General Guidelines for Translation

• Simple Sentence Structure Keeping sentences concise increases readability and reduces word count. In addition, writing as clearly as possible in your source language can affect the quality of machine translation.
  • Write in a direct, active voice.
  • Avoid repetition.
  • Avoid ambiguous content.
  • Avoid noun strings, idioms, gerunds, and cultural references.
  • Use standard word order (e.g., subject, verb, object).
  • Establish consistent naming conventions.

  • Use consistent terminology.

    Note When writing for a software user interface (UI), the UI labels can influence terminology.

• Mitigate Errors The content should be clean; meaning that the content data should be error-free. Since translations are essentially a copy of the original project in a different language, errors could carry over into the new translated project.
  • Make sure the project is technically complete (e.g., fix broken links, references, condition tags, formatting, missing files).
  • Make sure the project is grammatically correct (e.g., watch for bad punctuation, awkward sentence segmentation).
  • Make sure files are logically structured and complete in the project.
• International Formats Depending on where you are in the world, different standards exist for writing measurements, temperatures, phone numbers, currency, dates. etc.
  • Spell out the name of the month for clarity on international dates (e.g., 05/11/2020 might reference May, or November).
  • Use metric for units of measure. Most of the world uses the metric versus the imperial measurement system. If your source language is accustomed to the imperial system it might be worth adopting the metric system to simplify the translation process (eliminating the need for excessive conditions).