There’s more tech than ever to help companies produce financial translations at scale and better serve international customers. While there’s something to automate in almost every aspect, a localization team’s expertise remains vital for achieving seamless workflows and lasting results. Here’s how professional finance translators and the right tools make the winning combination to unlock global success.
Why do businesses need tools for translation?
Managing multilingual financial content with standard software can be a hassle and leaves room for error. Professional translation tools are a key part of your localization strategy, which saves time and ensures mistakes won’t go unnoticed. These are just some of the benefits:
Removal of tedious processes
On top of being time-consuming, manual tasks such as copying and pasting translations are extremely error-prone. Omissions from crucial documents, like quarterly reports, can tarnish your business’s reputation and lead to financial losses. Using a computer-assisted translation (CAT) tool or client portal speeds up time to market and eliminates long e-mail threads, making information easy to find.
Better consistency
Inconsistencies are a telltale sign to differentiate professional translation services from texts produced by non-qualified linguists or unedited machine translation (MT) output.
A translation management system (TMS) contains terminology, reference materials, and previously reviewed translations in the content database. Finding similar matches ensures consistency in the document and all future content, making it easier to process and compare information.
Enhanced quality assurance
Standard word-processing tools typically only check spelling and grammar. Localization requires adjusting the smallest details that could confuse readers if not properly adapted. Quality assurance (QA) checks flag missing terminology, incorrect numbers, date and currency formats, plus other common errors in financial translations.
Improved scalability
Having the appropriate tech stack makes handling higher workloads and expanding into new markets a breeze. You can add more languages to your TMS as demand increases and track the progress of your projects all in one place.
The sheer amount of content that needs to be consulted and translated in the financial sector means that manual processes aren’t sustainable or realistic. Effective global communications should maintain a high standard and, more importantly, feel local. Attached ensures that the tools used are practical and deliver outstanding quality.
How professional finance translators streamline the localization process
Tools can only contribute to your global expansion with the right experts and best practices. Localization teams do much more than render texts into their own language. Here are a few ways professional finance translators make translation technologies effective and improve productivity:
Addressing linguistic and cultural factors
Localization overcomes many cross-border barriers, including evolving standards and stakeholders’ expectations. Native translators have invaluable experience with financial conventions in the source and target cultures, especially since certain regulatory bodies may call for information that varies from other regions. A professional can recognize the challenges these differences pose and use translation tools to adapt financial documents accordingly to expedite international growth.
Maintaining term bases
Linguists extract essential brand and industry-specific vocabulary to a glossary (or term base), including usage notes and forbidden terms where applicable. This a fundamental step to comply with regulations like the latest International Financial Reporting Standards (IFRS) or avoid proper nouns (e.g., fund names) being translated.
Leveraging translation memories
A translation memory (TM) is a cost-effective resource that reuses existing translations. Your localization team can also populate TMs with prescribed translations before you start. For example, the questions to be answered when preparing pre-contractual disclosure templates under the SFDR must use the official translations.
Offering open communication and feedback
Communication is not just important when choosing which tools to adopt or requesting a translation. Discussions between the translator, reviewer and proofreader, you and the localization team can resolve issues and improve future projects.
Translators play a crucial role in laying the groundwork and ensure your translations follow these best practices. For more information on how specialists add value, see our guide to professional translation services for the financial sector.
Where does AI fit into professional translation services?
Nowadays, discussions on tools for translation wouldn’t be complete without mentioning artificial intelligence (AI). With guidelines and documents often exceeding hundreds of pages, using AI for financial translation can offer considerable support and save time, particularly when:
- Retrieving data from multiple sources for research
- Analyzing a market’s guidelines and requirements
- Extracting terminology from bulky documents
- Enhancing neural machine translation (NMT) output for post-editing
- Incorporating feedback to improve translation quality
Despite AI’s rapid strides, you shouldn’t expect an out-of-the-box solution. Generating relevant and accurate information requires expert training and insight. Take PwC’s tests on AI’s interpretation of reporting requirements as an example. Their proof of concept found that imparting reporting specialists’ tacit knowledge into their loan-specific natural language processing (NLP) model was necessary for reporting requests. This included training the model to take “as of today” data when a date isn’t specified.
Translation technology, including AI, can boost productivity and allow your teams to focus on other tasks. Nevertheless, these tools can’t replace the painstaking work to ensure your texts are compliant and resonate across borders. For the best results in your chosen markets, seeking support for this important selection step is highly recommended.
Get ahead with professional finance translators and smart tech
Professional translation tools are an asset in localizing financial documentation. With native subject-matter experts guiding your processes, you can fully capitalize on technology to adapt such specialized content. Attached offers the support you need all in one place, from workflow optimization to translation and AI-backed content creation. If you’re unsure which tools and specialists are the right fit for your financial translation, contact us for a free quote.
