The 3 Steps Of Quality Assurance For Translations

Most people imagine that when it comes to translating content from one language to another, it’s a simple matter handing the work to one person fluent in both languages and have the content converted to the target language. While this step is definitely part of the process, it is far from the only one, especially when the scope of the work is large and has to be handled by many people or go through many hands because of size, or specific requirements for formatting. That is why there is an overall process applied to translation called “Quality Assurance,” and it does exactly what the name implies; provide an extra layer of oversight to assure that a quality job has been done. Here are the steps that a normal QA process will go through to make sure clients get the best work possible.

There is an overall process applied to translation called “Quality Assurance,” and it does exactly what the name implies; provide an extra layer of oversight to assure that a quality job has been done.

Translation

Once the scope of the work has been determined, the content will go to the translator or translators that are required to meet the deadline. Translators are, whenever possible, native speakers of the language that is being targeted for translation, to ensure that the final product reads or sounds natural to the target audience.

It’s important at this stage to ensure the integrity of the content is preserved, as often a literal word-for-word translation may be impractical for grammatical or cultural reasons, such as a sentence using a cultural reference in the source language that has no direct equivalent in the cultural language.

Glossary & Terminology

Another important step in QA is ensuring that all special terminology or language has been preserved. While this is not an important step in content designed for general consumption, it is tremendously important for more specialized content aimed at the business, scientific or medical community where, above and beyond the normal language translation requirements, there may be industrial, scientific or other professional conventions that have been standardized in different ways for different languages and must be observed.

This is an especially important step for professional communications as this information can have a large benefit or impact on many different groups. Clarity of communication is absolutely paramount for this type of content and documentation. We employ specialists in the various fields and disciplines to make sure professional language and terminology is accurately preserved and translated.

Proof Reading & Final Check

Because translation is still primarily a human-driven process we have to make allowances for the possibility of human error somewhere in the production line. Because of this, we have an additional round of proof reading from in-house staff to check for structural, content and grammatical errors in the target language, and ensure that it reads efficiently and naturally.

Even after the proof reading, we have a final check in place to evaluate the work before submitting it to clients, and once that is done, the final work is turned over. During this entire process, we keep clients appraised of every step during the process, so you’re never kept in the dark about how far along your project is.

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