Translation projects depend on access to source files, work in progress, approved terminology, and completed deliverables. Terralíngua combines data center hosting, backup power and communications, and offsite backups to support its language services. These arrangements help reduce the impact of disruption and provide a basis for recovering project information.
What Continuity Planning Needs to Address
An interruption can affect more than the client portal. It may limit access to documents, project records, or the tools used to produce a translation. Planning should consider the information and services needed to resume work:
- Project materials: Source documents, translated files, and supporting graphics may need to be recovered together. The correct version matters, particularly when a project has several languages or successive rounds of review.
- Language resources: Approved terminology and translation memories help maintain consistency between assignments. Their availability can affect both ongoing production and later updates.
- Project information: Instructions, review decisions, and delivery requirements provide context for the files. Recovering a document alone may not provide everything needed to continue an assignment.
Backup and continuity measures reduce risk, but they do not make disruption impossible. The effect on a project depends on the incident, the systems involved, and the information available for recovery. A backup should not be interpreted as a promise of uninterrupted access or zero data loss.
Infrastructure That Supports Service Continuity
Our infrastructure includes several measures designed to reduce the effect of equipment, power, and connectivity failures:
- Data center hosting: Our hosted systems use Tier IV data centers, with redundant power and cooling and fault-tolerant infrastructure. This supports infrastructure availability; it does not establish a guarantee that every application or project service will remain continuously accessible.
- Power and communications: Backup power arrangements include high-capacity uninterruptible power supplies (UPS) and generators. Redundant communication lines and automatic failover help maintain access when a primary connection or system becomes unavailable.
- Cloud backup and synchronization: We use Microsoft Azure services for synchronization and backup of project files, databases, and translation memories. Synchronization supports consistency between working copies, while backups provide recovery copies. The two functions serve different purposes.
Infrastructure redundancy and backups address different risks. An unwanted change or deletion may spread through synchronized copies, so synchronization alone is not a substitute for backup. Restoring usable information also depends on the available recovery point and the systems affected by an incident.
How We Back Up Project Information
Our arrangements include backups for active work and archives for completed projects:
- Daily offsite backups: Active projects are backed up daily to remote locations. These copies support recovery if working files become unavailable. Changes made after the most recent successful backup may need to be recovered separately or recreated.
- Automated synchronization: Server synchronization helps keep working information consistent across systems. It complements backup arrangements but should not be interpreted as a promise of zero data loss.
- Weekly archival backups: Completed projects are included in weekly archival backups. If you need earlier work retrieved, discuss the files and versions required with your project contact. Archive retention and retrieval requirements should be agreed rather than assumed to be indefinite.
For any backup arrangement, checking that information can be restored is an important part of recovery planning. Recovery time depends on the incident and the systems involved. Keep your own approved source files and delivered translations under your organization’s document-control procedures as well.
Discuss Your Requirements with Terralíngua
Tell your project contact about any specific storage, confidentiality, retention, or continuity requirements before submitting files. Include delivery dependencies and any expectations for retrieving earlier work. We can discuss which arrangements apply and identify points that need agreement before your translation or localization project begins.