Writing for translation and localisation

Preparing a document for other languages means making its meaning clear and deciding how its content will fit each readership. The parts divide by the source writer’s decisions: the language route, translatable wording and context, terminology and market assumptions, and cultural adaptation. Meaning across languages, commissioning and managing translation, and working as a medical translator belong to neighbouring concerns.

• Planning the language route — choosing translation, localisation, adaptation or transcreation, settling decisions before approval, and supplying context and usable files at handoff
• Writing a source a translator can work from — treating the translator as a reader, supplying a glossary, making relationships explicit and avoiding source features that obscure meaning in translation
• Controlling terminology and market assumptions — precision, fixed and preferred terms, a maintained term base, market-bound references and borrowed English terms
• Adapting content to a local culture — health beliefs and symbols, cultural differences within a language, register, forms of address, local formats, practice and law, and adaptation within the community