This synergy is one of our favorite things about Ciklopea and something that our clients appreciate too. Linguistic expertise, advanced technologies, and project management are the key focus of our everyday activities. The way people collaborate and communicate with one another makes it possible to translate and localize products and adjust them to a variety of international markets.

Being a part of the Ciklopea team means being a member of an organization that respects its employees and believes in them. Not only that, but we have programs in place that help students enter the job market and kick off their careers.

Internships at Ciklopea

We believe that a person’s first professional experience can strongly impact their future career path. When you think about it, the transition from being a student to becoming a working professional can be challenging and confusing. At Ciklopea, we wanted to create opportunities that will make this transition as smooth as possible, which is why we have internship programs in place.

This first contact with a professional environment enables students to gain insight into the requirements, dynamics, and standards of the modern language industry. It helps them put their theoretical knowledge into practice and learn the know-how of working for an LSP. Some things that students can learn more about include:

• Translation / Localization Processes
• Quality Standards
• CAT and QA Tools

So how do we ensure that students get proper training and support?

Firstly, we organize lectures and workshops held by senior members of the Ciklopea team. These happen both online and on-site. The best part? All the internship courses at Ciklopea are developed in collaboration with partner universities. This is how we ensure that students are informed about the opportunity and that we develop a high-quality program that will set them up for success.

Ciklopea has proven to be a reliable industry partner for FFOS, providing several workshops on CAT tools and QA for our trainers over the years, many useful webinars on different topics, from onboarding to terminology, leading regional networking opportunities through ELIA, organizing summer schools and internships for our students, participating as a stakeholder in external quality audits at FFOS, and finally, as an employer of our graduates. This can truly serve as a model academia-industry partnership.

Marija Omazić, Director of the MA program in Translation and Interpreting Studies, the Faculty of Humanities and Social Sciences, University of Osijek, Croatia

Bridging the gap between linguistic and technical knowledge

Ciklopea recognizes the need for collaboration between LSPs and the academic community. This is the only way we can work together to narrow the gap between linguistic and technical knowledge. We believe that the responsibilities of LSPs also include providing a business and technical extension to the education students receive in an academic environment. This is why we organize a variety of events such as:

• Workshops
• Lectures
• Open Door Days
• Ciklopea Summer School

These types of events are always a great reminder of why we love working in the language industry. There seems to be a common denominator among people who choose linguistics as their major and professional focus. There’s a genuine interest in different cultures, the way language tech works, and often a curiosity about psychology and people in general.

We work closely with students to provide them with feedback on their translations and actionable tips on how to improve them. Additionally, we provide them with the opportunity to look behind the scenes, understand how project management works inside the language industry, and share the best practices for collaborating with different stakeholders in the process.

More importantly, we want to show that in a healthy work environment, translators are never left on their own, but they are openly appreciated as an important link in a much larger project chain.

By understanding the different phases of the project, students get a valuable opportunity to explore possible career paths in the language industry. So they can see what it’s like to work as an in-house translator, freelance translator, project manager, or QA specialist. Sharing experiences of what it’s like to be Ciklopea’s associate or employee has helped students understand the nature of business relationships and what day-to-day operations look like.

The Department of German Studies at the University of Zadar cooperates very successfully with the agency Ciklopea. The course content covered in the translation track of the graduate level of study is additionally professionally improved at workshops held with students by language experts and translators from the Ciklopea team. In this way, an excellent link is created between higher education teaching and translation practice, and students achieve close cooperation with professional translators and get to know the latest trends in the translation profession.

Helga Begonja, Assistant Professor, University of Zadar, Croatia

Awards and recognitions inspire us to push forward

At Ciklopea, we truly believe that if you’re committed and honest when it comes to your work, and if you’re determined to make every day count, good results will always follow. Over the past decade, we’ve received many recognitions that serve as proof that we’re doing something right.

Some of the awards that we’re particularly proud of:

• Employer Partner Certificate
• Best Employer Brand
• Excellence During Challenges
• Student Friend
• CSR Index
• Key Difference Award

We believe that there’s one key thing about Ciklopea that contributed to winning all these recognitions: we are wholeheartedly a people-first business. This means that we prioritize the human element in business, that we focus on making our employees feel safe and appreciated, and that we never put profits over people. We’ve pushed through hard times together – the pandemic is the most obvious example – but we’ve stayed true to our core values.

