Translation quality is one of our top priorities here at Trusted Translations. In order to maintain our high standards, in addition to the various steps in the translation process (translation, editing and proofreading) we also conduct frequent random quality evaluations.
What does a quality evaluation involve? It’s where a linguist revises a segment of a translation or edition– usually edition since it is the last bilingual step in the process, i.e., the editor has available to him/her, both the translation submitted for review, as well as the original text.
The reviewer has a form that must be completed with the details of the project under review: number of total words of the project, number of words that are being reviewed, source language, target language, industry, etc. When reviewing the translation, if an error is found, the reviewer must mark what type of error it is and determine the level of severity.
Errors that can be detected in a quality review include terminology, style, format, grammar, syntax and punctuation errors, among others. The reviewer may also detect mistranslations, including literal translations or even text that has not been translated.
Each error is scored according to its severity; however, there are other factors that impact how an error is rated, such as the type of text in question. If the reviewed text has too many mistakes or very serious errors, the evaluation of the translator or editor, depending on the step being reviewed, is not awarded a passing score.
If this is the case, we contact the linguist whose work has been reviewed and send him/her a copy of the quality assessment. In addition, the errors are corrected and the translation is delivered to the client.
In the opposite case, as it usually is, we also contact the translator to congratulate them for their work and express our desire that they remain part of our team.
