Archives for May 2023

Katja Virtanen of Delingua is the Employer of the Year 2022!

26.5.2023 by Delingua

International recognition for Delingua

25.5.2023 by Delingua

WordPress, WooCommerce and Polylang

24.5.2023 by Jari Herrgård

Together, WordPress and its e-commerce plugin WooCommerce are a very popular website and online store platform. Their popularity is easy to understand, as they offer a lot of customisability and countless plugins for a wide variety of needs. However, when it comes to localisation, what needs to be considered?

WordPress and WooCommerce do not offer ready-made support for multilingualism. For localisation, this means you cannot simply start typing in product names in other languages in your online store; using multiple languages always requires the purchase of a separate multilingualism support plugin. Fortunately, these plugins are readily available.

There is a lot of information about the pros and cons of multilingualism plugins, especially from the point of view of web service developers. You can find articles online that compare those ever-so-important load speeds, for instance. So, instead of that, I’ll tell you what we see in customer projects every day and what our customers have told us. We have localised numerous WordPress sites and WooCommerce stores and cooperated with many companies and their developer partners on that front – our own website was also created with WordPress.

Observations from customer projects

Polylang is by far the most popular multilingualism support plugin among our customers. It is also widely recommended by developers. Polylang is simple and does what it promises well and quickly (those load speeds!). It is an excellent choice, especially from the developer’s point of view, but when you need to update and localise content, it has major shortcomings, which I will explain in more detail below. The different language versions of our own website are also produced with Polylang.

Another popular multilingualism support plugin is WPML, and we have long experience in using it. Prior to our website renewal in 2020, the language versions of Delingua’s website had also been produced with WPML. This plugin has many advantages as far as localisation is concerned, such as good export and import functionalities and connectivity with a variety of translation environments. However, from the point of view of development and performance, it has its disadvantages and historical burdens, which is why it is not the best choice for every situation.

Using Polylang

As I mentioned above, Polylang is an excellent tool from the perspective of a website’s technical functionality, with advantages related especially to speed and performance in connection with WordPress updates. However, on the other side of the coin, straight out of the box, Polylang did not really support the localisation process itself. In other words, as a counterbalance to stability and speed, a person updating a website or an online store would have to go through a lot of effort to get localised texts onto the site.

If you wanted to do the actual translation work efficiently and use the translation memories containing the customer’s previous translations, you very quickly found yourself resorting to so-called traditional methods, in other words, copying and pasting. If you wanted to avoid mind-numbing manual work, you could do the translations using Polylang’s interface. However, it did not support the use of translation memories, and translators rarely knew how to use it. This made localisation slower, more expensive and more prone to error.

Since version 3.3, the Pro version of Polylang has supported the export and import of XLIFF files, which has solved some of the problems mentioned above, although the rather complex settings do not always make this feature easy to use. It also has a lot of difficulties with handling ACF fields.

Polylang and Delingua’s translation plugin

We want to serve our customers quickly and flexibly. This does not just mean responding quickly to emails and providing translations flexibly according to the customer’s wishes. It means that we also want to make it easier for our customers to manage their own systems and work with them. That is why we have developed a translation plugin that connects to Polylang. It complements the proven multilingualism tool with functionality that also makes it easy to order localisation and add the localised content to a website or an online store.

With Delingua’s Polylang plugin, you first select the content to be localised (products or other items) and then the languages and the project schedule. Finally, transfer the content to our translation management software with just one click. That is all the customer has to do. There is no need to trouble yourself with email attachments and other inconvenient arrangements. Once the translations are complete, they will automatically be positioned in their correct places on the website.

The customer can choose in advance whether they want to first receive and approve the cost estimate or send the content directly for translation.

Do you want to make it easier to localise the content of your online store and website? Sign up for Delingua’s Polylang plugin, and we can test together how we could use it with your website and plugins!

Tips for linguistic accessibility

17.5.2023 by Delingua

Accessibility means that everyone has equal access to services. Read our tips on how you can create linguistically accessible content and how a translation agency can help you.

More and more services are consumed online, which is why the accessibility of content has become an increasingly important criterion. The EU has introduced the Accessibility Directive. In Finland, its requirements are included in the Act on the Provision of Digital Services. The act applies to the public sector and certain private companies. Digital services must meet the accessibility requirements. For instance, it must be possible to access the online service with as many different devices and browsers as possible, also by means of assistive devices, if necessary.

By 2025, the EU’s Accessibility Directive will extend to private companies in certain sectors, such as online stores and audiovisual services. Accessibility is becoming the norm, which is why every online company should plan its digital services to be accessible both technically and linguistically – and a translation agency can help in this.

1. Do not ignore linguistic accessibility

The most important thing for accessibility is clear and comprehensible language. Technically well-executed content is of no use if it is linguistically clumsy or unclear. The text may be unnecessarily difficult to read or written in a wrong language. A website is easy to use when there are no technical challenges and the content is easy to understand.

The easiest way to produce linguistically accessible content is to write it in clear standard language, that is, in easily understandable language without jargon. Clear language is not the same thing as plain language, which is language where the structure and the vocabulary have been adapted to make it easier than standard language. The content and the target group are decisive factors in determining if plain language is needed.

