Description of Industry Translation Quality Practices

Alan Melby & Tyler Snow

GALA survey32 translation companies, content owners,

and freelance translators indicated that their current translation quality assessment procedures involve the following error categories…

Do your translation quality systems do the same?

Common error categoriesTerminology!AccuracyFluencyOmissionTarget grammarMistranslationTypographicalSpelling CompletenessLegal requirements

Less commonly mentioned categoriesOffensivenessToneRegisterFormalityStyle guide complianceLength of textProject level errors such as delivery datesDo not translate such as HTMLProductivity (using built in timers)

Cont.Not localized enough (too general)Too localized (needed international

translation)Source text errors*Tool compliance, (translator used unknown

tool that when read back into the management system caused a garbled text)

Consistency with translation memory (not termbase)

Lack of product knowledge leading to a misinformed translation

Thank you