All of our collaborations with Ulatus to date have been amazing experiences! They deliver top-notch quality within the required deadline and their team is supportive throughout the projects. This particular project was important for us and we are glad we had Ulatus for the job!
Discovery Education is a knowledge dissemination arm of the globally recognized Discovery Group. The group is the global leader in standards-based digital curriculum resources for K–12 classrooms worldwide. The client had an urgent requirement with a short TAT for localizing 10 student textbooks comprising 7‒8 chapters each with a total word count of 254,496 words from English to Simplified Chinese. The Localisation service included translation and book production services, such that we generate print-ready books.
The client accurately conveyed that these books are specifically produced for middle school students. Hence, we had to make sure that the final translation output was tailored accordingly and that the tone and terminology were catered to the school-going audience.
If the ideal process was followed for translation and production services, including client's review, the TAT requirement was way beyond the launch-to-market date of client. We had to go back to the drawing board, bring all the experts together and device a custom plan for this project. This plan definitely cannot work in all the projects as it depends on multiple factors including the content and experts involved.
DTP requirement was quite intensive in this project, with a very short TAT to complete everything. There were a lot of elements that the DTP expert had to take care of, such as the image recreations, text alignment, text fitment as per the target language, making sure eventually the file is in print-ready format. We had to smartly use the available technology, such that we not only complete the volume of work, but also incorporate changes/corrections noticed during the QA stages.
Book projects cannot be complete unless there is client involved to provide srategic suggestions to the translated text. Discovery Education understands this and were onboard with this idea to review the localized content. This was a complex activity considering the volume and the extensive DTP work. They had a dedicated internal reviewer with whom we had to work simultaneously and ensure all their feedback was incorporated before the final delivery.
It being an intense and fast-paced project, we had to assign our best team, who had experience handling complex projects and managing client expectations. The project manager who was handling this project would go on weekly calls with the client and their reviewers to make sure that we were always on track and aligned with the client's expectations and constantly updating the text and guidelines as per the client's feedback.
Selecting and allocating the right subject matter expert was very critical in this project. We had to ensure that we selected a native translator who had experience in working and translating for the life science domain. Ulatus project management team communicated the entire client’s expectations and made sure the translator was aligned with them.
As we had to maintain a strict timeline for this project, the team had to make sure that all the processes flowed simultaneously. We made rolling deliveries to the client in order to provide continuous updates and meet the project milestones efficiently.
Technology is at the core of Ulatus and this is the major reason of success in this project. For multiple steps involved in translation and book production services, Ulatus uses different technologies that can assist translators and other experts work faster and provide quality. At multiple stages our tools assisted the process to cut down on the timeline without negatively affecting the deliverable quality.
