French to English: Transcription & MTPE

Translation for enterprise clients brings its own set of challenges. The volume of translation is huge, and the turnaround time is limited, too. Yet, each client’s content is unique and so are their expectations from translation. We routinely work with enterprise clients to take their content global on-demand and on time.

In this case study, we discuss the requirements of an enterprise customer for whom we had to deliver transcription and machine translation post-editing (MTPE).

In this case, the customer had their tool for transcription and subtitling. But it was not easy to use. We had to learn to use it first and then train our linguists within a short period of time as the project had a very short timeline.
Communication with the customer was also difficult as they were not aware of most of the localization terms and processes. We had to introduce localization concepts, terms, and processes to them so that the client was clear about what was being discussed.
The audio quality of the file given to us was not good. Along with this, the client’s tool was not appropriate for such a project. But the client expected us to return a good quality file to them.
The language pair was French to English. The customer required us to work with a native French linguist with good command of US English for this project. This is an unusual request, as we usually work with linguists who are native speakers of the target language.
A small mistake in transcription would directly affect the output and result in more editing work.

We assigned this project to one of our project managers, who has a wide experience of handling transcription and subtitling projects into and from European languages.
We insisted on regular communication with the client. We developed a questionnaire to understand their requirements. We made sure we had their responses in writing so that we could always go back to it and confirm. This led to clarity on the client side as well as ours.
We engaged our Solutions team to learn more about the client’s tool. We coordinated with the client’s support team to understand the tool better. This involved a lot of close collaboration between the two teams.
We designed a workflow for this project and let the client know about our quality checks and the different stages in the workflow.
We gave our linguists a quality test before on-boarding them for the project. This helped us assess their expertise in French to English language projects.
To maintain quality, we performed an extra round of review with another linguist and ran the QA checks at each stage of the project.
To manage the short deadline, we split the file between two linguists.
Will did partial delivery to the client and asked for their feedback, so we could implement it in the rest of the work.
We shared our feedback on the tool with the client. This helped them improve the tool further for better results.

Our project workflow and efforts to educate the customer on localization helped the customer know about each stage of the project, and it brought transparency to the project.
Our workflow and processes helped the customer get good quality output even though the initial quality of the file was poor.
Our quality checks and partial delivery assured the customer about the quality of the project. Their feedback on the partial delivery helped us rectify any errors or align expectations right then instead of creating unwanted surprises at the end.
The customer was so pleased with the speed and quality of delivery that now we get regular work from them.
Our feedback on the client’s tool helped the customer develop it further and come up with a better internal solution. This was an additional benefit to the client on top of the high-quality translation that we delivered.