The development of the translation industry is currently growing rapidly, as shown by various agencies competing with each other to gain the trust of clients. To survive in this industry, one of the things that needs to be done is to implement a translation quality assessment. There are also criteria, parameters, and procedures so that the results obtained can be maximized. Read on to find out its details!
Translation Quality Assessment
At a glance, the process of translating seems simple as long as you understand the two languages you are working on. However, in the professional matter, there needs to be an assessment now that the client spends a budget to pay for the work. Then, what can be applied as an assessment indicator?
Back translation is one way that can be applied in this case. You can use free tools available on the internet such as DeepL and SYSTRAN Translate to compare whether the translation results are equivalent to the source text. However, a note that you need to pay attention to is, insert small phrases when testing it to ensure the level of accuracy.
As a smart client, you need to make sure whether the Linguist at the agency you are going to work with uses Google Translate or not. If they use it, you can be sure that their credibility is not so good. It would be nice if they use manual translation with native workers. In addition, they use translation quality assessment tools to check the spelling and grammar.
Another thing you need to consider about the performance of an agency is the prices they offer. If it is far below the standard, you need to question the results you will get later. Prices that are reasonable or even slightly high do not really matter as long as they have multilingual employees to ensure the fine result.
Translation Quality Assessment Criteria
Translation quality assessment criteria can be judged from the accuracy produced in the target text. At least, there are eight points that need to be considered as a form of realization, including:
- The original meaning of the source text does not change, but the results still take into account the target audience by emphasizing aspects of readability and acceptability
- Maintaining the grammatical, punctuation, alignment, and capitalization aspects of the source text without any sense of compulsion
- Address, date, and measurements writing system that matches the target text
- The style of source text is adopted to target text
- There is no error in reaching client’s specifications
- Maintaining all the cultural factors as the challenging part of translation
However, the points above cannot always be fulfilled since each type of text has a different treatment. For instance, advertising texts and other creative things will be more flexible to be executed in order to get the same way of message delivery without being hindered by cultural differences. This attempt is commonly referred to as trans-creation.
Translation Quality Parameters and Procedures
The opinion that translators are the main role in this industry is not entirely true. To improve translation results, it is necessary to have an editor to assist it. The job is described as follows:
- First of all, the translator will indeed do their job, then the results are given to another Linguist who acts as an editor.
- Next, the editor will compare the translation results with the source text to check for deficiencies such as the style and intent of the source text.
- Moreover, the translator will observe the changes assessed by the editor to improve it again.
- Finally, translators should check the quality with regard to client requests, especially when they provide specific terms and conditions.
Translation quality assessment has two functions from different aspects. The first function relates to the field of linguistics, while the other is practical to gain client confidence in choosing the many agencies that exist. Whatever it is, it is a salient thing to pay attention in order to survive.
