Quality assurance
A professional translation team is at your service.
The perfect project management and translation quality assessment system accumulated over the years ensures that quality control runs through every link of the project implementation process, not just post-inspection. All translations undergo rigorous quality checks and assessments before delivery. If there are any quality issues with the translation, we will revise it free of charge until it reaches the quality standard.
Translation Quality Assessment Criteria
For details on the quality scores and calculation methods for each quality level, please refer to the relevant clauses stipulated in the Translation and Localization Service Contract.
Definition and severity of translation errors | |||
---|---|---|---|
Severity Level | Code | Definition | Quality Deduction |
Error in Original Text | S | The problem does not come from the translation itself. If there are defects in the source text, the client may request changes after the translation is completed. | 0 |
Suggestive | P | It has nothing to do with right or wrong, it is just a suggestion to make the translation more perfect. | 0 |
Minor Errors | 3 | This type of error can be understood by readers, but requires further improvement, including but not limited to long sentences with too many embellishments and translation that is not smooth enough. | - 0.5 |
General Errors | 2 |
1. Translations that are difficult to read and may lead to misleading understanding. 2. The wording is imprecise, the logical connections are unclear, making it difficult to understand or prone to ambiguity. |
- 1.0 |
Serious error | 1 |
1. Serious mistranslation, illogical, unclear sentence meaning, and completely word-for-word translation. 2. The term translation is inconsistent with the provided term base. 3. The full text was not revised strictly according to QA feedback, or the translation was not performed according to the responses to questions and customer requirements. 4. Errors caused by negligence (typos, omissions in translation, etc.). |
- 1.5 |
Big mistake | 0 |
1. Misleading users in how to use the product and understand the content, which may cause damage or loss to users. 2. Errors that damage the customer's reputation, including but not limited to code errors and errors in the description of key functions. 3. The company or product name is misspelled in a prominent position. 4. The product technical indicator values and measurement units are incorrect. |
- 2.0 |
Accuracy | |||
---|---|---|---|
Category | Describe | Quality deduction | |
Mistranslation | The translation misinterpreted the original meaning. | - 1.5 | |
Redundant translation | The content of the original text is not fully expressed or is missing in the translation; the translation adds content; the translation fails to delete lengthy content in the original text. | - 1.5 | |
Omitted Translation | The translation contains untranslated words, phrases, sentences or paragraphs. Except for those specifically requested to be retained in the original text, such as personal names, mailing addresses, company names or product names that are not translated. When encountering such situations, it's advisable to consult the client and adhere to their response for accuracy. | - 1.5 | |
Over translation | Content that does not need to be translated (codes, addresses, etc.) has been translated. | - 1.0 | |
Inconsistency | The translation is not consistent with the existing translation and translation memory. Cross-references and other references in the translation are not consistent with the relevant text. | - 1.0 | |
Data misinterpretation | The data in the translation does not match the data in the original text. | - 1.5 | |
Serious mistranslations and misinterpretations | There is a risk of misleading users into using the product and causing damage and loss. | - 2.0 | |
Misspell | Word/character is misspelled. | - 1.0 |
Language and style | |||
---|---|---|---|
Category | Describe | Quality Deduction | |
Grammatical Errors | The translation does not follow the specific rules of grammar or syntax of the target language and the language style. | - 0.5 | |
Choice of wording issue | The wording does not conform to the target language norms or does not fit the context. | - 0.5 | |
Expression Problem | The translation does not refer to the original text, making it difficult for the reader or end user to understand. | - 0.5 | |
Style Issues | The language style or wording does not fit the style of a specific industry. | - 0.5 | |
Discrimination Exists | Inappropriate language regarding race, gender, occupation, belief, disability, etc. | - 0.5 | |
Style Guide | No translation was performed according to the style guide provided by the client or CTC. | - 0.5 | |
Terms of Agreement | The translation does not conform to the standard conventions of each country (date format, currency unit, measurement unit, etc.) and does not conform to language habits. | - 1.0 |
Terminology | |||
---|---|---|---|
Category | Describe | Quality Deduction | |
Vocabulary Problems | Failure to strictly adhere to the terms provided by the Client or CTC. | - 1.0 | |
Industry terminology standards | Terminology does not conform to recognized industry standards. | - 1.0 | |
Lack of accuracy | The terminology does not fit the context. | - 1.0 | |
Inconsistent terminology | The terminology is inconsistent or inconsistent with the translation memory. Mixing terms among different products (Windows, Linux, Mac...). | - 1.0 | |
Politically sensitive terms | The translation of politically sensitive terminology did not follow the client's or CTC's style guidelines. | - 1.0 |
Format (see the typesetting quality standards. If you do not order typesetting services, these errors will not be counted) | |||
---|---|---|---|
Category | Describe | Quality Deduction | |
Format | Inconsistent fonts, sizes, highlights, colors, line breaks. | - 0.5 | |
Garbled characters | The text symbols and other content in the translation are displayed incorrectly and are unrecognizable. | - 1.5 | |
Identifier | Tags added/removed, or incorrectly positioned. This option is only available for files using markup (HTML, XML, FM...). | - 0.5 | |
Space | Failed to retain or remove spaces between Chinese characters and single-byte characters as requested by the customer. | - 0.5 | |
Line Break | Failure to follow the line breaks of the original text, including adding unnecessary line breaks and deleting line breaks that exist in the original text. | - 0.5 | |
Punctuation | The translation does not follow the target language's punctuation rules. | - 0.5 | |
Spacing | The translation uses incorrect line spacing or word spacing or the spacing is inconsistent. | - 0.5 | |
Annotation, indexing, citation | Annotations do not point to the correct objects, indexes and cross references are incorrect, etc. | - 0.5 | |
Number Format | The translation style of the numbers did not adhere to the client's or CTC's style guidelines. | - 0.5 | |
Others | The translation style of parameters such as keyboard label names, shortcut keys, variables, etc. does not follow the client's or CTC's style guidelines. | - 0.5 |
Translation Quality Levels and Quality Scores
1. Quality score calculation formula:
Error penalty = number of serious errors×1.5 + Number of general errors×1+Minor Error Quantity×0.5
Quality score = 100- (total penalty points for errors x 1000)/number of valid translated words
2. Quality score and quality level correspondence table
Grade | Quality score | Suitability recommendations |
---|---|---|
A-level | 95≤Score < 100 | Meet the translation quality requirements for general publications, news and publicity content, and training materials (except for situations where politics, economy, diplomacy, military, science, etc. require zero accuracy and error). |
Class B | 90≤Score < 95 | Meet the translation quality requirements for product use and maintenance manuals (except for industries with low error tolerance such as medical, pharmaceutical, life sciences, aerospace, nuclear products, etc.). |
C-Class | 85≤Score < 90 | Meet the translation quality requirements of product manuals and general materials with low quality requirements. |
D-Class | 80≤Score < 85 | Translation quality requirements for internal corporate communications and primary technical support for customers. |
E-Class | Score≤80 | Meet the translation requirements of understanding the general meaning. |
Qualitative description of typesetting quality
If the average is calculated as general errors (deduction of 1 point), for English technical documents, there are an average of 300 English words per page, then: |
Instructions:
1. The quality of the manuscript will be assessed based on the average number of words per 1,000 source languages, with a full score of 100.
