Automotive 

Can you imagine the disastrous consequences of confusing timing belts with drive belts? 

I have seen this type of mistranslation in the manuals of some of the world’s largest car manufacturers. If you need an automotive translation, make sure your translator is very familiar with vehicle mechanics. Ideally, besides being a professional translator, he should also be an engineer, a mechanic, or a car enthusiast. 

What could happen if you confuse the “R” gear position with the “N” position in an instruction manual? 

I have seen this type of mistranslation in a manual of one of the world’s best-selling vehicle models. Translation memories are widely used to speed up translation and reduce costs. Often they lead to mistakes or even dangerous instructions (not to be confused with machine translation). If the translator relies on these tools, wrong phrases can slip in easily. 

For example, imagine the translator has to translate this sentence: 

Set the shift lever to D

The translator correctly translates as: 

Ponga la palanca de cambios en D 

Now imagine the translator must translate the following sentence: 

Set the shift lever to R 

The translation memory will automatically detect the similarity with the previously translated sentence and propose: 

Ponga la palanca de cambios en D 

The translator must carefully check the differences between the original and the proposed translation to avoid a fatal error. In this case, it would be enough to replace “D” with “R,” but the mistake could easily go unnoticed, resulting in an incorrect and potentially dangerous instruction. 

Translation memories are very useful to save time and minimize risk, as long as the translator separates mechanical functions from linguistic ones, constantly reviews the proposals, and develops automotive termbases to ensure that the most important terms are never mistranslated. 

Automotive Experience 

I have translated for five car manufacturers: two Japanese, two European, and one American. 

Since 1999, I have translated or revised more than eight million words of automotive texts, equivalent to over 12,000 pages. 

Types of Automotive Documents I Have Translated 

• User manuals

• Workshop and maintenance manuals

• Technical documentation for repair and maintenance shops

• Technical articles

• Press releases

• Web pages

Terminology Database 

In addition, I have created, in collaboration with other translators, an English-Spanish terminology database of more than 2,000 terms, which I still update occasionally and to which I have devoted over 180 hours. 

© 2024 Alejandro Moreno Ramos, www.translatorengineer.com