About the service
I start with the subject, not with the sentences. Before the first page is translated I read the whole set through, pull out the recurring terms, abbreviations and designations, and assemble a working glossary that we agree on together. That day of preparation is what keeps the twentieth chapter speaking the same language as the first one, and it costs far less than discovering a naming conflict when the whole set is already laid out.
The work itself covers manuals, specifications, operating and maintenance instructions, safety sections and service bulletins. Structure and numbering stay exactly as they are in the source: clause numbers, cross-references, table numbers and figure captions keep their places, so your reader can hold the two versions side by side and point at the same line. Tables are rebuilt as tables rather than flattened into paragraphs; captions, footnotes and callouts are translated with the drawing in front of me. Units of measurement, tolerances and symbols get a separate check at the end, because a decimal separator in the wrong place costs more than a whole page of awkward phrasing.
Every document goes through a second pass with a cool head before delivery, and I hand the work back in the same format I received it, with the layout intact. When the source is revised later, I keep supporting the set: changed fragments are translated into the terminology already in use instead of being started from scratch.
What I want settled before we start:
— machine translation without human editing is not something I deliver, and I do not take on cleaning up a raw machine draft as if it were proofreading;
— terms are approved with you before translation begins; renaming a term halfway through means redoing the entire set, not a single file;
— documents that require a certified translator's attestation or notarisation are handled as a separate job and agreed in advance;
— source files in an editable format, plus drawings and screenshots at readable resolution;
— your existing internal glossary, if you have one: it outranks my own choices;
— one person on your side who can answer a terminology question within a working day.
The work itself covers manuals, specifications, operating and maintenance instructions, safety sections and service bulletins. Structure and numbering stay exactly as they are in the source: clause numbers, cross-references, table numbers and figure captions keep their places, so your reader can hold the two versions side by side and point at the same line. Tables are rebuilt as tables rather than flattened into paragraphs; captions, footnotes and callouts are translated with the drawing in front of me. Units of measurement, tolerances and symbols get a separate check at the end, because a decimal separator in the wrong place costs more than a whole page of awkward phrasing.
Every document goes through a second pass with a cool head before delivery, and I hand the work back in the same format I received it, with the layout intact. When the source is revised later, I keep supporting the set: changed fragments are translated into the terminology already in use instead of being started from scratch.
What I want settled before we start:
— machine translation without human editing is not something I deliver, and I do not take on cleaning up a raw machine draft as if it were proofreading;
— terms are approved with you before translation begins; renaming a term halfway through means redoing the entire set, not a single file;
— documents that require a certified translator's attestation or notarisation are handled as a separate job and agreed in advance;
— source files in an editable format, plus drawings and screenshots at readable resolution;
— your existing internal glossary, if you have one: it outranks my own choices;
— one person on your side who can answer a terminology question within a working day.
