branch offices, local marketing and product managers screen the translated texts, brochures or the localised website and provide feedback if any changes need to be made.

The underlying idea: in this way the company is able to regulate the quality of multilingual content without ignoring valuable on-the-spot input which takes cultural and linguistic particularities of the respective country into account. That is in itself a good thing, you may think. But this process is not without its challenges.

The Challenges

The colleagues in the branch offices who are charged with the task of reviewing translations are not usually translators or linguists. They are experts in a variety of other fields. And this can have far-reaching consequences:

• It is often the case that the colleagues in the branch offices cannot read the source text because they do not speak the respective language or because they do not have the source text at hand.
• They are not familiar with the company-specific multilingual translation processes or the tools and their respective interfaces (Translation Memory, CMS, terminological database).
• They make preferential changes or modify the text in another way which does not correspond to the source text. Or changes which violate terminological stipulations.
• They do not adhere to the guidelines which are defined in the Corporate Language Guide in order to ensure consistent brand communication in a range of different target markets.

Furthermore, the feedback from the branch offices often arrives late and in an uncoordinated manner, for example, in the form of illegible handwritten comments. Or suggestions for improvement are provided over the phone.

Having 20 or more foreign branch offices may involve considerable effort in the central translation department. And sometimes it may lead to frustration and to the realisation that the process simply does not work and the benefit is not worth the effort.

The question therefore arises as to how you might make it better.

What You Should Pay Attention to During Planning and Implementation

It is important to note that you must not have the same expectations of the reviewers in the branch offices as you would of language professionals. Nevertheless, the input provided by the reviewers in the branch office is still very valuable because they are close to the market and know their product particularly well.
In order to prevent those involved feeling discouraged, there are now various possibilities of structuring the process in a more coordinated manner. We have listed some aspects for you here.

Set Procedures and Responsibilities:

The branch offices ought to have a realistic time frame for their in-country review and a specific contact person. The exchange of texts ought to be clearly defined (via email, FTP server etc.). Upon expiration of the time frame, the translation ought to be considered to be released, so that any time-consuming follow-up action with the relevant people in the individual branch offices can be eliminated. Ideally you should determine just one reviewer who is responsible as the contact person—even if there are many people involved. In the best case this should be somebody who is proficient in the source language and has a certain feel for languages. Direct contact between the reviewer and translator also promotes mutual understanding and is something which most translation partners appreciate.

Optimally Prepare the Translations for the Branch Offices:

Use file formats which can be opened and edited with commonly available programs (e.g. Word, PDF) and in which the translations can be presented in the final layout. For not only the text but also the layout including images forms part of the overall appearance.

Provide Support:

Explain to your colleagues in the branch offices what you imagine the changes will be and what changes should rather not be made. That is where a “Review Guide” can prove useful. You can find an example of a Review Guide here. This document will help the branch office reviewers get “on board”. The background of the translation at hand will be explained to them and the aspects which you should pay attention to will be outlined. The Review Guide also explains why preferential changes or those which do not correspond to the source text or the defined terminology should be avoided. You can offer further help by providing specific instructions in which you indicate how you wish to have your adaptations done. You could show in a small webinar, for example, how your reviewers ought to use the PDF commenting feature.

Please note: Some things which you may take for granted because you deal with them daily may not be so clear for colleagues in other countries and cultures. These ought to be identified and mentioned.

Be Persistent:

Do not give up even if you get an extremely late reply from the branch offices despite having a clearly communicated time frame and excellently prepared translations or review guidelines. Invest time in your feedback. Show how an optimised approach reduces any unnecessary additional effort and what advantages this will have for the branch offices. They will benefit, since they will have the necessary brochures in the local languages or the localised website at their disposal—not only at the agreed time, but also in line with their expectations.

As a result, the feedback from the branch offices will possibly look better next time.

We wish you every success!