When translating education materials for school districts, a common expectation is that the translation will match the formatting of the original English version. Obviously, we all know that Korean looks different than English and anticipate that the characters will be unique. But, the actual layout itself, meaning the placement of text, graphics and attributes such as form fields should stay approximately the same as the English.

At first rub, this expectation seems reasonable enough. It would make perfect sense that the language translator could simply swap out the English text with the corresponding language translation and the layouts will be mirror images of each other. But, in reality, this is much more difficult than simply swapping out languages due, in part, to ‘word expansion’.

Word expansion is an increase in the amount of words that it takes to communicate a concept from one language to another. When English is translated into another language, the translated version is often longer as is the case with Spanish in that the word counts can expand approximately 25% and English to Vietnamese increases almost 35%!

When word counts increase so significantly from one language into another, it can be incredibly challenging to format the language translation in the exact same manner as the English. Often, a translation may have a longer page count than the English or it can be near impossible to squeeze a translation into a set form field. For example, the English phrase “Proficiency in English Program” can be translated in Spanish as “Programa para Lograr la Competencia en el Inglés”. The English version is four words whereas the Spanish version is eight words – that is a 50% increase in the amount of words!

As you can see, applying that type of word expansion could make your 20 page parent/teacher handbook start to resemble War and Peace. Ultimately, knowing what to expect will minimize any last minute surprises.

Keep Learning!
Maggie
K12Translate