Your style guide for translations: these five steps will get you off to a great start
Suppose you want to translate a marketing brochure or a website into five languages. You naturally expect a maximum return on your investment and assume that your message will reach your target audience flawlessly.
Your translation style guide as a guide and support
How do you brief your translators so that they deliver the quality you expect? With a translation style guide!
But how do you create such a guide? Our advice: start with these five steps that we at Lexitech also follow.
1. Who are you?
Define your brand identity and product identity: who are you as a company, who are your customers and, above all, how do you want your customers to see you?
Your company values and possibly your mission statement are a good starting point.
2. Tone of voice
How do you want to communicate as a company (or as a brand)? Formal or informal, serious or light, accessible or exclusive, pioneering or conservative, very comprehensible or rather elaborate …
Best to look at this market by market and language by language … Each language simply conveys a tone in its own way. Discuss this with your translator beforehand.
3. Copywriting guide
In it you outline your preferences around punctuation, lowercase vs. capitals, formatting (of words, brands, abbreviations …). For the localisation of numbers, currencies, measurements, dates and hours, remember to follow the customs of your target language.
4. Translation guidelines
Translation guidelines deal with mundane issues such as the maximum length of a translation (when the translation work is then cast in a specific format or application with length restrictions). Such guidelines also define your choice between translation or transcreation: does your content allow the translator to translate slightly more freely or do you prefer a translation that is closer to the source text?
5. Reference material
Bilingual or monolingual, reference material that conveys the tone and style is always a great help. Terminology material (specific to the sector or your company) is also a great tool.
Are you already thinking about the things that should absolutely be covered in your translation style guide? If so, we at Lexitech will soon be happy to help you draw up and elaborate the guide.