Manufacturing is a demanding industry that spans international markets with a complex network of regulations to get products from the factory floor into showrooms and store shelves.
Translation plays a key role in keeping the manufacturing industry moving from design rooms in one country to factories in another and consumer markets around the world. In this article, we look at seven ways manufacturing companies can ensure their translation process meets their demands.
Build an effective manufacturing translation process
Manufacturing is a volatile industry where supply and demand creates a constant tension across global markets. Manufacturers need a translation process that is robust enough to meet the high demands of international scale, but also flexible enough to respond to overnight changes.
Here are seven key steps to building such a translation process:
- Increase asset quality: Improving the quality of your source assets will ultimately improve the quality of your translated material – so create style guides for each source language and use translation technology to maximise consistency.
- Machine translation: Use machine translation where appropriate to speed up turnaround times and respond faster to new demands. This includes regulation changes, internal process changes etc.
- Translation technology: Use translation memory, terminology management and intelligent translation tools to achieve the highest quality possible in shorter time frames and with greater consistency.
- Integrate & automate: Select tools that integrate together and automate repetitive actions to reduce the manual workload of your translation processes.
- Build the right team: Build or hire a team of manufacturing translation specialists who understand the challenges of your industry and know when human intervention is more effective than automated technology.
- Translation management: Work with a translation agency that specialises in managing large, dynamic projects with the capability of meeting your needs as they change and evolve.
- Optimise processes: Constantly review and improve your translation processes to increase cost efficiency and ROI.
By following these steps, you can develop a translation process that is reliable, even under the strongest market stress, while agile enough to respond to market shifts quickly.
Is your manufacturing translation system holding up?
The global manufacturing industry is currently still experiencing some challenges with raw material costs, shortages, trade wars and economic woes all exacerbated by the impact of the Covid-19 pandemic.
If your translation process is holding you back from responding to changes quickly, now, more than ever, is the time to upgrade your system and translation processes. It seems that the worst is now behind us, but agile recovery will be dominated by the companies capable of responding to new opportunities the fastest during a period of intense competition where manufacturers are fighting it out for incremental market recovery.
If you feel your translation process needs reviewing, feel free to speak to our specialist team of manufacturing translators by submitting a request online.