English to French Translation of Data Spreadsheets

Documents containing technical data often create headaches for companies that need to translate them. Many terms do not translate as one might expect. That’s why at Tomedes we use only the best translators, to provide word-perfect translations undertaken by humans and not machines.

Our French translation team was recently challenged by a new client to translate a lengthy, technical data spreadsheet from English into French. The client wanted to be sure of the team’s skills, so set them three phrases to translate as a test. Needless to say, our team passed with flying colours, and the client was pleased to use us to proceed with the translation of the entire document.

The client also wanted to be sure that words and phrases that were repeated on multiple lines of the spreadsheet were only translated once. To ensure this, we set up a pivot table as an additional worksheet on the translated document, in order to summarise the data and evidence to the client that no repetition had taken place.

This was a lengthy job, with nearly 14,000 words in total. We chose two of our leading French translators to undertake the work, both of whom had backgrounds in the IT and technical services field. Thus we ensured that our translators had both the language skills and the technical knowledge required to undertake the work.

It proved to be a winning combination. We were able to complete the translation of the full set of data within just four business days, easily meeting the client’s timescale. He was impressed with the high quality of the final data, and is looking forward to working with Tomedes on his future translation projects.