We build your term base.
Send us your past translations. We extract your terms and build your bilingual term base from them.
Technical translation, English and French
Keep your engineers on engineering.
We'll handle the translation, English to French and French to English. Your drawings, specs and reports in your terminology, ready to issue.
- Title block
- Firm
- Technitrad
- Discipline
- Technical translation, EN / FR
- Since
- 1987
- Standards
- ISO 17100 / ISO 18587 / CAN/CGSB-131.10
- Office
- Montréal, Québec
01 / Sheet A-101, as issuedThe drawing, in English.
02 / Translated in placeEvery callout in French, written into the drawing.
03 / One terminologyThe same terms in the model, the specs and every sheet.
04 / Ready to buildAn issue-ready design, in both languages.
05 / Pavillon A, as builtBuilt in both languages.
01 / The problem
Your senior engineers spend hours correcting the wrong terms in translated deliverables.
47%
of translation errors are wrong terms, in General Motors' study of its own translations.SAE J1930, Woyde 2005
What managed terms save
One company cut complaints about its translations by 80% once it managed its terms.
Fixed late, a wrong term costs more: by then it is in every sheet, spec and language. And every project starts from zero, so the same corrections come back.tekom, Schmitz and Straub 2018 (one company’s report); Warburton 2024
C-01
Safety
Health and safety hazards on site.
C-02
Cost
Expensive rework and re-issued sheets.
C-03
Time
Delayed approvals and projects.
C-04
Liability
Non-conformances in contract documents.
C-05
Usability
Inconsistent drawings, specs and manuals.
C-06
Reputation
A client who stops trusting the translation.
What we believe
A term your engineers approved once should never need correcting again.
02 / What makes us different
We translate the actual AutoCAD files, in the same terms as the spec.
You receive an issue-ready set in the other language. We do the retyping, adjust the layouts for the longer French and check every callout against the spec. How AutoCAD translation works.
- 1Every callout, with its French beside it.The text is pulled out of the DWG itself, label by label. Repeated labels fill themselves in.
- 2The drawing, live beside the text.Select a callout and the sheet zooms to where it sits, so nothing is translated out of context.
- 3Your terms and QA on every segment.Approved terms and checks run before the translation goes back into the file.
What you usually get back
What we send back
A file of drawing text to retype into AutoCAD
The DWG files, with the translation written in
Layouts broken by longer French text
Layouts adjusted for French, ready to plot
Callouts that don't match the spec wording
Every callout matching the spec
Terms that change from one document to the next
One terminology across drawings, specs and reports
Result
Ready to issue.
03 / How it works
Your terms, built once. Applied to every document after.
Three steps, the same on every project.
You choose, project by project.
An AI draft your team reviews in NEOLO, or review by our specialists. Both use your terms. Compare the two.
Ready to issue.
Your documents come back in your format, and your drawings as DWG with the translation written in.
Sheet A-101: the terms on this drawing
Approved once. Used on every sheet, spec and report after.
- 08 44 13Curtain wallMur-rideau
- 03 30 00Concrete slabDalle de béton
- A-101Line of slab aboveRive de la dalle au-dessus
- A-101Typical columnPoteau type
- A-101Canopy aboveAuvent au-dessus
- A-101Main entranceEntrée principale
On every project: Upstream Quality
The right term is settled before the first word is translated.
Only about 5% of the words in a text need terminology research, yet wrong terms cause close to half of the errors. So we deal with them first.Champagne; General Motors, SAE J1930
AIdentify
The key terms of every project are extracted before translation begins.
BValidate
A subject-matter expert translates them and your team approves.
C → DKeep, then check
Approved terms go into your term base, and every deliverable is checked against it before delivery.
04 / Case study: two Nunavut harbours
400+ pages. 71,658 words. 17 days.
An engineering firm had written the development studies for two harbours in Nunavut. During a public owner’s request for proposals for marine infrastructure at both, a French-speaking contractor asked for the studies in French. The reports came as Word files and the drawings as DWG, but some parts existed only as PDF, including a 1970s geotechnical study that went through OCR.