2. Errors in the translation caused by defects in the original text shall not be counted as translation errors.
3. If an error occurs multiple times in different translations, it will be counted only once instead of being counted twice.
4. Differences in language style are not counted as errors.
5. If Party A does not entrust Party B to perform typesetting work, errors in typesetting will not be counted in the number of errors.
Typesetting (DTP) quality standards
Error definitions and error level penalties for typesetting (DTP) | |
---|---|
Severity Level | Definition |
Typesetting error level: serious error, quality score deducted 1.5 points |
1. There are omissions in translation. 2. The decimal point and thousandths section break style and language habits does not match. 3. The text style does not match the original text: font, font size, bold or italic, color. 4. There are garbled characters in the file. 5. The graphics display is incomplete or the graphics are missing. 6. The lead lines on the diagram should point to the incorrect location. 7. The conditional text settings do not match the source file. 8. Loss or destruction of special symbols: e.g. ©(Copyright symbol),®(Registration Symbol), ™(Trademark Symbol)°C (Celsius),°F (Fahrenheit), — (dash), etc. 9. The paragraph style does not match the source text, including paragraph indentation, item numbering, bullet points, etc. 10. The page size is inconsistent with the original text or does not meet customer requirements. 11. The link zone does not work or the destination is incorrect. |
Typesetting error level: General error, quality score deducted 1 point |
1. Missing or extra spaces. 2. The figure/table is not on the same page as its title. 3. Numbers and units or proper nouns such as product names are displayed on two lines. 4. Directory levels should not match source files. 5. There are separators within the paragraph. 6. The glossary is not formatted according to the language requirements. 7. Punctuation marks appear at the beginning of a sentence. 8. The table background is inconsistent with the source file. 9. The index is not sorted: Simplified Chinese is sorted by pinyin, Traditional Chinese is sorted by strokes, Japanese is sorted by Kana (including Kanji), and Korean is sorted by Korean letters (Hangul). |
Typesetting error level: Minor error, quality score deducted 0.5 points |
1. There are single-word lines. 2. The distance between the lines and the text or graphics is inconsistent. 3. The broken pages do not match the source file. 4. The version of the delivered file is higher than the customer's source file. 5. Missing or extra punctuation. 6. The first letter of a sentence is not capitalized. 7. The table line thickness is consistent with the source file. 8. When a table is spread over multiple pages, the column widths are inconsistent. 9. File naming was not converted according to customer requirements. 10. The property settings of PDF files should follow customer requirements. 11. The use of hyphens and long/short dashes should be consistent. 12. The translation in the header and footer is inconsistent with the main text. |
Typesetting quality level and quality score
1. Quality score calculation formula:
Error penalty = number of serious errors×1.5+ Number of general errors×1+ Minor Error Quantity0.50.5
Quality score = 100- (total penalty for errors x 10)/number of valid pages
Instructions:The effective number of pages refers to the number of typeset pages checked by the evaluator.
2. Quality score and quality level correspondence table
Grade | Quality Score | Suitability Recommendations |
---|---|---|
The quality of document layout is assessed based on the "average quality score per 10 pages", with a full score of 100. | ||
A-level | 95≤Score <100 | Meet the quality requirements for typesetting of general publications, news and publicity content, and training materials (except for situations where politics, economy, diplomacy, military, science, etc. require zero error). |
Class B | 90≤Score <95 | Meet the quality requirements for typesetting of product use and maintenance manuals (except for industries with low tolerance such as medical, pharmaceutical, life sciences, aerospace, and nuclear products). |
C-Class | 85≤Score <90 | Meet the typesetting quality requirements of product manuals and general materials with low quality requirements. |
D-Class | 80≤Score <85 | Typesetting quality requirements for internal corporate communications and primary customer technical support. |
E-Class | Score ≤80 | Applications that have no requirements on the format of the translated documents. |
Explanation: |
If the average is calculated as a general error (deduction of 1 point), then: 1. A score of 95 is equivalent to an average of 1.5 general errors per page. 2. A score of 90 is equivalent to an average of 3.0 general errors per page. 3. A score of 85 is equivalent to an average of 4.5 general errors per page. |