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Linguistic Consultation
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The linguistic consultation is to be understood as a communication
phase during the translation or linguistic review cycle that helps to
keep all involved parties (translators, reviewers, linguists) informed
and aligned regarding the decisions made.
This communication involves Sun Globalization and an external partner.
This may be the Sun linguist and the leader of the open source
translator
group for the language concerned, the Sun linguist and the lead
translator of a translation vendor, or the leader of an open source
translator group and the lead translator of a translation vendor.
For this purpose, it may be more convenient to work with a single
document that can be shared between the partners: Using a template for
the linguistic consultation is recommended. The following template was
developed during the collaboration between the French linguist at
Sun, translation vendors and translation communities. You can download
the template
here.
Open Source translators may also use this method for their internal
communications when making decisions that must be validated by their
respective group leader.
This method uses a linguistic consultation template that documents the
discussions between the partners involved during the translation cycle:
- Queries/discussions relating to new translations
- Queries/discussions relating to existing translations
- Queries/discussions relating to general language issues
The audience/users of the linguistic consultation template are:
- Translation vendors
- Open source native language communities (translator groups)
- Sun Globalization linguists
The benefits of using the linguistic consultation template are:
- Transparent communication
- Tracking of errors/inconsistencies
- Tracking of new translation terminology
- Improved terminology and translation quality
- Expansion of SunGloss content
- Building of strong relationships between Sun Globalization
and translation partners
- Involvement of partners in decisionmaking on terminology and
translation, building of responsibility and proactive spirit on the
part
of the translation actors
The proposal is to work with 4 sheets designed for the terminology and
translation discussion and for tracking the decisions made:
- 2 sheets to categorize the terminology discussion points
- Termino_Discuss
- Updated_SunGloss
- 2 sheets to list style and terminology changes that cannot be
taken into account in the current release (for schedule and/or
priority/severity level reasons) but that should be implemented in a
later release:
- Termino_Changes_Product_LATER
- Style_Lang_Product_LATER
NOTE: This template is not fixed and may be modified as necessary. Of
course, it's also possible to design additional sheets as necessary.
There are various reasons for terminology queries/discussions; the
following explanations are based on the most common reasons.
In any case, the main worksheet to be used by the translators
(requesters) is the sheet Termino_Discuss.
The other sheets should be used for tracking the decisions made,
in addition to consulting the status of these decisions:
Updated_SunGloss lists all terms/expressions that have been identified
as terminology and added to the SunGloss content.
Termino_Changes_Product_LATER lists all terms/expressions
(translations) that cannot be changed for the current release (for
example, because of a low severity level or tight schedule) but need
to be taken into account in the next product release.
Style_Lang_Product_LATER lists general style-related language changes
(formulation, wording, grammar, typos, etc.) that cannot be changed in
the current release (for example, because of a low severity level or
tight
schedule) but need to be taken into account in the next product
release.
For more details on how to work with the linguistic consultation
template,
refer to the HowTo sheet of the
Linguistic Consultation
Template.
If you would like to share your opinion regarding the content
of this page, please
contact
the Open Translation team.