Pages400+
Marine, geotechnical and environmental studies.
Images and drawings39
Localized for the French reports.
Words71,658
Six translators and one reviewer, working in one shared translation memory.
Turnaround17 days
From the first order on day 1 to delivery on day 18, as a rush job.
From the purchase orders and the invoice, day 1 to day 18
Task148111518
Terms2 terminologists, days 1-2
OCRPDF-only parts
Translation6 translators
Review1 reviewer, from day 3
LayoutOrder day 10
DeliveryAll four parts, day 18
Result
Terms first, then translation.
Two terminologists set the terms on days 1 and 2, before the first translation order. All four parts were delivered the same day. Read the case study.Client: an engineering firm. Owner: a public owner in Nunavut.
05 / Drawing register: what we translate
Start with the document, or with the discipline.
Five kinds of document, then eight engineering disciplines, each with its own terms.
- S-01NMS specificationsDOCX, PDFSection by section, in the same terms as your drawings, built on your term base.
- S-02AutoCAD drawingsDWGSend the DWG files; get them back with the translation written in, the layout intact.
- S-03Reports and studiesDOCX, PDFThe same approved terms as your specs and drawings, across every document type.
- S-04Your term baseTBX, XLSXBuilt from your past translations, applied to every future document, and yours to keep.
- S-05Everything else technicalAll formatsTenders and contracts, submittals, O&M manuals, health and safety, software and e-learning.
D-01Civil and infrastructureRoads, sewers, water and municipal works.
D-02StructuralConcrete, steel, seismic and shop drawings.
D-03GeotechnicalSoil reports, borehole logs and foundations.
D-04Mechanical and MEPHVAC, plumbing and fire protection.
D-05ElectricalPower, lighting and communications.
D-06EnvironmentalImpact studies, site assessments and monitoring.
D-07EnergyGeneration, substations, backup power and offshore energy.
D-08TransportationRoads, bridges, rail and marine works.
The people we work with
Made for the people who issue the documents.
In engineering and architecture firms, at contractors and at public owners.
R-01
Senior engineers
Approve your terms once, then spend your review on the content.
R-02Project managers
Receive an issue-ready set in the other language, with the retyping and layout fixes done.
R-03Specification writers
Standard NMS clauses come back in their official wording, and your edits in the same terms as your drawings.
R-04CAD and drawing leads
AutoCAD DWG files come back with the translation written in place, so nobody retypes a callout.
R-05Bid and site teams
Bids, submittals and shop drawings come back in the terms of the owner’s specification.
R-06Owners’ technical staff
Keep one term base you own and hand it to each new consultant, so an asset keeps one name.
06 / Why Technitrad
Translators for engineers, since 1987.
The firms that build the country trust us with their French and their English.
Founded1987
Founded by a technical translator.
Term extraction67.3
NEOLO’s F1 on ACTER, a public benchmark for English term extraction. The best published result is 61.2.
Clients6 of 10
Six of the world's ten largest engineering firms trust us with their translation, and so do 12 Fortune 500 companies.
SpecialtyNMS
Experience across every section of the National Master Specification, backed by an NMS term base of over 15,000 terms.
CertifiedISO 17100
ISO 18587
CAN/CGSB-131.10
ISO 18587
CAN/CGSB-131.10
Translation, post-editing of machine translation, and the Canadian standard for translation services.
AutoCAD2,000+
Drawings translated for engineering firms, contractors and public owners.
We’ve completed our review of the translated documents and are pleased to say we have no comments, everything looks good on our end.
We were extremely satisfied with the service received from Technitrad delivering the [breakwater] translation.
Thank you very much for your excellent work! And for delivering ahead of time! It makes our team’s work so much easier.
In their words
Everything looks good on our end.
What the people who check our work write back once the files land. Quoted from their emails, trimmed, never reworded.
Start
DirectRequest a quoteYour engineers review the translation in the terms they approved.
Send your package: specs, drawings or reports. We reply with a price and a date.
FreeFree terminology checkUpload a recent translated deliverable. We return a short report of every inconsistent term.