Translation Quality Blog

New Version of QA Distiller

2008-06-11T08:24:00.000-07:00

Last month Yamagata Europe released a new version of QA Distiller, a translation QA tool.

New features

Automatic software updates
Batch processing from command line
Full results log file
Match rate displayed in error list
Checks for hard spaces
Support for TMX user fields
Support for TBX term status
Improved regular expression syntax
Better font handling in TTX files
Improved stability TMX editor

Validation system for Multilizer

2008-04-21T13:50:00.000-07:00

In addition to the stand-alone QA tools available on the market, several modern translation memory or localization programs offer their own quality verification tools, including those that come with, for example, SDLX and TagEditor.

Multilizer has recently announced enhancements to its translation QA system:

The configurable translation validation system supports implementing company best practices and contains also pre-defined recommended rule sets for common translation tasks.

(Source: PR.com)

Crimson files for translation quality patent

2008-02-21T09:22:00.000-08:00

According to the following Business Wire press release (ISO 14971-Certified Risk Management System Yields First Labeling Translation Patent), Crimson, a division of TransPerfect, has filed for a patent about a method for “analyzing, evaluating, and controlling risk of language errors in connection with medical device labeling.”

More details about this method and the patent application can be found on Crimoson's Risk Management web page.

Quality Doesn't Matter (as a differentiator)?

2008-01-30T09:27:00.000-08:00

I didn't go to the ATA conference in San Francisco, so I missed Renato Beninatto's presentation "Quality Still Doesn't Matter".

I recommend reading the presentation (although of course it can only contain the gist of what the actual presentation was like): behind the provocative title, I think it has interesting things to say.

Results of Translation QA Tool Survey

2007-12-11T23:51:00.001-08:00

Tamara Lukyanova and Julia Makoushina, of Palex Languages & Software, have concluded their work on the interesting survey of translation QA tools we announced here in August.

From August through September 2007 Palex performed a translation community survey to evaluate acceptance of translation quality assurance tools by the translation community, to define where such tools currently are, their advantages and disadvantages and to visualize their future capabilities and their role in the translation process. In parallel with the survey, Palex tested and benchmarked translation quality assurance tools currently available in the market.

Julia has recently given a presentation ("Translation Quality Assurance Tools: Current State and Future Approaches") at the 29th Translating and the Computer conference that took place on 29-30 November 2007 in London. In addition to the presentation (which can be downloaded from the previous link), Julia has also written a paper with the same title. Both paper and presentation are very interesting and well worth downloading (you can do so from the previous links) and reading.

Translation QA Tool Survey

2007-08-06T15:49:00.001-07:00

Tamara Lukyanova and Julia Makoushina, of Palex Languages & Software, have set up an interesting survey about translation QA tools.

From 1 August through September 28, 2007 Palex will perform a translation community survey to evaluate acceptance of translation quality assurance tools by the translation community, to define where such tools currently are, their advantages and disadvantages and to visualize their future capabilities and role in translation process.

[...]

In parallel with the survey, Palex is going to test and benchmark translation quality assurance tools currently available in the market. The survey and benchmarking results will be presented at 29th Translating and the Computer conference that will tale place on 29-30 November 2007 in London, as well as in other industry publications.

According to Tamara and Julia, if you respond to the survey and provide your e-mail address, you will be able to receive the survey analysis as soon as the survey is closed.

Please feel free to point other colleagues to the questionnaire.

To access the survey, click here (or on the link at the beginning of this post).

Translation QA Tools

2007-05-03T22:34:00.000-07:00

I've just added a page to TranslationQuality.com to provide links to QA Distiller, Error Spy, and XBench, three tools designed to perform QA checks on translation files.

As soon as I can, I will put up a table to compare the features offered by these tools.

If you know of any other translation QA tools, please let us know.

Update

Also added to the page a link to BlackJack.

ApSIC’s XBench: New QA Functions Help Providing Consistent Translations

2007-03-22T14:05:00.000-07:00

Many translators have been using XBench, a free utility created by ApSIC (a Spanish localization company) as a handy program to check glossaries or exported translation memories. Its main use was probably as a convenient and simple tool to search the Microsoft Glossaries.