Want to join Ciklopea?

If a lot of what we’ve written in this article resonates with you and your personal values, we have some great news! We’re looking for new team members so feel free to fill out the open application here.

Even if there are no open positions that match your preferred career path, we’d encourage you to reach out and join our talent pool.

Our pledge to employees includes:

• A carefully crafted professional development plan
• 800+ hours of training per year
• An opportunity to discover your true strengths, to grow, and to develop
• Being part of a socially responsible company that takes care of each team member

But don’t take our word for it! Check out some of the stories of Ciklopea’s people. We find them precious because they strengthen our love for the work we do and remind us that people form, share, and reinforce a company’s culture.

The post Ciklopea offers great opportunities for students appeared first on Ciklopea.

While the basic phases and the desired outcome of each project are generally the same, the variables such as language combinations, number of language pairs, type, format and purpose of the materials and any additional services required will influence the scope and consequently the price of each project.

Take a look at the key points you need to define at the beginning of your journey towards the perfect service:

Translation vs Localization

While translation refers to communicating the meaning between the languages (mostly in textual format), localization, as its name implies, refers to a particular place, or even more specifically, to a particular market.

Its purpose is to adapt the product/service to the linguistic, cultural and legal environment of the target market, while maintaining the corporate identity and the essence of the corporate message and values across different languages and locales.

Translation is an extremely important part of the localization process, but localization goes deeper, as it also often includes adaptation of non-textual elements such as images, layouts, multimedia elements etc, as well as alignment of the product/service with any market-specific legal or technical requirements.

In short, you may need translation only for textual content, while for websites, software, IFUs, multimedia materials and everything else you should be looking for localization.

When done the right way, localization is invisible – if the end user can notice the seams, something is not quite right. To achieve this invisibility, we need the localization process.

The process

The localization process can include more or less stages, depending on the requirements and objectives of each particular project. The standard process version includes the essential roles of a PM, translators, reviewers and a QA
team.

The technology

It is impossible to imagine the localization process without the dedicated translation technologies and productivity suites designed to generate more high-quality content in less time and at optimal costs. CAT (Computer-assisted translation) tools are software products designed to help professional human translators generate more work in less time and they have been the industry standard for decades.

Machine translation (MT) is the translation output generated by machines, i.e. machine translation engines that should be custom developed for best results. MT can be performed with the application of Artificial intelligence (AI), with the post-editing and quality control steps by professional human translators.

The context

The context refers to what do you need to localize and who is your target audience. The type and format of your content will have a significant impact on the turnaround time and costs of the localization process. It is important to bear in mind that the purpose of the localization process is the same in all cases and what differs mainly depends on the context i.e. target audience: It is not the same to localize corporate materials in editable vs. non-editable files, website localization vs. localization of highly specialised materials, transcreation vs. localization of multimedia files etc. In other words, the specific stages and workflows of the process will largely depend on the type and format of your materials.

The volume

The volume refers to how much content do you want to translate and how are the costs calculated – and, lest we forget, the number of language combinations. Translation and reviewing volumes are usually calculated per source word, with applied calculations that generate weighted word counts, with matches and repetitions at reduced price per word. This method of calculation is one of the many benefits of CAT (as well as MT + AI) platforms. In cases when localization is performed in several language combinations, it is always advisable to prepare the source material in one major language and then to localize from it to other languages, and thus avoid language pairs with reduced availability.

The Quality

Quality in this context is not an elusive or preferential aspect of the localized materials, but actually a predictable and measurable result of the localization process. The aspects of quality of translated materials such as accuracy, appropriateness and fluency can be assessed, and these are the aspects of your corporate message that can have an impact on your business performance and that can make your marketing campaigns sink or swim in international markets. The thing is that people tend to notice the quality of the language only when it’s bad – and when it’s bad, it always brings a whiff of sloppiness and untrustworthiness that may have serious consequences on your business.

The reason why language industry even exists, together with its processes and dedicated technologies, is to prevent this kind of thing from happening.

Sounds interesting? See more details on:

Buyer Guide

The post All you need to know when buying Translation and Localization Services appeared first on Ciklopea.