We build your term base.
Send us your past translations. We extract every term 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 one 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 a wrong term costs
10 to 20× more to fix at the end of a project than at the start.
Every project starts from zero, so the same corrections come back.Xerox, JD Edwards
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, not a translation your team still has to process. The retyping, the layout fixes and the cross-checking against the spec are our job.
- 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 our specialists. Both use your terms.
Ready to issue.
Your documents come back in your format and your terms, ready to issue.
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.
Terms are about 5% of the words in a text, and 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, which runs a final check before delivery.
04 / Case study: Iqaluit and Pond Inlet harbours
420 pages. 45 drawings. Two weeks.
Worley had written the harbour development studies for Iqaluit and Pond Inlet. When the Government of Nunavut put both harbours out to tender, a French-speaking bidder asked for the studies in French, and the bid date could not move. Everything was PDF only, and some of the geotechnical studies dated from the 1970s and were barely legible.
Pages420+
Marine, geotechnical and environmental studies.
Drawings45+
AutoCAD drawings, translated in the drawing.
Words80,221
Four translators and one reviewer, sharing one translation memory in real time.
Deadline14 days
Fixed by the tender. No extension was possible.
The programme, day by day, weekends included
Task1234567891011121314
FilesPDF to editable files
TermsValidated before translation
Translation4 translators
Review1 reviewer, from day 5
LayoutAdjusted for the longer French
DeliveryOn the bid date
Result
Delivered on day 14.
The Government of Nunavut issued the French studies with the tender, and bidding went ahead on schedule.Client: Worley. Owner: Government of Nunavut.
05 / Drawing register: what we translate
Known for construction. Fluent in everything technical.
Engineering, construction, energy, transportation, manufacturing, technology.
- 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, bridges, water and municipal works.
D-02StructuralConcrete, steel, seismic and shop drawings.
D-03GeotechnicalSoil reports, foundations and shoring.
D-04Mechanical and MEPHVAC, plumbing and fire protection.
D-05ElectricalPower distribution, substations and controls.
D-06EnvironmentalImpact assessments, water and remediation.
D-07EnergyHydro, wind, transmission and storage.
D-08TransportationRail, transit, marine and ports.
06 / Why Technitrad
Translators for engineers, since 1987.
The firms that build the country trust us with their French and their English.
Founded1987
Translating for engineering firms, contractors and public owners from the start.
Term extraction67.3
F1 on ACTER, the standard term-extraction benchmark. 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.
Volume10M+
Words translated every year, 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 East Breakwater, Skinner’s Cove 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
Delivered ahead of time.
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 minutes, not hours.
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.