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Smart Information for Translators

How we keep our worldwide translation team informed.

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Smart Information for Translators

As a Freelance Translator, you’re always involved in several projects for different clients in which you have to follow different work processes and customer requirements. This starts with logging-into various CAT tools’ servers, finding the correct location for reference materials, and it continues with the individual client's own terminology process and style guidelines. Now it's time to keep your cool, sort information and start translating. This can be particularly challenging for new freelancers in our translator pool.

Our approach: a smart knowledge portal for our translators.

With the kothes smart space for translators, we now also provide our Freelance Translators with a portal that has been specifically designed for them, and it’s constantly growing. Under Getting started, our translators will find, among other things, all the basic information on communication and query management, the TM concept, as well as the requirements for secure data exchange. The Topic Quality section now includes the kothes Style Guide for various EU languages, in addition to our quality check specifications. In it, we’ve compiled and collected our expertise in this area, which has grown substantially over the years — in a clear and concise manner. The translators use this guide to help ensure consistent translations and precise adherence to the style requirements of the target language — key criteria for an appropriate text for the target country.

Not only do we expect our translators to work carefully and diligently to achieve our quality goals, but we also want to engage in proactive communication with everyone involved in translation projects. The exact procedure for communicating with all project participants (i.e. with the kothes Technical Editor or with the customer) is explained in a clear and concise manner within the smart space. Of course, the translators can also provide us with their direct feedback there. This includes feedback on the quality and cohesiveness of the TM body or terminology lists and also on the specific content of the source texts, the product, the target audience or other framework conditions that help our customers successfully establish their product in the target (i.e. local) country.

In the FAQ section, our translators can find a growing database of help and other resources that they can quickly and easily search using keywords. The modular structure within the Content Delivery Portal also enables the various sources of information to be expanded upon and linked.

News, job offers, contacts and important dates are now available at a glance. The smart space is also available to our translators via the smart space app on their mobile devices and is currently being localised into English so that all our translators can use it.

We’ve already received the first positive feedback, which was expressed as follows: "This translator portal is really "smart": informative, clear and really well designed — both in terms of content and appearance."

Last but not least, the quick succession from idea to implementation was met with enthusiasm by our suppliers. As the interface between translator and client, we’re delighted to find the same innovative spirit among our suppliers as we have here at kothes, and that the close relationship with our translators, which we’ve always nurtured, has once again resulted in operational and qualitative advantages for both sides.

Verena Döhler
Author:
Blog post Verena Döhler