Save on Your Translation Budget Behind Acronym Lines
If you happen to be the legal heir of Carlos Slim Helu, please stop reading at this point because we were only joking in the title.
But if you are one of those many professionals who constantly need to translate presentations and documents without always having to bargain for discounts from your Arabic translation service provider, you should trust this blog.
Acronyms are your discount coupons.
The rationale behind this cost-effective tool is very simple: 1 acronym equals 1 word.
Since the translation company will charge you based on the amount of words in the language from which the text will be translated, you can start reducing the total number of words from your end by using acronyms instead of complete phrases.
Thus, using UNDP rather than United Nations Development Programme will subtract three words from the count without affecting the translation since the acronym will be translated into full phrases in Arabic.
Why? Because there’s no such thing as acronyms in the Arabic language.
All you need to do is place your acronyms and leave it up to us to do our research and find out what they stand for as long as they are searchable and conventional to a certain extent. Acronyms that are exclusively created by and known to the author alone will confuse the translator unless they are defined at least once in the source texts.
Yes, acronyms are your best friend, go ahead and abuse them.
Yes, acronyms are the worst enemy of Arabic translators, but it is this very Arabic language that made us partners. No complaining from our side.
Therefore, it’s my pleasure today to be the devil’s advocate and raise this awareness because I believe it’s in our interest to help our loyal clients save on their translation costs and come to us for more requests.
And now that I’m done with my Mother Teresa attitude and with advocating the use of acronyms in source materials, I need to mention that I’ve always felt that it would be much nicer to write “as soon as possible” instead of the dreaded acronym ASAP because it’s my interpretation that ASAP comes across abrupt when used in a demand. But that was just a FYI that I will leave to your discretion and convenience.:)
What are your favorite or least favorite acronym? Please share for Service Help and Resource Exchange.