Saipem S.p.A.: Complex technical translation for an oil industry project

Strategic Partner

Saipem S.p.A. (Società Anonima Italiana Perforazioni E Montaggi) is a multinational company providing services to the petroleum exploration and production industry.

In short, Saipem employs engineers for the kind of technical work that is so complex, they had to build an entire marketing campaign to even try and explain it. Suffice to say, if it is so daunting to describe the technical preparation, professionalism, and skills of Saipem employees, you can imagine the difficulty of their technical documentation!

Saipem was one of the main contractors responsible for the construction of a liquified gas terminal (LNG Terminal) in Świnoujście, for Polskie LNG. S.A. This mammoth task was performed between 2011 and 2019 and we’d like to think that Studio Gambit is at least in some part responsible for the success of the operation.

Challenges

This brings us neatly into our first challenge. As Saipem is a true multinational giant, the engineers on the project typically spoke French, Italian, or English. To this we have to add Polish, spoken by the employees of Polskie LNG. S.A. and we have a melting pot of truly epic proportions. Studio Gambit had to set up and execute efficient processes for multi-directional, multi-lingual translation while keeping the consistency of vocabulary across all documents.

In addition, most of the documents to be translated belonged to highly technical and specialised fields such as construction, engineering, and mechanics to name a few.

Insights

Studio Gambit quickly realised that such a big engineering project generates peripheral services and jobs, fulfilled by additional contractors. These contractors also needed translation services within the specifications named above.

It was also noted that most of the material to be translated was being generated continuously, thus making it necessary to operate to short deadlines.

Solutions

Studio Gambit made sure to remain flexible with regards to the deadlines and output by assigning more than seventy employees and freelancers to the project, including DTP specialists, editors and sixty-two language specialists.

Studio Gambit set up processes to integrate all translation work for the main contractor with the output for the auxiliary contractors, thus improving communication between all parties and acting as an intermediary in cases of cultural conflict and misunderstandings.

Quick Facts

Language pairs translated: Polish – English, English – Polish, French – Polish, Polish – Italian, Italian – Polish.

Translated fields: construction, engineering, mechanics, electronics, business, IT, law, environmental protection, health & safety

Translated documents: delivery specifications, technical documentation, legal and corporate documents, daily memos, project specifications, etc.

Translated volume by month: up to 2 thousand pages

Number of translated words: 7 403 395

If you print 7 million words, you’d have to use more than thirty thousand sheets of printer paper – for comparison, there are 423 pages in the first edition of Tolkien’s Lord of the Rings trilogy and 1223 pages in the first edition of one of the world’s longest novels, Tolstoy’s War and Peace.

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