Case study: The logistics of translating software with Embrace

At Nimus translations we’re proud to call ourselves a technical translation agency. Translating technical texts is our specialty, whether it’s user instructions for electronics or User Interface text for apps. It’s what we built our company on at the start, and what we still do every single day: producing good, clear technical translations. Because technical texts are often difficult enough. Sloppy translations are even worse. Imagine trying to operate 3D printer software using instructions that were poorly translated from Chinese. Pretty painful.

The client

We like delivering clear, useful software translations. Ones that make every user’s life easier, not harder. And we mean every user. This services is absolutely essential for software companies nowadays. If you produce software, you want your product tot be translated quickly, painlessly, and most of all correctly. That’s why we’re happy to share that that’s exactly what our clients have come to expect from us. One of these clients is Embrace, a company right here in Groningen that creates social intranet systems. The kind of systems many offices rely on. In other words, this product needs to be user-friendly and intuitive. Users will be interacting with it on a daily basis, after all. That’s why it’s so important that they can operate these systems in their own native language.

The intranet industry is becoming increasingly multilingual. Freddy Groen, Lead Developer at Embrace, can attest to this: “In the beginning, translations were just an extra service, the icing on the cake, but now our clients expect a good and complete translation of all their modules.” This means a good relationship with a preferred supplier is very important.

The challenge

Software translations demand a specific approach. Consider, for instance, the release notes, or product updates: “Release notes are pretty simple to translate compared to product updates. Product updates are far more complex and require more insight to translate properly. A product update could be a single line of text or a few words in an existing piece of text. In these cases, it’s very helpful to have an understanding with Nimus about how to make the context of these words as clear as possible.”

Freddy describes the translation phase as a “recurring activity” in the development of software. Having a clear, preset workflow is therefore very important to improve the process: “In the beginning, we were looking for a way to streamline the entire process. Eventually, we started using the client portal to deliver our files.” This has saved Embrace a tremendous amount of time and effort, both of which are better spent elsewhere. “This has been a massive improvement in our workload. At the start, this would take us a whole day. Now, it just takes half an hour, tops!”

The Nimus client portal was designed to reduce the amount of work and time demanded from the client: “The files can be delivered from our own software, and we receive the finished product in the same format! Because this is a recurring step, it’s an integral part of our development process.”

Our approach

A good relationship with your translation agency is therefore no added luxury. At Nimus translations we work closely together with our clients. We are your advisors as much your translators. And, of course, we’re always happy to make changes or implement feedback where required: “We’re always very satisfied with the translations we receive. Every now and then we’ll send an email with a question or a remark, and these are always processed very quickly. Extremely helpful when we have a deadline of our own!”

And what about Embrace’s clients? How do they experience the translations? “Clients are very pleased with their digital platforms, and that we can offer them in their own mother tongue. In general, we don’t get any feedback (which we interpret as good feedback!) and sometimes we might get a few tweaks, which we’ll incorporate in our translation process.”

This kind of feedback makes us happy. Do you want to experience the same smooth-running translation process for your software? Request a quote today!

Want to hear a little bit more about how we do what we do first? Smart move. Get in touch, and we’ll be happy to help!