2. Subtitle videos

It is a good idea to subtitle videos even if the law does not require it yet because many people watch videos without sound. The text format is not precisely defined, but the most user-friendly method is adding captions that can be easily followed at the same time as watching the video.

At the moment, accessibility requirements do not require videos to be subtitled in other languages. In other words, the guidelines mandate that a Finnish video is subtitled in Finnish, a Swedish video in Swedish and so on. However, having the content translated strengthens the multicultural dimension of accessibility.

Services must also be accessible to those who speak a language other than the language in which the content was originally published. In Finland, public services are designed primarily for speakers of the national languages; however, in the light of accessibility, there is an increasing need to reach immigrants as well. With the help of translated subtitles, you can also reach a wider, international target audience.

3. Transcribe audio content

In audio recordings, such as podcasts, accessibility could be improved by transcribing them as written text. The accessibility requirements of the Act on the Provision of Digital Services require that audio-only broadcasts, such as podcasts, must also be accessible. According to the legislation, organisations affected by the requirements must provide a text version of the recording within two weeks.

For podcasts, this usually means a transcribed text version of the audio recording. As the text version must fulfil the requirements of accessibility, a simple script or summary of the podcast is not sufficient. In practice, the entire content of the recording must be provided in text form, including background sounds, and the text must also indicate who is speaking at any given time.

Creating a text version of the podcast ensures that everyone can enjoy the podcast. In addition, not everyone has time to listen to a 60-minute podcast, for instance: reading the text version is much faster.

If you are reaching for a larger audience, use a translated transcription, in which the podcast is transcribed into another language. You can also use a voiceover to do the entire podcast in a different language.

Corporate language strategy

A company’s language strategy means you decide on which languages will be used, in which channels and how. This raises a few important questions: is all content available in only one or several languages; which language is used on social media; is your website available in Finnish, English or both; and, in addition to Finnish and English, do you need other languages? In addition, the question of who writes, translates and maintains the foreign-language content is also an integral part of the language strategy. Corporate communications should be linguistically consistent, that is, logical. Choose a language strategy and stick to it.

Although the Act on the Provision of Digital Services mainly applies to public online services, accessibility also benefits other digital service providers. Issues such as the equal treatment of customers, a better user experience and access to a wider market should interest all companies and organisations. Accessibility is a key advantage for a company!

Terminology management in the translation process

11.5.2023 by Delingua

According to the adage, a rose by any other name is still a rose. Also in translation, the same thing can often be said in multiple ways. Sometimes, there may be situations in which a customer and a translator disagree on the best term to use. How can we decide which term is better? How does a translator manage terms during the translation process?

Translators always walk a fine line in order to get a translation right. There are times when the differences in terminology choices are lines drawn in the sand, and it might be difficult to say which term is the most appropriate for the context. Customers sometimes give feedback that even if a specific term’s translation is correct, there is another equivalent they would rather use in the text in question.

As a starting point, the customer’s suggestion will be used unless it is, for one reason or another, a poor choice or erroneous. If this is the case, the matter is discussed further with the customer and it is explained why the term suggested by the translator would be a more appropriate choice for the context. All agreed terms are stored in a term base to keep the information safe and terminology consistent.

Background research

Researching different matters and searching for information are staples in a translator’s work, with the actual translating interwoven with searching for information. Often, terminology issues brew in the unconscious, and solutions to key issues might pop up in the most surprising places.

Translators are familiar with the specific field they translate and look for terms from, among other places, the customer’s website and public databases, but they cannot know about terms that have been decided internally by the customer and are not available publicly. Often, terms also have different translation equivalents. It is the customer’s responsibility to decide which term to use.

Sometimes, the idea is to use the most common terminology, while on other occasions, the customer wishes to differentiate itself from the competition with its very own terminology. The translator should receive specific instructions if the customer wishes to use different translation options according to the context.

Unestablished terminology

There are situations in which the translator may even have to come up with a completely new word. More often the case is that the translator has to use terminology that is not yet established, or a term that is not yet commonly known.

At times, it may be a good idea to include the term in the source language in brackets since, in some fields, people may be more familiar with the foreign language term than its Finnish equivalent. There may also be other reasons for this: for example, when translating instructions on applying for a benefit related to Finnish social security, including the benefit’s Finnish name in an English-language text could be useful for the reader.

Specialty terms

Our experience has shown that new customers are very concerned about whether the translator really is familiar with a certain field of business. For us, each translation assignment is special and deserves a translator who is familiar with the subject matter and its special terminology. This is why translation assignments are allocated to translators on the basis of the field of business and text type. In addition, various translation tools, such as translation memory software and term bases, are used in quality assurance.

In organisations of all sizes, it must be ensured that terms are used consistently so that the organisation’s internal and external communications are uniform and professional. A company’s own term base also makes the translator’s work easier. With a well-maintained term base and transparent cooperation, translating content becomes easier and unnecessary misunderstandings are avoided. Read also our 5 + 1 tips for managing companies’ terms.