Ways to Automate Translation Quality Control and Move Content Quicker
People are trying to avoid their products being regarded as something that can easily be provided for. In the translation and localization business this attitude is common as well. Since this part is inevitable, but is not the ultimate essence of a business, just one of the gear wheels in the machine, business owners tend to consider it a step requiring less commitment than others. They are almost persuaded that a huge amount of translation and localization tasks can be completed in as short time as possible, with a low rate, but extreme quality. This statement is supported by a few combining elements like a decreasing complexity of the supply market and an increasing competition with more and more professional purchasing behavior, often in a form of auctioning, quoting, bidding, or whatever is a translation bargaining being called. With this arising phenomenon, both potential and current clients demand translators show more flexibility, so they take higher volumes to work on and meet shorter deadlines.
So, the question is being imposed－how is one, both freelancers and agencies, going to survive under such conditions? They can either differ from others or come up with a new approach. Therefore, some agencies and companies tend to stand out. They urge to be seen as ‘highquality providers’, so that is the reason they underline a conscious dedication to the task they will be assigned to. But, since every business has to undergo market rules, this is often not enough. Then, how to get quality translation, on time and with reduced rates?
One can hire a person who accepts lower rate payment and can meet the deadline, but he quality matter is still lingering. If that translation assignment is going to be review, well that is an additional cost. All these processes can be sped up, which will probably lead to running the risk of publishing a chaotic and inaccurate content that might not even be reminiscent of the brand in question. An introduction of some quality measures would be desirable, but with a tendency of avoiding more people being involved in the checking process? Something like automated quality controls would save time, ensure quality and be cost-effective.
Defining translation quality
Even though different people have different personal experiences, achievements, insight, and goals, which can shape their point of view perception of quality. However, when discussing translation quality such thing is non-existent. A certain translation is of high quality in one’s opinion whine in somebody else’s is a poor quality work. That is impossible since there are characteristics and elements proving a high value.
Before implementing quality control, it is necessary to establish the right indicators, or better said, to define exactly what quality entails.
Is it accuracy to win the game over preference? Is translation quality determined by perfect comma placement, or more likely the tone and essence of the message itself, as well as style preferences? What also can happen is that some tasks care about the overall value of the content and the ultimate goal that specific content is predicted for.
Building a foundation for automating translation quality control
To both translate and manage the given content can give a hard time. Without a proper base to keep following when it comes to managing content and translation turns into difficult and rather complicated process. Since automating translation quality control cannot be enabled without the right base, in other words, without a convenient piece of technology in place, the basic requirement is going to be a TMS or a translation management system.
1. INTEGRATIONS
In order to enable easier and faster content moving around, the creation of the right base or foundation is the first step. It needs to ensure automatic downloading, automatic job assignment, automatic string parsing, and automatic workflows, so the whole process becomes well-organized.
2. LINGUISTIC ASSETS
To be prolific and successful in completing their tasks, translators must be provided with all of the necessary resources, assets, and tools. What any decent translation management system should be equipped with are glossaries and style guides which help translators immensely. They are allowed to quickly and easily look up the appropriate word choice or phrasing. More than that, the users are given a solid reference point to rely on, which is at hand when translators have to fill in the gaps on their own. In this way, they are provided with great assistance during their work.
3. CONTEXT
Context is always the crucial point. No context and the meaning will suffer disambiguation and be lost. Hence, a strong context solution is the thing to empower translators to produce the highest quality content. Translators’ searching for information and filling in gaps on their own should be highly avoided for quality and speed achievement. Basically, the relevant information translators need should be given them front and centered so they can give their best.
4. FEEDBACK
A feedback loop with the translators can be arranged if the best among them is assigned to communicate around any issues, correct some and clearly explain why the provided solution is not the happiest choice. The feedback rhythm should be kept flowing smoothly and in friendliest atmosphere as possible. After all, people keep learning all their lives.
Automated Quality Control
Automated Quality Control has the ability to locate omissions, inconsistencies, formatting problems and terminology mistakes in bilingual files such as .ttx, .rtf and .tmx extensions. It enables the rapid correction of these mistakes by bringing translator’s attention directly to the reported error to the problem in the text. What could be the case is that the translator skipped the source segment or that the source text segment does not have the right counterpart in the target segment. Now that a solid base has been set, dealing with further managing quality and translation issues can be talked about.
QUALITY CHECKS
Any errors or mistakes both after and before translators complete their task, or just submit their work for review, can now be easily detected by automated quality checks.The configuration of specific Quality Check notifications can enable users build an automated process that make them sure that translations cannot be moved any forward in the process if and when an issue is recognized. First, it must be solved, then the work is allowed to be proceeded with.
Quality Checks even have the ability to be configured so to look for target language word misspellings and repeated words.
ISSUE MANAGEMENT
Some automated translation controls can even facilitate the work of translators or reviewers in forms of raising any issues. Given such possibility, they are allowed to automatically notify the proper party of any action that needs to be taken. The integration with Slack app is the right thing to deal better with rising issues. When translators hit a problem during performing a task, their request for a solution will automatically be sent to a dedicated Issues Management Slack channel, enabling project managers to take action right within the app. It saves time by avoiding communication going through emails.
QUALITY CONFIDENCE SCORE
The QCS or Quality Confidence Score is a unique predictive reporting mechanism. Platforms owning it say it is a fundamentally new approach to Quality Management which helps organizations spot and address quality issues for all translations in real-time.
A prediction of translation quality outcomes in like this one is empowered by a scale of a 1-100 score. Specific point indicates the overall likely quality of translator output for every job completed. In fact, with the QCS, the identification of any deficiencies in the translation process, as well as problems with the source content is surely and timely noted. Anything obstacle in the form of a negative impact on the current translation quality will be predicted and removed.
Getting Creative
Depending on the specific content and its current or future value, the stream of creative with implementing even more automation is prone to finding unbelievable solutions. Since not all content will carry the same weight and be equally significant to the customers’ campaigns, not all content deserve nor request the same level of attention. If the content is not be seen by a huge audience, the quality pole can be lowered and a few steps omitted. On the contrary, when accuracy is mission-critical, taking a slower pace is more than recommendable.
A solution like Dynamic Workflows make it easy to automate the whole translation process, by allowing users to set up and design workflows based on their specific needs, and link multiple actions to one trigger. Certain contents that are similar to previous ones, repetitive and typical for specific business domains, can be automatically routed to machine translation. It means if
User-Generated Content is the subject of a translation task, to have all that automated to machine translation is sensible in order to cut costs, without any quality feature lost..
Bottom Line
At the end of the day, everything depends on the ultimate goal. Sensitive content requires sensitive approach, time and devotion. If it is not the situation, then automation will be a reliable tool to save time and money without jeopardizing the content translation quality. At least now, in modern times, one can have a choice.