ApSIC has recently released an upgrade to the program; though it looks like a minor upgrade (from version number 2.6 to 2.7), it is in fact a major improvement, which adds many more file formats (including Trados and SDLX bilingual files), and, above all, powerful quality assurance tools.

The new functionality permit to define files as “key terms” or as “ongoing translation”; the two things are linked: the ongoing translations files are checked against the key terms glossaries, and any discrepancy is noted in the QA screen. In addition to that, the new QA functions warn of various other potential problems, including numeric or tag mismatches, and permit to run checklists against the translated files (I believe this could be useful, for example, to check against specific types of problems).

The new features make the program more complicated (though the basic glossary search functionality remains as simple as before), but they are clearly explained in the thorough help file.

All in all, XBench is now a program that should prove very useful to almost all translators, and at a price that is impossible to beat.

New page of translation quality links at TranslationQuality.com

2007-02-09T11:14:00.000-08:00

We have just added a new page of
interesting links about translation quality at TranslationQuality.com, our web site devoted to translation quality issues.

Developing and using a translation quality index

2006-08-05T09:43:00.000-07:00

Our new article "Developing and using a translation quality index" has just been published in the July/August 2006 issue of MultiLingual.
The article is not freely available online (though you can get to an excerpt following the "current issue" link on MultiLingual's home page), however, if you are interested in reading it, please contact me.

Translation Quality Measurement Approaches

2006-05-22T21:46:00.000-07:00

Six approaches to measuring translation quality is a short article published several years ago on the Medical Design Online web site (the article is still available).

The six approaches mentioned are:

Society of Automotive Engineers (SAE) J2450
Localisation Industry Standard Association (LISA) QA Model
ForeignExchange Translations' Multilingual Compliance Process
American Translators Association accreditation program
Deutsches Institut für Normung DIN 2345
Six sigma quality initiative

The article contains some further details about these differing approaches to quality.

Standards and Models

2006-05-22T08:05:00.000-07:00

Better Localization has an interesting article (Standards and models, why should we care?) about how the application of various standards and models would be beneficial in the localization industry.

They are not goals, but tools to achieve goals

The standards described briefly in teh article are ISO 9001:2000, CMMI, BSC, PCMM, and their integration.

ISO 9000 Certification, and Other Methods of Certifying the Quality of LSPs

2006-05-12T15:49:00.000-07:00

A few days ago Common Sense Advisory published an article (Looking for Language Service Providers in All the Right Places) on how customers may make sure that LSPs (Language Service Providers) meet their business needs.

...training and certification are good ideas that we believe every buyer ultimately will demand of their suppliers.

Among the interesting things mentioned in the article there is the fact that only 10% of LSPs have ISO 9000 certification.

The article ends up promoting Common Sense Advisory's own certification service for LSPs, which itself looks interesting:

We take a financial auditor's approach to the question of certification -- such firms check a company's compliance to Generally Accepted Accounting Principles (GAAP). Similarly, our 24x7 program looks for "a" process that is used consistently and constantly throughout an LSP's organization. That process can be ISO, defined by a client, internally developed, or any combination of these.

Our Article to Appear in Multilingual

2006-04-20T11:37:00.000-07:00

The title of the article is "Translation Quality Measurement: Using the Translation Quality Index to assess the quality of translations", and deals with such questions as:

Why measure translation quality?

Why are translations so difficult to evaluate? What methods are available to help assess translation quality?

What is the Translation Quality Index (TQI)?

Why measure errors?

The article is scheduled to appear in the June 2006 issue of Multilingual, which should also contain other articles about translation quality.

UPDATE

(4/26/06)
The article will actually appear in the July/August issue, not the June issue.

CEN Approves Translation Quality Specification

2006-03-31T17:15:00.000-08:00

Common Sense Advisory has an interesting article about the approval, by CEN (the European Committee for Standardization), of EN 15038 quality standard for translation service providers.

The article also compares EN 15038 with ASTM 15.48, then goes on and criticizes the antiquated procedures that were followed in drafting the standard, and above all the lack of transparency in these procedures.

