Recommendations for Translation Environments to Improve Translators’ Workflows

Language professionals play an important role in an increasingly multilingual society where people commonly do not sufficiently understand all languages used in their environment. While there are many translation environment tools (TEnTs) available to support translators in their tasks, there is evidence that these tools are not used to their full potential. Within the context of a broad research project, SCATE (Smart Computer-Assisted Translation Environment), we investigated the current tools and work practices of language professionals to enable personalization of the user interfaces of translation environments and improve translators workflows. We used complementary research methods in our study: a survey among language professionals, semi-structured interviews with five local companies involved in translation and nine contextual inquiries with both in-house and freelance translators and revisers. Based on the gathered information we identified eight relevant scales to typify the users and their experience with TEnTs, we created generalized workflows and summarized the key insights using two personas. We present a set of recommendations that could positively impact translators workflows. These recommendations are in line with, but go beyond state of the art: they are focused on improving efficiency, effectiveness and usability of translation environments as well as giving more control to translators.