Quality Assurance
Your vendor's quality assurance methodology is an essential component for ensuring your language services project is successful. Along with a proactive approach to translator selection and communication protocols, adherence to quality assurance protocols demonstrates a vendor’s commitment to professionalism.
Careful attention to and application of quality assurance processes are a prime reason for using a professional language services provider rather than managing individual translators yourself.
As the process of professional translation itself is unique, so are the standards that have been created to ensure the quality of the final translation product. You are probably familiar with some of the international bodies that certify quality assurance processes, and some of them may be important to your particular industry.
The Three Ps in Quality: Person/Provider, Process, and Product
Quality in "person/provider" is established via certifications/accreditations, such as the American Translators Association (ATA) accreditation for translators, the PMP certification for project managers, and the PHR certification for human resources professionals. For translation services providers, the new Common Sense Advisory translation company certification program is an example of a company-wide certification, rather than an individual certification. We will be happy to supply you with a list of McElroy Translation’s accreditations.
Quality in "process" is established through such standardized measures as an ISO certification or adherence to the ASTM standard. Our operations manager strongly recommended that we employ the ASTM standard (rather than the ISO standard) because it's U.S.-based, better suited to a professional services firm, and offers standardized best practice guidelines specific to the translation industry.
ASTM International is one of the largest voluntary standards development organizations in the world, known for its best-in-class practices for standards development and delivery. And in June 2006, it finally published a translation standard, F 2575-06, entitled “Standard Guide for Quality Assurance in Translation.” This guide has been many years in development, an effort supported by the ATA, and is an important new resource for the translation industry and its clients. McElroy adheres to and promotes the ASTM International Standard Guide for Quality Assurance in Translation.
Quality in "product" is established through such standardized measures as the SAE J2450 Linguistic Standard or LISA QA model. McElroy is well underway to complete implementation of the SAE J2450 metric by the end of 2007. This was originally designed to establish a consistent standard against which the quality of translation of automotive service information could be objectively measured, regardless of process or language pair. The metric has since been approved as an industry-wide standard, and application of the metric extends far beyond automotive service information to highly technical translations ranging from industries such as life sciences to other types of manufacturing.
McElroy has further customized and enhanced our quality assurance model to meet additional requirements of particular clients and their industries. We use additional and specific QA steps and staff instructions for documents to support litigation documentation, patents for filing, and back-to-English translations for IRBs. Also note that software localization projects naturally have a detailed QA and testing process that is distinct from the linguistic testing process.