How To Set Up a Language Quality Measurement System

2006-03-23T10:56:00.000-08:00

The six phases for setting up a robust quality system:

Design
- - Collect a corpus of good and bad translations
- - Analyze the corpus to identify critical-to-quality errors (error definition)
- - Decide what to measure (error categorization)
- - Assign a weight to various types of errors (severities)
- - Define an error threshold

Calibration
- - Pilot,
- - test, and
- - adjust
  until the system works in an objective, repeatable, and reproducible way

Sampling
- - Sample selection criteria (e.g. random, systematic)
- - Sample size, confidence intervals, margins of error
- - Cost considerations (find the point of diminishing returns)

Measurement
- - Calculation of a Translation Quality Index (TQI)
- - Evaluation must be
  - * repeatable,
  - * reproducible,
  - * objective
- - Use of independent auditors
- - Provide formal training

Statistical Analysis
- - Use of control charts
- - Investigate results
- - Rule out special causes

Process Improvement
- - Take corrective actions
- - Compare the TQI values before and after a process change to check for actual process improvement

Writing for Translation

2006-03-15T10:05:00.000-08:00

An aspect of translation quality that is often not mentioned, is how much the quality of the SL affects the quality of the translation.

Courses on "Writing for Translation" such as this one are often popular, and, when done right, also useful, as technical writers may learn why, for example, concatenated strings are so much trouble for us.

One thing I saw when I worked in a large business software company, however, was that technical writers often resist any attempt to introduce controlled English, to limit their terminological choices, to introduce stringent editing rules, or, more in general, anything that they perceive as limiting their freedom and creativity.

"About Translation" Locked by BlogSpot

2006-03-14T09:38:00.000-08:00

I have another blog on BlogSpot, About Translation, where I write more in general about translation and things of interest for professional tanslators.

Unfortunately, since last week my blog has been locked by Blogger, as their algorithms have (wrongly!!!) deemed it a "spam blog" (no idea why: it is clearly a legitimate blog, but until some human person takes a look, it remains locked)... so while the blog is still up, I cannot post anything new.

If the situation persists, I'll move the blog to some other service.

UPDATE: About Translation has finally been checked by a human member of the support team, white listed, and unlocked.

Brave Comment on the Blog

2006-03-02T08:26:00.000-08:00

We have just received a comment on our blog, from "Anonymous":

That's rich, a blog about quality in translation operated by a Lionbridge employee. Lionbridge is a fraudulent company that doesn't pay its translators.

To which I have a few things to say:

This blog is completely independent from Lionbridge; it was set up to complement our web site TranslationQuality.com with an area where we could discuss issues related to translation in a more dynamic way than on the main web site (where we make available more information about our work on translation quality, such as our presentations and articles).
Franco is indeed a Lionbridge employee. I am not: I have my own small translation company, and we provide our services to several larger translation companies. Among the services we provide on request is translation quality assessment services, including helping other companies improving their translation quality systems.
This information is clearly available both on the "Profiles" section of this blog and on our main web site.
I suggest that if "Anonymous" has a complaint against Lionbirdge, he should contact Lionbridge directly, and, if not satisfied, take the appropriate legal steps. On the other hand, this blog is not an appropriate venue for such complaints.
While Franco and I are clearly named in our blog, "Anonymous" has not the courage of signing his message. That, to me, says all there is to say about the merit of his complaint.

Any further anonymous abusive messages will be deleted from this blog without comment.

Revision, Editing and Proofreading

2006-02-27T14:19:00.000-08:00

The February issue of the ATA Chronicle has just arrived, and with it an interesting article on translation quality control: "A Second Pair of Eyes: Revision, Editing and Proofreading", by S. Alexandra Russell-Bitting.

After introducing herself and her experience, the author devotes sections of her article to Quality Control in Translation, Revision, Editing, Proofreading, and Managing Quality.

Apart from other things, the article could be very useful in that it differentiates between activities that are often lumped together, confused with each other, or misnamed.

In this case, "Revision" is defined as "checking a translation for accuracy and style", going through the text sentence by sentence and comparing SL and TL.

