TAUS Best PracticesQuality and the Translator Guidelines

June 2013

Helping Translators to Deliver the Expected Quality

WHY ARE TAUS INDUSTRY GUIDELINES NEEDED?By defining best practices for translators’ kits, customer specific briefings, and communicating expectations these guidelines clarify the responsibilities of buyers and translation agencies in ensuring translators deliver the desired/expected quality. These guidelines are intended for the localization segment. We assume that translators/service providers are already in place (i.e. screened and recruited, certified where necessary). We cover the main actions required to create a successful working environment and thus a successful translation. We do not cover the management of translation memories (TM) and terminology resources in any detail within these guidelines.

Best Practice GuidelinesProvide translation briefs/kits/instructions• Make sure instructions are clear, precise, and concise. Be willing to pay an

additional fee for reading a high volume of reference material.• Separate linguistic and technical instructions, as they are often handled by

different teams.• Clearly communicate volumes and schedules upfront. • Have an agreed change management process in place. For example by

outlining who, how and when TM/glossary changes will be made. • Assign someone in your team to respond to queries rapidly and

effectively. • It is important to specify the final user/audience of the material to

translate.• Provide information on stylistic requirements, purpose of the material to

be translated, tone of voice, preferred terminology, numbers to be localized and names to be transliterated.

Translation buyers should directly brief translators about their products, services and vocabulary.• Provide training on the product or alternatively marketing

or documentation about the product. Briefing by provided during periodic face-to-face meetings involving your in-country teams and translation partners or via online meetings.

• Make sure that you establish an agreed terminology database for all target languages in advance, that this glossary is provided to all translators, and that you have someone on-site to answer queries on terminology and update the database in regularly.

Ensure translators are given training on the tools they are required to use.• Provide training on the tool to be used during

localization if it is not a standard tool. If it is a standard tool make sure you describe your preferred settings in the brief.

• If you are using your own MT system and post-editing, offer an online training session.

Set quality expectations and communicate evaluation criteria before translation begins• Establish clear rules for each quality level (in case of

different desired levels of quality for post-editing, for example). See TAUS Post-Editing MT Guidelines.

• Set a quality evaluation schedule to follow and ensure you have a trained evaluation team in place

• If a subsidiary or in-country office will review the final translated product, ensure they are in contact with the translator/service provider from the outset to avoid rework after translation is completed

Implement a CAPA (Corrective Action Preventive Action) process.• Best practice is for there to be a process in

place to deal with quality issues - corrective action processes along with preventive action processes. Examples might include the provision of training or the improvement of terminology management processes.

• Ask translators for feedback in post-mortem meetings or through questionnaires.

Our Thanks To:

Ana Guerberof (Pactera) for drafting these guidelines.

The following organizations for reviewing and refining the Guidelines at the TAUS Quality Evaluation Summit 15 March 2013, Dublin:• ABBY Language Services, Amesto, Autodesk, Capita

Translation & Interpreting, CNGL, Concorde, Crestec, Crosslang, European Commission, EMC, Google, Jensen Localization, Lingo24, Microsoft, SAP, Spil Games, Symantec, Tekom, WCS Group, Welocalize.

Consultation and PublicationA public consultation was undertaken between 16 May and 7 June 2013. The guidelines were published on 19 June 2013.

FeedbackTo give feedback on improving the guidelines, please write to dqf@tauslabs.com.