Quality levels for translation?

Can you have different quality levels and how do you decide what they are?

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  • Can you have different quality levels

    Yes, you certainly can and it really depends on your discussions with your customer about they want to use the translation, what sort of target audience they have and in the commercial business we operate in it's how much the customer has in their budget to be able to pay. We talk a lot about machine translation as well and it's possible to get translations done relatively cheaply by machine translation but you can post-edit and you can improve it a bit.  Then we have what we call the premium end, premium translation, which has a different process, so we're really talking about different processes to create different products, different levels of quality.  For example, if it's for something we call regulated industries like labelling or packaging for medicines there's a very long and complex process to ensure that everything is absolutely correct and that there are no errors there at all because obviously the risk to users is considerably higher than if it's just a product review on some kind of shopping site or something like that.

    how do you decide what they are?

    In terms of how we decide what they are this really goes back to the relationship we have with our customers and clients and what they're looking for. Our customers typically have lots of work they want to translate so it's not one size fits all for all of them. But we will get a brief from them, we will write down the specifications, and then we will match the quality levels that need to be produced to match these specifications. Sylvia mentioned in the presentation that often someone from the clients side will check the work as well and give input to ensure that those levels are being met; then we will work together to make adjustments as necessary. But the key thing is really working on the translation process so that you decide the process you want to use and that will guarantee the quality level at the end. So make sure that everyone is happy with the process that is going to be used.

Reply
  • Can you have different quality levels

    Yes, you certainly can and it really depends on your discussions with your customer about they want to use the translation, what sort of target audience they have and in the commercial business we operate in it's how much the customer has in their budget to be able to pay. We talk a lot about machine translation as well and it's possible to get translations done relatively cheaply by machine translation but you can post-edit and you can improve it a bit.  Then we have what we call the premium end, premium translation, which has a different process, so we're really talking about different processes to create different products, different levels of quality.  For example, if it's for something we call regulated industries like labelling or packaging for medicines there's a very long and complex process to ensure that everything is absolutely correct and that there are no errors there at all because obviously the risk to users is considerably higher than if it's just a product review on some kind of shopping site or something like that.

    how do you decide what they are?

    In terms of how we decide what they are this really goes back to the relationship we have with our customers and clients and what they're looking for. Our customers typically have lots of work they want to translate so it's not one size fits all for all of them. But we will get a brief from them, we will write down the specifications, and then we will match the quality levels that need to be produced to match these specifications. Sylvia mentioned in the presentation that often someone from the clients side will check the work as well and give input to ensure that those levels are being met; then we will work together to make adjustments as necessary. But the key thing is really working on the translation process so that you decide the process you want to use and that will guarantee the quality level at the end. So make sure that everyone is happy with the process that is going to be used.

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