"Editing" is described as "more creative work than revision [where] you have the freedom to make improvements in the text for readability"

"Proofreading", finally, according to Russell-Bitting is "a final check before publication".

When I am asked by a translation company to "proof" or "edit" a translation, I always have to ask what, exactly, they want me to do: what's proofreading to someone is called editing by a others, and revision is confused with both things. I hope this article may help differentiate between these important translation quality control activities.

A Simple QC Technique for Bilingual Files

2006-02-26T17:41:00.000-08:00

One of the most insidious kind of errors happens when a negation is translated in the affirmative, or vice-versa. Insidious because sometimes such errors are difficult to spot, as the sentences that contain them, on their own, probably still make sense.

However, when translating using an environment, such as TM program, which produces bilingual files, there is a simple quality control technique that, while not 100% effective, still helps avoiding this type of errors. The following example works for the English-Italian language pair, but it could easily be adapted to other languages:

Once the translation (or editing) is complete, search for word "not" throughout the bilingual file
For each occurrence of the word found, check the corresponding Italian segment, to make sure that the negative meaning is preserved
Once completed the search for the English "not", repeate the search for the Italian "non", so as to make sure that a negative meaning has not cropped where the English instead has an affermative sentence

Of course this is not 100% foolproof, but it can be improved by adding other relevant words (such as "cannot", "failed", "impossible", etc.) to the search.

Why Translation Quality Measurement?

2006-02-25T09:44:00.000-08:00

You cannot manage what you cannot (or do not) measure; yet, this is precisely what most translation quality control processes try to do.

A Method for Predicting the Productivity of Machine Translation

2006-02-19T20:58:00.000-08:00

Better Localization has recently published an interesting article on how to predict the productivity of an MT and post-editing process.

The article also deals by necessity with the translation quality level of machine translation, as the productivity that can be achieved during post-editing heavily depends on the quality of the MT output.

I have some issues with some of the things the article says (for instance that "testers and cannot give reliable quantitative results in a cost-effective manner.": I believe that the work Franco and I have done on translation quality measurement is cost effective and could be adapted to MT as well, but the article is very well worth reading, and suggests a novel approach that looks promising.

Article for Multilingual: Translation Quality Measurement and the Translation Quality Index

2006-02-17T22:13:00.000-08:00

That is the tentative title for the article Franco and I are committed to write for a forthcoming issue of Multilingual devoted to Translation Quality. Jeff Allen is coordinating the issue, will write a companion article and, as I understand, has another two articles being written by others.

Now the hard part: writing the article itself.

Language Standards For Global Business

2006-02-14T20:13:00.000-08:00

Interesting press release about the first language standards summit, which was held a few days ago in Berlin.

Practitioners, corporate planners, suppliers, and academics came together and actively shared their views on what they needed in language technology and process standards.

Among the issues tackled were language standards and translation quality.

The next summit is scheduled for May 29 and 30, in Barcelona.

Translation Quality Measurement in Practice

2005-11-13T22:51:00.000-08:00

You can download our latest presentation from our website TranslationQuality.com.
We gave the presentation on Saturday at the 46th ATA Conference, in Seattler.
The presentation went well: I was nervous, and I think it showed, but Franco handled his part with ease, and I think that there was a fair amount of interest.

TranslationQuality.com Now Up

2005-11-04T15:18:00.000-08:00

Our new web site, devoted to translation quality issues (at present mainly our work on the measurement of translation quality), is now up.

You can visit it at TranslationQuality.com.

Another blog of ours that you may find interesting is About Translation, devoted to information, news and opinions about professional translations.

Translation Quality Measurement in Practice

2005-03-08T22:51:00.000-08:00

This is an abstract for the presentation we plan to give at the next ATA conference.

In previous years, we proposed a theoretical framework for assessing and measuring translation quality, explaining how the Translation Quality Index (TQI) can be a reliable indicator of translation quality and serve as the foundation for process improvement.
This year we will show how we have turned our theory into practice. In particular, we'll discuss how translation quality measurement is being implemented worldwide at a leading translation company, and we'll share our experience and real-life examples.

The presentation will include a demonstration of tools and services that they developed to help measure translation quality.