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Communication Dans Un Congrès Année : 2024

Agile translation or assembly lines?

Résumé

Since its beginning, the localization industry has evolved both content- and technology-wise simultaneously. As for the workflow, it was initial and unstructured in 1985-1995, structured in 1995-2005, and virtual starting from 2005 (Schäler 2008, 198). This evolution also reflects the change of work management within development teams, which is represented by the Agile Manifesto announced by a team of developers in 2001. Agile work, as opposed to waterfall work (Andrei et al. 2019), has become the norm in almost every virtually-performed work nowadays, including localization. It aims to deliver working products fast through short iterations while ensuring collaboration and product ownership for each team member (Tripp, Riemenschneider, and Thatcher 2016). This paper attempts to shed light on the impact of agile work on the localized content. Surprisingly, and to the best of our knowledge, no studies are done in Translation Studies (TS) on agile work. One study published outside TS (Kabát 2023) dealt with the translation challenges under this model. The present paper is based on a bilingual corpus of product blurbs selected based on the target language (Nord 2005). It takes the Arabic version of 15 international corporate websites (furniture, cosmetics, and technology) versus the English version. The results show questionable discrepancies in the quality across industries, besides textual inconsistencies, linguistic and cultural issues. These issues can be associated with the fast iterations, the temporality aspect and prioritization in agile work (Junker et al. 2023), and the dynamic nature of websites (Jimenez-Crespo 2013). The use of machine translation and/or post-editing is not excluded, particularly that it fits the fast and short cycles of agile work. Such practices in turn lead to ethical issues that contradict the goal of localization, focused on the end user’s experience. The paper should contribute to the practice with more insight on the advantages and disadvantages of agile work, and integrate relevant research from management into Translation Studies. It can also be a helpful explanation of the work nature awaiting translation students wishing to work in localization.
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hal-04553725 , version 1 (21-04-2024)

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  • HAL Id : hal-04553725 , version 1

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Madiha Kassawat. Agile translation or assembly lines?: Implications of agile work on the localized content. 2nd International Conference: Translation and Cultural Sustainability - Challenges and New Avenues, Salamanca University, Apr 2024, Salamanca (Spain), Spain. ⟨hal-04553725⟩
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