Translation Automation

Translation Services Automation for Cheaper, Faster, Better Enterprise Localization. Continuously.

Stepes (/’steps/) streamlines the professional translation process to deliver quality localization with speed and scale, competitively. Our intelligent online translation management system automates the entire localization workflow, end-to-end, enabling businesses to get ahead faster in international markets in all languages.

Translation Service Automation Achieved

Translation Service Automation Achieved

Traditional translation models include many manual touchpoints that slow down project efficiency while increasing translation costs with prolonged turnaround time. The digital transformation means information is created constantly and around the clock to meet rapidly changing customer demands, calling for translation services that are delivered fast, often in hours or even minutes instead of days or weeks. Today’s DevOPs operations compel companies to look for agile, always-on, and continuous translation solutions to stay ahead of the competition in global markets. This is why you need Stepes. Our cloud-powered, intelligent translation automation solutions help reduce or eliminate manual localization tasks such as file handoff, content analysis, legacy translation leverage, project quotation, transkit creation, translator assignment, linguistic review, weekly updates, desktop publishing, project delivery, and invoicing and payment.

These manual, labor-intensive tasks are routinely carried out by specially trained project managers, localization engineers, and DTP publishers which not only extend project timelines and increase translation costs but also lead to potential human errors. The good news is, regardless of the content subject such as medical, technical, legal, financial documents, or content format such as PDF, Word, InDesign, the mechanical steps involved to properly localize the materials into the target languages largely remain the same and repetitive. This is where translation workflow automation can come in to achieve higher productivity and better consistency. Stepes AI-powered translation management ecosystem automates the non-essential tasks but employs the best professional human translators and multilingual subject matter experts to deliver linguistically fluent and technically accurate translation services with speed and scale. Our machine-human translation solutions are purposely designed to help our clients accelerate international success with the best localization ROI.

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A Few Of Our Clients

Stepes is a leader in next-gen enterprise translation automation solutions that help our clients achieve simpler, faster, and more cost-effective human translation deliveries. The following is a small list of our customers.

VMware
Facebook
AirBNB
Zoom
Netflix
Google
Walmart

Automatic Translation vs Translation Automation

Automatic Translation vs Translation Automation

Although the two terms sound similar, they represent distinctly different concepts. Automatic Translation uses computer algorithms to convert text from one language into another in a process called Machine Translation or MT. Machine translations increasingly play an important role in processing large amounts of content with fast speeds at a significantly reduced cost. Armed with AI and the latest neural programming, MT is generally sufficient for internal communication or basic content that is less critical in terms of linguistic accuracy and quality. You can visit Stepes’ machine translation page to learn more. Translation Automation, on the other hand, automates the translation workflow to achieve efficiency but relies on professionally trained human linguists with the right subject matter expertise to translate the content for high-quality output. The result is faster and more competitive translations without scarifying quality.

Translation Automation Use Cases

The potential of translation automation for enterprise localization is huge because it allows companies to most efficiently deliver quality multilingual information to customers globally. There are many use cases for Stepes professional translation automation solutions.

ecommerce-translation

Ecommerce Translation

Ecommerce websites process a large number of product titles and descriptions constantly, and much of this information needs to be translated continuously with quality to meet international customer demands. Traditional translation workflows are too slow to support these always-on and around-the-clock translation needs. Stepes translation automation is perfectly suited for eCommerce translation that demands both speed and scale without scarifying linguistic quality.

DevOps Translation

DevOps Translation

Technology companies are increasingly employing agile, iterative methodologies in software development to launch applications and updates fast in the world market. These DevOps operations generate large amounts of small content that must be translated on-demand all the time. Stepes cloud-based translation automation solutions are perfectly designed for DevOps translation requirements using a continuous workflow model.

Enterprise Translation

Enterprise Translation

A growing trend within enterprise localization is that more and more companies are processing an ever-increasing number of small or micro projects with fewer than 400 words. This scenario makes old-fashioned offline translation solutions less feasible both logistically and economically. This is where Stepes automated translation workflow can be a game-changer, delivering unrivaled localization performance with the best ROI.

