Since 2016, MasterWord has helped a global leader in oil and gas in resolving inefficiencies in their language review process. This involved reviewing the translation efforts of multiple departments within the company. After proposing and implementing a technological solution to enhance the workflow, both parties experienced positive outcomes. Here’s how we did it:
Previous Workflow
One of the necessary process requests made by the client included the involvement of language reviewers from their company who would validate MasterWord’s translations as they progressed. They had established a workflow where small batches of the formatted translation in print-ready format would be sent via email from MasterWord to the language reviewers, who would then print out the documents, manually review them with pen on paper, then send them back for our teams to implement.
This was a cumbersome process for many reasons – but most importantly, from a content strategy standpoint, it prevented both parties from effectively tracking what terminology or style changes were being made in the source text. Ultimately, this meant that every iteration of the change needed to be caught by a language reviewer in the target language, although fundamentally the change was being made in the source. The process was haphazard and required much back-and-forth to achieve the quality and consistency required in the final documents.
Our Strategy
We wanted to make the process easier for both teams. This was made possible by developing and implementing our Collaborative Translation Environment (CTE). The CTE allowed us to create and incorporate industry-standard technologies used in translation to ensure consistency and accuracy in files as massive as the ones that were provided by the client. We trained both our teams and the client-side reviewers to use CTE so that they could work in tandem on projects. This ensured there was no more back-and-forth emailing, duplicate documents, or pen-on-paper revisions. Once a revision or update was made, it was automatically replicated across all documents in every instance where appropriate. CTE helped all parties track the progress of the language review process, and also generated a translation/terminology corpus for future document creation. In short, it unified the content and streamlined the review process.
But what did it really do?
By implementing this technological strategy, the review process was shortened by half. What used to take two weeks only takes half the time now. The overall satisfaction in completing the project increased greatly. We achieved a 23% percent savings growth on average across departmental projects for the client, and developed a means for them to identify and prevent content coherence issues for future projects.
MasterWord serves clients not only through completing translation projects, but also by optimizing how those projects are completed. Our strategy aims to help create the best means to support the client’s translation and localization needs, with help from the latest in language technology and process innovation.
