Quality Management in Translation Projects

Initial Situation

A high-quality text is a text that is both accurate and complete. To optimize the reading experience, the text needs to be processed under consideration of various factors. A text must be target group-oriented, comprehensible, terminologically correct, and translation-oriented. Moreover, it must fulfill country-specific and legal requirements.

Challenges in the Translation

Process For many enterprises, translation processes are like a black box that comprises numerous people, e.g. external translation partners. These partners are specialists for different subject areas, text types, and file formats. The three biggest challanges are:

• Finding a language service provider
• Defining the quality standard
• Coordinating the translation and the review

Quality Management from the Outset

The quality management should start with the source text and continue throughout all process phases. Careful preparation of the source text lays the basis for a good translation. The source text should be coherent in terms of syntax, complexity, spelling, grammar, and wording. Terminology should be used consistently, as diversity in source texts results in inconsistent translations and more customer questions due to comprehension problems. The use of smart software technologies supports authors in the composition of the source text. While composing a text, they can immediately see which terminology is preferred, e.g. because a particular wording is already available in several languages. In this way, the proliferation of terms can be avoided, resulting in improved text consistency and comprehensibility as well as lower translation costs.