As a translator, how I help a famous electronic company become successful in China
By: Lulu Xu
Tags: Electronics, Translation, Marketing, Localization, Globalization

Last year, one of the Top10 distributors of electronic components in the world (“Company A”) reached to me and asked me if I was interested in dealing with their translation (English to Chinese Simplified).

Company A’s official website was localized into 70+ languages. Many types of content on the website, including technical resources such as blog, forum, solutions, product introduction, etc.

Due to the professionalism of this content, the company is extremely hard to find proper translators. I was on board since Aug 2020 after passing a test translation including three types of content: technical blog, marketing PPT and legal agreement.

Although our cooperation is very smooth now, this project was a big challenge for me at first:

1. Content is Too Technical

There are many technical articles written by engineers, some of them may not very good in English and prefer using many terms or abbreviates, which is very hard to understand unless you are one of them.

I shared my concern with the contact in Company A, however, he said it is not a problem since I am a professional translator. He is the person who reviewed my test and knows what I can do. “But a professional translator is not an expert in electronic field who is familiar with how to make a PCB”, I said. I convinced him that I needed help in this case; otherwise, the quality would be at risk, then I provided my solution and he accepted it.

The solution is simple. The contact in Company A is an engineer, and he served as an SME (subject matter expert).

I often asked him about any unclear content in the source. After I got the answers, I tried to learn the related knowledge and make notes.

I collected all the terms/abbreviates/slangs into a glossary and converted it into a Trados glossary. The translations of these words will pop up while translating and can be checked with Xbench or Verifika after finishing.

Also, to learn the basic knowledge of electronics. I bought some books as per the suggestion of the SME.

2. Audience is Changed

Company A wanted to market its content via popular Chinese social media such as Douyin (Tik-Tok), WeChat, etc. The content needed to prompt is very technical which is originally targeted to engineers. If released directly, the audience on those social media will not be interested. Therefore, Company A wants to summarize and extract the content, making it easy to understand and keep the key information.

The task is not a simple translation work.

Before translation, I proofread the source English and deleted the content that was too professional. For example, I emphasize what the product can do and delete the theory behind it with track change.

SME will check all the modifications and finalize the content, then ask me to translate it.

While translating, I used terms that is easy to understand by the most Chinese people and kept the style natural and simple.

My translation is used as a source and other marketing guys will make adaption based on it.

3. No Editors

The contact in Company A (also the SME) told me that some of my translations might be sign-off directly without editing. He said: “Lulu, I think your translation is ready for publishing directly.” I told him it does not comply with ISO 17100, but he said he never heard about it and insisted on no more editors involved due to “low budget”.

Actually, I am not too much worried about it, since as a veteran translator, I am used to self-checking with the correct tools and methods:

After finishing the translation, I proofread sentence to sentence, correcting errors and making the translation more organic.

Using TM to ensure the consistency between sentences and words.

Using .sdltd to ensure the correction of terms while translation.

Using Query Form to collect queries and not delivering without answers.

Using Xbench or Verifika to ensure no objective errors.

If you have a little knowledge about translation, you will know that nothing special actually.

Yes, nothing special. I used the most popular methods and tools to guarantee quality by myself, and the results show that such “common” are of most effective.

Client feedback

I asked the contact in Company A to write something on me:

Lulu is familiar with the electronic field and our source content. The quality of her output is high enough that I just need a quick check.

That’s not 100% true since sometimes he will review my work carefully when the document is very important.

He told me that the number of subscribers of their WeChat Official Account is 50 times more than when I was not on board. Also, my work is used on Company A’s forum, Tik-Tok, website, etc. He said their revenue in China is 300% higher than the previous year and I also contributed to the result.

I said, “you are the people who made it since you selected me”.