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Technical Translation Tips 03

How to coordinate your technical translation quality management process

Go to: Tip 01 Tip 02 Tip 03

Your Quality Management process should utilize a multi-level system of checks and balances:

Translation is an intrinsically human-factor driven process, and qualifying, accrediting, and assigning the best personnel possible to each assignment is the first step of Quality Management. The translator selection, accreditation, and project-staffing procedures are all important.

To minimize the chances of an error or omission in language or information, you should require that three pairs of expert eyes look at all content from the beginning to the end: document translator, editor, and proofreader. Every one of these specialists is a professional translator, a native speaker of the target language with a science degree and experience in the appropriate industry. Any differences of opinion among these linguists will be discussed with the project manager, who may then ask for the client’s opinion, if necessary.

To ensure the relevance of your work to users in target cultures, another staffing requirement is your insistence that the linguists working on each translation reside in different countries.  While finished documents will be going to customers in various countries, you should insist on having a combination of regionally based as well as U.S. based translators of editors with native language abilities in the target language to review the translations before sending them back to our project managers for a final check on formatting and consistency. For example, a Japanese document translation for a telecommunications company may be translated in the United States by a Japanese telecommunications expert with a degree in Electrical Engineering. Then it would be sent to a technical translation editor living in Japan for an additional check not only to ensure the most current technical language usage, but also to take account of any and all cultural sensitivities.

For larger projects, when more than one translator is working on a document at a given time, an additional Japanese native speaker will act as Editor-in Chief responsible for all final edits on the document to ensure consistency in terms of style and jargon throughout the life cycle of the translation service project. This Editor-in-Chief will have the same high level of expertise with telecommunications. Furthermore, having years of experience as a chief translator and editor, he will have a proven track record of maintaining quality control over large quantities of translations. 

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