Subscription-Based Translation

Subscription-Based Translation

Subscription-based models are transforming business services and translation is no exception. Subscription-based translation models allow companies to streamline the provision of language localization to achieve on-demand, always-on, and easily scalable multilingual translation support. Clients simply sign up for Stepes translation account to take advantage of our translation automation capabilities.

Online Translation Ecosystem

At Stepes, we have created an online translation ecosystem that optimizes various localization processes and automates many of the labor-intensive tasks. Our online dashboard allows our customers to upload project files and receive instant project estimates while leveraging from translation memories. Upon approval, the projects kick off immediately with Stepes selecting from its pool of pre-approved linguists who have matching subject matter expertise. Real time translation notifications are a unique differentiator between Stepes and other online translation platforms because Stepes is the first company in the industry to introduce mobile translation technology. During the entire project, clients are able to track live translation progress at any time. Upon completion, Stepes clients can download translated files with the click of button. Better yet, they can also rate the translator’s performance so the best translators become a member of their dedicated MyTranslator team.

mobile-translation File Analysis Automation

File analysis is a common task within the professional localization process that scans documents in a variety of formats such as Word, Excel, PowerPoint, and InDesign for translatable strings. These strings are then extracted with formatting tags and control characters stripped. Next, these strings are systematically compared to legacy translated texts stored in a database called TM (translation memory.) Translation memories allow previously translated texts to be recycled or reused for cost savings, allowing for faster turnaround and better translation consistency. The file analysis will generate a report listing total word counts, new words, 100% matches and repetitions, various fuzzy matches, and if the document needs DTP, it will also list the number of pages, graphics, and screenshots used.

Traditionally, localization companies have relied on localization production engineers to perform file analysis offline to produce the final word count reports. This is because the file evaluation and text extraction processes require many different software applications to work together. In order for all of these isolated systems and applications to work together seamlessly, expert developers with deep engineering know-how (both software and hardware) and solid language experience are needed to code sophisticated algorithms to handle these complex functions. Compared to the majority of the translation houses which have very limited technical engineering background, Stepes was created from the ground up to use cutting-edge technology innovations in order to achieve translation efficiency. Stepes online translation platform is able to handle virtually all file formats, including scanned documents, audio, and video files.

Real Time Translation Quotation Automation

The file analysis report produced in the previous step is then used to create a client quotation using standard per word rates for different language pairs such as English-Chinese, English-Spanish, or French-Japanese. The translation industry has long established the best practice to use word counts for quotation calculations. This is the most accurate method because it allows companies to more easily capture legacy translated content on a granular level to achieve the highest leverage ratio. Translation quotations are usually broken by new words, repetitions (word segments that appear multiple times within the same document,) 100% matches, 95%-99% matches, 85%-94% matches, and $75-84% matches. The translation quote may also include the number of pages that need DTP service. Traditionally, DTP took up a large part of translation project costs because translated contents must be formatted to match the source files. However, modern translation tools (CATs) are able to do a much better job preserving the original layout so the final DTP effort is minimal. In fact, if a customer uses DITA XML for creating the source documents, manual DTP can be completely eliminated.

Stepes generates translation project quotations automatically which allows our clients to receive project estimates in real time, compared to other translation companies that can only turn around quotes in 24 hours or longer. In today’s fast changing digital economy, instant translation quotes allow our customers to make important business decisions quickly, enabling them to accelerate product development and reduce time-to-market for international deployment.

Large Scale Translation Translator Assignment Automation

Linguistic resource management is one of the most critical business practices for professional language services. Translation companies by virtue of their core business work with a large number of professional freelance translators from around the world. The ability to effectively and efficiently manage these linguistic resources separates the good LSPs (language service providers) from the mediocre ones. However, linguistic resource management can also be time consuming and labor intensive. This is because evaluating vendor qualifications, negotiating rates, and managing project assignments, performing linguistic evaluations, and handling translator payments for a large number of contact translators all take substantial time. This is where Stepes excels because we have developed a highly automated online linguistic resource management platform that streamlines the entire translator provisioning process.

