Over the course of our partnership with this leading law firm, LanguageLine Solutions has translated a wide range of documents (both into and out of English) for its client base.
We have successfully collaborated on a variety of projects, including witness statements, litigation notes, supporting evidence for key trials and even providing interpreters for meetings and court cases.
The Challenge
For one particularly large and high-profile case, the usual challenge of fast, high-quality translation grew to new heights. The files were a mixture of different file types and languages (with some content already in English, and other content in Russian).
The majority of the files were non-editable, scanned PDFs. Under normal circumstances, these files would require manual translation without the aid of traditional, cost saving translation technology like Translation Memory (TM) or Computer Assisted Translation (CAT) tools.
Cost was an important factor in this case, making it incumbent upon us to come up with a creative solution.
How We Assisted
LanguageLine was able to speed up the translation process and reduce costs for the law firm. Our team developed an innovative optical character reader (OCR) tool that was able to analyze the quality of PDFs. By simply dropping batches of files into the tool, we were able to identify the language, and provide a word count, as well as assessing the quality of each page.
With this innovative technology, both the editable and un-editable text was picked up for translation, and the tool was able to score the quality of the OCR output to determine its usability. This resulted in greater leverage of the TM, as more text became usable and therefore could be analyzed by the CAT tool.
LanguageLine also applied some unique file processing to pass on additional cost and time savings to the client. A workflow was established whereby only unique content for translation could be identified, and any repeated segments were processed using TM.
This second stage of the process more than halved the number of translatable words from 1.1 million to 400,000. Due to the urgency, and with a standard turnaround time of 7-8 months, multiple linguists with the correct expertise and skill sets were deployed and thoroughly briefed to translate the documents simultaneously. Independent proofreading was also carried out in parallel, which enabled LanguageLine to further accelerate the turnaround time of this urgent project and guarantee quality.
Spot quality assurance (QA) checks were then carried out on some of the documents by a third linguist, and then all files underwent a final delivery QA check by LanguageLine‘s Project Managers, who acted as a safety net to manage quality and consistency. Some files also went through a round of desktop publishing to ensure the formatting mirrored the original Russian documents – a challenge in itself given that Russian text is usually 30% longer than English.
Finally, through certificate bundling, LanguageLine was able to further reduce turnaround times. Rather than certifying each page or document individually (which would take considerable time), the batch of files was certified as a whole. This solution met court requirements and also helped to further reduce costs, as only one certificate was charged for 1.1 million words.
The Result
Through innovative technology, careful planning and close collaboration, LanguageLine and this leading law firm were able to complete Batch 1 of the case within 30 days while maintaining the highest quality standard.
Cost savings amounted to 86% when compared to the cost of translating each document word for word by standard translation methods. Another 10 batches of files have since been completed for the case, bringing the total translated word count to nearly 1.2 million with more to come.
LanguageLine Can Help
Are you interested in achieving similar translation results? We’re confident that similar opportunities reside within your organization.
We invite you to contact us to request a quote or schedule a free consultation.
