IT
Course Translation
Who
The client is a leading software conglomerate who is working
with China’s Ministry Of Education (MOE), and provides high
quality IT training programs in the Chinese market.
What
Every spring and fall, the client worked with the MOE
to introduce a new IT training program with over 10 courses,
covering programming languages and software engineering. All
of these courses were developed in English and needed to be
localized for the Chinese market. After a thorough vendor screening
and selection process, the client selected BizSmooth to provide
the services. The client cited BizSmooth’s professional processes,
strong technical expertise, high quality control systems, and
competitive pricing as the reason behind their selection.
To localize these courses, BizSmooth faced the following challenges:
 Large
volume and broad coverage:
With a total number of 3 million words and 8,000 pages of text,
the program covers network security, programming language, database,
system administration and testing. Such a wide range of topics
required a localizing program with strong technical expertise
as well as language skills.
Various
deliverables
The materials are designed for different teaching methods including
instructor-led training, self-learning, on-line training and
lab courses. Different methods may require different types of
deliverables. For example, Microsoft PowerPoint documents were
used in instructor-led training outlines, while HTML files were
used in online training courses, and Adobe PageMaker was used
for all textbooks.
Fast
turnaround
The project had extremely tight deadlines because of the nature
of the training and college class schedules. The ability to
quickly localize the content and maintain high quality was essential
to the success of this project.
Solution
To meet the tight deadline for such a large-scale project,
BizSmooth set up a dedicated team consisting of translators,
engineers and DTP specialists. The team was centrally managed
by one experienced project manager who developed and implemented
the localization strategy for this project focusing on:
Employing
a large group of linguistic resources to finish the large volume
of translations
Streamlining
the process of managing the flow from first pass translation
to final QA
Using
of the latest translation memory software to ensure translation
consistency and overall quality
Well
planned schedules to allow desktop publishing and other engineering
tasks taking place concurrently with translation to shorten
the overall turnaround time
In addition, for optimal results, the team also performed the
following:
Technical
review: There was a significant amount of sample coding, screenshots,
and database management practices used in the courses. To guarantee
the usability of such samples, BizSmooth engineers took an extra
step of setting up proper environments, and ran all the sample
cases.
Templates
re-design: Some of the original templates were not suitable
for the Chinese market. BizSmooth DTP specialists worked closely
with the client, and re-designed the templates.
Benefits:
As a result, the client was able to:
Reduce
time to market by 40%
Reduce
cost of production by 25%
Eliminate
most of the technical errors from the source materials
Ensure the
accuracy and consistency of terminology used in the entire text
Customize
the touch and feel of the final deliverables for the Chinese
market
Was
able to build a solid foundation to further expand into the
Chinese IT training market |
