Translation Quality Assurance

Prime Languages has developed a highly standardised Translation Quality Assurance Process that enables us to guarantee professional quality translations time and time again.

The core stages of the Prime Languages stringent Quality Assurance Process
are depicted in the following illustration:

The well defined stage-by-stage translation quality assurance cycle acts as a filtration system that aids in eliminating errors and enables us to isolate any problems to a specific stage in the process. Translations are a meticulous art, however, in the event of a glitch, errors can be quickly rectified and lessons learnt with immediate implementation; avoiding any further problems and complications.

Customer Care

We will assign you a single Client Manager who will act as your sole point of contact with Prime Languages. The Client Manager will be in charge of your entire project and will build and hand-pick a team of Professional Translators, proof readers, third-party specialist sector experts, graphic designers as well as additional project managers (large projects only). The Client Manager then communicates with you continuously throughout the project and will guide you through any complicated or unusual procedures.

Translation Quality Assurance Process

Our team of dedicated Client Managers & Project Co-ordinators will streamline your request so that you get the most merited combination of translators, proof readers and editors to suit your document translation requirements.

Customer Enquiry

Upon contact, Prime Languages will collect some initial details regarding your Translation assignments including:

• Length of the assignment
• Delivery Deadline
• Target Audience
• The member(s) of Staff or individual(s) in charge of the project
• Contact details

Based on this information we will ask you to send us the text in question for a detailed analysis by our Client Manager.

Text Analysis

The Manager then requires the text or a representative sample of the text for analysis. Highly specialised and technically complex texts demand a higher level of expertise which is reflected in the total cost of the project.

Order Placement

Once the nature of the text has been determined your Client Manager will draw up an accurate binding quote that sets out details of: total cost, completion date, delivery format and the team members to be involved in your project.

Project scheduling

Upon acceptance of a quote, the Client Manager then delegates the tasks and responsibilities to the various chosen team members including: translators, third-party expert proofreaders and graphics designers. All team members will receive an itemised schedule explicitly stating the precise delivery date and volume of work to be completed.

Research & Terminology

Research into the background of your project and its corresponding industry will be carried out by our in-house researcher. This information will be provided to all team members to supplement their progress and to give them a grounded understanding of the expectations within your specialist sector/discipline; as well as to aid them understand your texts further.

Research into lexicon and semantics will be conducted mainly by the translator and the in-house researcher. With explicit customer permission, any new glossary (in the case of new customers) will be inputted into a dedicated database and a file for your project/organisation complete with ´Client-Specific Glossary´ will be created for future use. For returning customers, your file database will be researched for any specific glossary used in the past enabling us to maintain consistency and accuracy of your most commonly used terminology.

Translation

At this stage the translation will be completed by one or more translators. The number of translators (as set out in the initial quote) will depend on the total volume of translation required considering the delivery date restrictions. All our translators use the latest ´Translation-Memory´ software which essentially recognises if a word has already been translated once and automatically translates all duplicates. This in conjunction with our dedicated glossary database enables our translators to process and turnaround highly consistent projects in a much shorter space of time without compromising on quality.

Expert Proof-Reading

All translations completed by Prime Languages include expert proofreading. Third party industry experts will review the translated work to ensure that all lexicon and semantics used within the document are correct and are placed within the right context. They also ensure that the overall readability and style of the final text is consistent with other similar industry documents.

Graphics & Post-Editing

This stage involves editing the layout of the final translated document and ensuring that all corporate logos and colour schemes have been included and are correctly placed. Our talented graphic designers will take care of this and will add the final touches that will ensure that the document is delivered in the exact format as stipulated by the customer in the contract.

Draft Delivery

The completed project is delivered for review and feedback.

Feedback

Any amendments requested are made using the exact same process, and any feedback queries received are filled for further training and procedure improvements. All new client-specific vocabulary yielded from the project are presented to the customer for a final review and are placed in our dedicated database to be utilised in any future assignments carried out for the customer.

Language Service Software

We deploy the latest translation service software throughout Prime Languages. This includes:

• A dedicated database for client-specific glossary.
• Latest translation-memory software.

Client-Specific Glossary Database (CGD)

With explicit permission, we utilise the ´Client-Specific Glossary Database´ to store all distinct vocabulary and terminology that relates to your organisation. So when we encounter terms, words or phrases that has been coined by your organisation we no longer have to ´re-invent the wheel´ and spend time researching and translating them, as they are already available in the database from a previous assignment that we carried out for you.

Translation-Memory Software

All Prime Languages translators use an up to date ´Translation Memory Software´. This software recognises duplicate words and phrases and will highlight them to the translator at the time of the translation. Once one of those words or phrases have been translated, the software is able to translate all duplicates immediately at the click of a button. This means that the translator no longer has to research the same words again and spend time looking them up cutting down the total time spent translating considerably.

These tools combined enable us to manage your translation assignments more effectively and efficiently. The benefits are reflected in the much shorter translation-turnaround, considerable cost savings, as well as consistency of all your written materials no matter what language they are being conveyed in.

We can provide a Quick Translation Quote or our Free Callback Service.
Alternately, please telephone +44 (0)207 785 7198.