The oil and gas industry is undergoing a whirlwind of change at the moment.
Most of it Covid-19 enforced; whilst the other is a result of rapid digitization and innovation forcing the sector to reevaluate the entirety of its value chain.
This change also extends to localization and translation best practices, in the oil and gas sector.
This article will outline these practices, helping you understand how to create better quality localized and translation content.
South Africa’s oil and gas sector, what do you need to know today?
South Africa’s oil and gas sector is growing!
The recent discovery, the existence of over 9 billion barrels of oil, discovered on the South African coast – has been a major point of conversation and excitement in the country.
To put that 9 billion barrels into context, it amounts to just over 40 years of oil consumption for South Africa and its citizens.
This will further develop the oil and gas sector by enabling the country to produce some 370 000 barrels of oil and gas per day. ( Which currently accounts for 80% of the country’s gas imports.)
How language service providers work with oil, gas, and energy sector companies.
An experienced language service provider understands the complexity of the content produced by oil and gas clients. And possesses the experience to help streamline clients’ localization strategies, for various types of content.
The following translation and localization best practices will ensure uniformity of your global content, no matter the region:
Market expertise
The oil, gas, and energy sector produces large amounts of health and safety, technical and legal documentation, compliance regulation amongst others.
Either way, no matter what the content you produce, your business has to meet the various regulatory requirements mandated by local governments. In this case, content should be translated and localized to meet local requirements.
A service provider that understands your industry, your market terminology, and practices – will work with speed and reliability, making sure to follow regulatory requirements.
Compliance and training expertise
It is a best practice that if health and safety training is conducted on an oil rig, to an international workforce, training materials must be communicated in a native language, and must be fully understood by the workforce.
And when required, make qualified interpreters available to deliver the training programs.
Work as a team
A language services provider, who provides localization and translation services to the oil and gas sector… should be trusted fully by the clients it works with.
A role as a trusted advisor or consultant is how a client demonstrates this trust.
An LSP (Language Service Provider) must share resources and best practices, with clients and their partners, during the translation lifecycle.
Localization requires a program strategy
Oil and gas clients should view translation as part of an overall long-term business strategy.
Why?
To benefit from cost advantages when production processes become efficient.
Approach your localization projects as a program to be strategized, with a language services provider, to define a workflow that’s optimal – to help manage projects over time.
Language technology, automation matters
Language service providers must introduce innovative language technology into their workflows; to achieve efficiency through technologies like Machine Translation, for content commonly known to be of low to medium impact.
We are beginning to see a proliferation of exciting technologies, whose impact on the translation and localization work we do, remains to be seen.
Resource management
A team of experts, experienced in working together and who are familiar with a client’s industry-specific content – we have found, leads to increased output and higher quality work.
We manage our resources by ensuring that translators, interpreters, and linguists work in areas of subject matter expertise, to deliver results within budgets and given timelines.
You’ve made it all the way here…
Thank you for taking the time to read this article.
It was created to offer valuable insights that you can share with your colleagues and co-workers.
We are Afrolingo
A professional translation and language services company in South Africa.
We use our knowledge of:
- Translation
- Transcription
- Interpretation
- Software localization
- Mobile localization
- Desktop publishing
- And website publishing
To create localized content and messaging that connects your brand to African audiences, and drive profitable action, Learn more about what we do here.
