Added Value: Professional Translators (All Native Speakers), Translation Tools and Localization Standards
Far too many translators and translation agencies have earned themselves a bad reputation. But we understand that cutting corners can turn out to be an expensive way of doing things.
E-globalcom.net embraces client satisfaction as a defining principle, and we've built a reputation as a
round-the-clock high-quality provider. As a professional language partner, we only work with the best people available and never stop investing in technology. It's common sense: we help our people achieve their full potential, we increase productivity, and we deliver
better end products to our clients.
Click here
to find out how our customers feel about our working methods.
Our professionalism is based on three pillars:
Maximum Computer Support: The Right Tool for The Right Expert
Every year, e-globalcom.net invests at least 15% of its turnover into new hardware and software.
This is our way of helping our people to achieve their full potential, of increasing productivity, and of delivering better end-products to our clients. This does not mean, however, that we supply machine translations. For now, machine translation is still inadequate for 99% of all texts. While other agencies may want to automate the only aspect that cannot be automated — the human translator — we make the unparalleled effort of automating everything else.
Technology is getting so important that some people tend to forget that translating still is — and probably always will be — a job for skilled human beings. Machine translation simply cannot consistently produce grammatical and logical sentences.
Your Software
We take pride in working in our clients' choice of formats as much as possible. Click here
if you'd like to learn more about the software packages we are familiar with.
Our In-House Tools
In addition to the the file formats supplied by our customers, we also make use of a variety of in-house tools to optimize the translation process.
The right terminology is essential for an accurate translation. Your company probably uses terminology that is unique from any other company. To ensure the accuracy and consistency of all your translations, we keep track of all your terms, listing them in client-specific glossaries that both you and your translators have online access to. This way, we can guarantee our clients a consistent use of vocabulary. Creating and updating these glossaries takes time and money, so we need the help of our clients to be successful. But most of them realize that this kind of investment in their own corporate style pays off richly.
In some cases, we will even scan an entire paper dictionary, run it through our OCR (Optical Character Recognition) software, and import it into an online database.
TM
Terminology programs form the basis of translation memories, which are databases of phrases and terms. By storing large projects phrase by phrase into a database, we can guarantee consistency throughout huge documents. Anyone who has ever translated a project of thousands of pages will know that memory databases are absolutely indispensable. When we work on a large project, the translated text and terminology are edited and compiled on a daily basis. The result is immediately made available to the whole team, which might be made up of ten, twenty, or even more people.
With workbench translation systems such as IBM TM/2, Trados, Transit, and especially Déjà Vu, translators and revisors have a permanent overview of all comparable phrases and all recorded terminology. Without such a system, it is almost impossible to update texts properly at a later stage.
E-globalcom.net has earned a reputation as specialists in machine-aided translation, and we share our expertise through
information and training sessions.
DTP
The layout of a translation should always reflect the original layout. Formatting features such as
bold, italics, and underline are always reproduced. When editing a text, we also check how it looks, both on screen and on paper.
Our editors know that the layout could look very different on your system if you use — for example — a different printer driver or font. So they spare no efforts to check and double-check the final layout.
All too often, clients waste time and money by having the layout of their finalized texts done by a graphic or advertising agency. E-globalcom.net takes care of your layout in a professional and cost-effective way... and it's all part of our standard service package.
Projects consisting of more than 10,000 files are becoming increasingly common. Websites in particular work with very small files because they download faster. That's why translating or editing a complete site requires a well-considered and comprehensive approach, especially when there are different drafts or versions of all these separate files.
Below are examples of three small shareware programs that have often been very useful to us:
Search and Replace provides advanced search and replace options for whole series of files.
RenameIt!
allows you to change the names of series of files very easily, e.g., by adding a suffix indicating the language.
FileSync offers a user-friendly way of synchronizing folders so you can be sure of having the latest version of everything.
Workflow
Good project management
implies that we know the status of every file at any moment. That's why we've automated our entire workflow. Our e-workflow gives our clients a user-friendly online language solution. When you send us a file via this portal site, our system immediately assists us in
selecting the right translators and editors for your document. As a client, you have permanent access to an online overview of all your orders and invoices. Our translators, editors, copywriters, account managers, and project managers communicate with each other through
a fully automated system.
Orders are
automatically delivered when they are finished. The advantages are many, but automation, user-friendliness, and reliable service are the bottom-line of our e-workflow system.
The outline below makes everything clear from the very beginning of a project until its delivery, including
archiving, invoicing, and payment follow-up.
Our workflow looks like this:
Our Network
If you want to run the numerous software packages mentioned on this site and store millions of megabytes of information, a
powerful computer network and sufficient storage capacity are no luxury. Our computer network boasts:
2 Windows 2000 file servers, 1 e-mail server and 1 web server
12 Windows 2000 and Windows XP clients: dual PIV or dual PIII Xeon, 512 MB RAM, SCSI
2 Power Mac G4 Cube machines and 4 Dell laptops (512 MB RAM)
2 PostScript laser printers
a color laser printer
a network scanner
internet access via a digital leased line
All database and file servers have been fully redundant clustered since the beginning of 2001, so that we can always keep on working in the event of a system breakdown. All your orders are systematically stored on a high-end disk series. The diagram below gives you a pretty good idea of our server configuration.
