Background

The Coimbra School of Nursing (ESEnfC) is a public benchmark institution both in Portugal and abroad, through proven contributions in the area of nursing. The school is heir to the oldest nursing school in Portugal, actively intervening in society in general and in the national health system in particular.  Its teaching is recognised at home and abroad, so it is only natural that the school’s influence extends across borders and that their linguistic needs are on a global scale. The use of language services, namely translation, is therefore inevitable.

Challenge

ESEnfC contacted SMARTIDIOM to request the translation of approximately 152,000 words, from European Portuguese to British English, for tender purposes. ESEnfC decided to entrust the translation of its documents to SMARTIDIOM, justifying its choice with the trust deposited in the team and the company’s work methods, already proven in previous work projects. The project represented a demanding challenge for SMARTIDIOM from beginning to end, as the requirements went beyond any target language specifics. The complexity of the topic (nursing), the word count and the delivery deadline (about two weeks), exacerbated by a delayed in preparing the documents to be translated, were just a few some of the hurdles to cross. The fact that certain text fields included a character limit made the whole process even more difficult as the translation might not always flow as intended. All these difficulties made it impossible for the translation process to have the ideal scenario of only one translator and one reviewer. It became evident that it would be necessary to split the project among various professionals in order to meet the proposed timetable, but, in doing so, the implementation of specific and rigorous methods and processes would be necessary in order to avoid the end result being a document with multiple writing styles and inconsistencies in terminology.

Solution

The project’s characteristics, especially in terms of volume and deadline, required a large team working in unison, exclusively dedicated to the one project. As mentioned, it was also necessary to ensure the consistency of the finished work. Given the complexity of the project, a quick, effective strategy was needed. One that would not waste the little (and valuable!) time SMARTIDIOM had to complete the project. Initially, the translation files were distributed among several qualified, tested professionals, who were native in the documents’ target language. As the files were being translated, in small batches, these were swiftly and directly sent for review. In this way, the translation and review work was done simultaneously, on a constant basis, requiring a dedicated, internal project management team, also working full-time on this project. To assist the team’s work, a translation memory was created, updated and distributed among all the parties involved, as the project progressed. Similarly, the most frequent terms were introduced into a terminology database that was progressively updated and continuously accessible. So, as the solid work basis was being developed, the number of inconsistencies found during the final quality check decreased. The reviewer’s work also greatly contributed to the project’s consistency. He was responsible for consistently updating the translation memory (TM) and the terminology database (TD), the reviewer had the ultimate responsibility of looking at the project as a whole, rather than isolated contents. Finally, the project went through a quality control phase, reinforcing the final consistency of the files. The same way that the files received for translation and distributed were staggered, the final delivery to the client was also staggered, in response to its needs.

Results

Although the project was large as well as demanding in terms of its tight deadlines, SMARTIDIOM was able to present the work requested within the client’s timeframe. The quality and consistency deserved careful attention and, as such, all files were submitted to three distinct stages: translation, revision and quality control. Communication was pivotal to the project, both the communication with the translation and review team, and the communication with the client, so that all the needs were duly fulfilled. More than the individual values, the collective values that move SMARTIDIOM were emphasised.

About SMARTIDIOM

Founded in 2012, SMARTIDIOM offers innovative multilingual services, helping global organisations and brands to grow and achieve international success. Our solutions include technical translation, technical writing, website and software localisation, software and hardware testing, copywriting, transcreation (creative translation for marketing and advertising), subtitling, interpreting, narration and audio/video transcription. Actively present in 25 countries, SMARTIDIOM partners with clients from a wide variety of industries, including Marketing and Advertising, IT and Software, Telecommunications, Construction, Energy and the Environment.