When a client uploads a project onto Stepes, its MyTranslator module uses the specified industry or subject matter information to match pre-approved translators automatically. Furthermore, since Stepes is the first translation company to introduce our patent-pending translation technology, the system is able to notify the selected linguists instantly on their mobile instantly. It then allows the linguists to immediately begin translating, all their smartphone or desktop computers, anywhere and anytime. At the end of each project, MyTranslator also allows the clients to rate each translator’s performance so good translators will become a part of the customer’s dedicated translation team.

Large Scale Translation Live Project Tracking

Nobody wants to be surprised to receive a note from a translation supplier on a Friday morning saying that they can’t deliver a project on time as they’ve promised. Timely project delivery has a major impact on the client product development schedule. Missed translation deliveries often lead to delayed international product launches which can translate into millions of dollars in lost revenue. Worse yet, late deployment of products and services can also lead to lost market shares that take years and substantial efforts to recover. One of the most important localization risk management best practices is the proactive administration of project tracking and monitoring in real time. However, traditional offline translation models make this aspect of risk management next to impossible to implement due to their opaque product processes. This is why you need online translation services, like Stepes, that have the ability to track live translation progress 24/7 from anywhere, on mobile and on desktop.

The Stepes online translation ecosystem provides its customers with a powerful dashboard that gives them easy access to a variety of project monitoring functions. In addition to seeing the percentage complete for each project per language, clients can also view the actual content that is being translated in real time. This allows them to proactively perform linguistic validation if needed concurrent to actual project translations, enabling our clients to detect translation issues early in the project cycle should they occur and take appropriate action quickly to prevent project delays.

Continuous Translation Job Delivery Simplified

FTPs and email attachments have been the staple of project file deliveries for the translation industry until cloud drives like Box and Dropbox became available. FTPs require special applications which are hard to use. Email file attachments are difficult to manage and backup. Even the latest cloud drives add an additional layer of project complexity that is not completely necessary. To deliver projects using these means, the translation company’s project managers must manually upload the files leading to potential human errors with incorrect file placements, especially if the same project involves many target languages. Depending on the file transfer protocol used, sometimes files end up getting corrupted during transmission, often wasting a day or more for new uploads to arrive because of the vendor’s international time zone differences.

With Stepes, all translated files are stored on the cloud and within our clients’ online account that they can download with the click of a button. Furthermore, since the project deliveries are grouped by projects, dates, and languages, they can be easily searched and accessed at any time. Since our online based project management system has completely bypassed outdated FTP and email file transfers, we are able to achieve robust project deliveries in real time.

MT Post-Editing Billing & Invoice Automation

Most people may not realize, but a big part of translation production is the timely management of project invoices and billing. These efforts involve both the client and vendor sides. Manual project invoicing is tedious, labor intensive, and more likely to cause human errors. Manually submitted invoices also require the customer to allocate additional human resources to process these invoices by hand. Stepes has streamlined our customer payments into a fully automatic process. Our clients have the option to pay by weekly or monthly invoices, or by using a company credit card. Stepes also accepts a number of electronic payment systems such as PayPal, Alipay, WeChat Pay, Apple Pay and others. More importantly, Stepes allows our clients to easily track what they spend on a weekly, monthly, or yearly basis, and obtain graphical view of various finance related data points.

In addition to automating customer payments, managing translator billing and invoices is also a big part of a translation company’s regular operations. This is because translation companies tend to work with a large number of linguists from around the world, it’s quite labor intensive if a LSP has to manually process translator invoices and payments. These additional human efforts all contribute to higher service costs which the customer ultimately ends up paying for one way or another. This is why Stepes’ fully automated translator payment system is a game changer. Translators never have to manually submit invoices anymore because all project related finances are systematically handled online in real time. Translators only need to decide if and when they need to withdraw from their wallet within their Stepes accounts.

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