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International P&IDs

International P&IDs

International P&IDs

(OP)
We are an English language company.  All of our specifications and drawings are in English.

We are creating new P&IDs for a plant in another country, where many of the operators/maintenance personnel do not speak/read English.  The Engineers/Management do know English.

So....

Do we create the P&IDs in English to maintain our own documentation, with a translation guide for the plant, or do we send the P&IDs to be translated to the other language.

Problem with the latter is that we will be responsible for maintaining the P&IDs, and in the future, other documents.

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This is normally the space where people post something insightful.

RE: International P&IDs

What does your contract require?

What is the other language?

Who would you send the drawings to for translation?  Many (most) translation firms, and especially translation programs, do a crappy job on technical stuff.

RE: International P&IDs

(OP)
Contract?  Plants are owned by us.

Language?  In this case, it's French, but we will soon run into many others such as Chinese, Spanish, Vietnamese, Indian, Russian.....

Translation firms?  My thoughts exactly....

______________________________________________________________________________
This is normally the space where people post something insightful.

RE: International P&IDs

If you have personnel in your foreign plants that can understand the English diagrams they would be best equipped to translate. They would have sufficient technical background and their native language would be the language to be translated to. I think those are two requirements for good technical translations. I would arrange in advance for foreign plant personnel to translate and maintain the diagrams.

RE: International P&IDs

it'd make sense (to me at least) that your offshore colleagues would, as part of undertaking the work, translate your drwgs.

like CJCPE, they know their language best and hopefully some of them know english too !  I'd have one of them come to head office to see the parts being made and to talk to the designers to understand the engineering intent.  then go back and translate, and have some of your head office engineers (not bean counters) go and look at the parts they're making.

RE: International P&IDs

My opinion is that is that you should maintain in English your own documentation and send the documentation and P&Ids to be translated to the other language.

Technical translations are a hard work and difficult to perform because the meanings of one language to another are not direct and require lots of search.

Some technical translations from English to other languages such as Portuguese, came from Brazilian side and some times are misunderstood and hard to understand to avoid errors is better to check the original English term and try to understand it trough the English meaning.

As someone has already post everything depends on the terms of the contract made with your clients.

Good Luck

Luis   

RE: International P&IDs

If your P&IDs are mostly symbolic with some names, may I suggest that you use English on the drawings, with a separate glossary?
I find that engineering disciplines tend to have previous experience with English drawings and specifications.
I think that functional descriptions or operation manuals, need to be both in the local language, and in English to avoid any mis-understandings.
This is my experience in Thailand.

RE: International P&IDs

My two cents,

We had this happen at our plant when it was built many years ago.  A large, very expensive piece of equipment was built overseas and shipped here (USA) with all relevant prints in the originators native language.  The manuals etc were translated in English (sort of) but all of the prints and schematics were not.

To this day we still have problems getting the documents translated even when we send them to the OEM they have difficulty determining some of the technical information.

If I were the customer I would want everything translated into my native language especially the way CJCPE mentions.  Otherwise the majority of the schematic just becomes a picture to look at.

Regards,

EOIT

RE: International P&IDs

If my company was English speaking, then I would work in my own language.

If someone else wants to use my drawings, then they would be responsible for making sure that they translated correctly.

If I did my own drawing in a foreign language, there is a good chance that I would make a mistake on my own drawing.

I would prefer to limit the opportunity for mistakes due to a language error.

"Do not worry about your problems with mathematics, I assure you mine are far greater."   
Albert Einstein
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RE: International P&IDs

You should prepare your docs in English and work with your native-tongue colleagues to do the translations. There are some very good technical translation services out there but they are very, very expensive. Since you've got bilingual colleagues, you're in a good position.

Make sure you provide explanations for everything and not rely on simple phrases like "float switch" or even "ON"/"OFF".

Make sure you establish a good relationship with your colleagues and create an environment where it's OK for them to tell you that they don't understand what you've written or what you're saying.

You should also ask them to write things down in English, in their own words, in an effort to validate their understanding.

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