Welcome to August, 2017 edition of Carnival of Quality Management Articles and Blogs.
Our topic for the August 2017 is Quality of Translations. The trigger for taking up this topic, in our present issue, for a brief overview, was an email from Mr. Ravi Kumar, the founder of Hindi Center /Modlingua Learning Pvt. Ltd.. However, we will deal with that a little later.
First the basics:
Quality of translation : The term quality of translation is used to refer to the desirability of properties or characteristics of a translated text or content.
“In manufacturing quality is the concept of making products fit for a purpose and with fewest defects. Many different techniques and concepts have been tried to minimize defects in production, including Zero Defects, Six Sigma, and the House of Quality.”
Thus, in the translation process quality would be the concept of making the target text (the translated text) fit for a purpose and with the fewest errors (in terms of sense, grammar, orthography, style, omissions, etc.)
What is a “quality” translation? : The quality of translation has two constructs: In one sense, quality refers to whether the translation is acceptable. In another sense, there are different quality levels that could be needed for a given translation.
‘What is the quality of a translation?’ is the Lecture by Anthony Pym at the University of Vienna, April 13, 2015, as part of a course on academic Translation Studies.
And then a few pointers to the Quality of Translation:
10-Step Quality Assurance Process: All translation projects undergo a multi-layered process of checks and reviews in order to ensure the highest degree of quality. Presented here is a 10-Step Quality Assurance process that enables delivery of spot-on translations and the highest quality output.
10 crucial ways to ensure high quality translations has shared 10 blog posts that have given numerous tips and professional advice on how to implement and monitor processes to ensure you get high quality translations.
Ten Common Myths About Translation Quality that can actually do more harm than good.
Measuring Translation Quality: Constraints, Challenges and Solutions: Without clear goals and a repeatable, objective and accurate methodology, quality can be hard to measure, especially in the localization industry. From lack of knowledge to outside factors to subjective reviews, there are many reasons quality is hard to measure. In a webinar called “A Practical Approach to Measuring Translation Quality”, David Sommer discusses challenges with measuring quality and potential solutions.
That brings us to the core of e-mail message from Mr. Ravi Kumar:
Translation-quality standards: Like any supplier of goods or services, a translator potentially bears ethical and legal obligations toward his patron or employer. This has turned to be of enormous importance with the development of the language industry at global scale. For the protection of both parties, standards have been developed that seek to spell out their mutual duties.
In the e-mail referred to at the beginning of the article, Mr. Ravi Kumar informed me that Modlingua has recently released these videos on the subject of Translation-Quality standards:
Quality Standards and Translation:
Seven Quality Standards one must know:
As can be expected, these videos provide the strong ground work for following up the more structured approach the task of translations (services).
Moreover, Modlingua has also presented a project management perspective to the translation services:
Fundamentals of Project Management:
Project Management in Translation Business:
We can look forward to more such videos to be uploaded on language, translation and culture @ YT channel Modilingua.
Mr. Ravi Kumar, himself a language-translation entrepreneur, has presented The Translator as Entrepreneur: An Indian Perspective . – This paper deals with Translators as entrepreneurs who are slowly getting aware of their profession and have begun coming to a common platform to share knowledge, experience and resources – a most desired step necessary for the better future of the profession. Further, this paper proposes “networking” as a possible solution to entrepreneurs who can economize their process and speed up their growth by using available resources and infrastructure without having to invest huge resources.
We will now turn to our regular sections:
For the present episode we have picked up two articles @ the column The Drucker Today @ Management Matters Network.
3 Questions Drucker Would Ask You And Your Management Team
- What is our business? – The Mission
- What will our business be? – The changing environment that we are certain about
- What should our business be?” – The Vision
Dr. Robert Swaim also goes into more detail on the concepts discussed in this article in chapters 2 and 3 of his book The Strategic Drucker.
Notes From A Drucker Lecture: Six Questions Every Manager Must Ask To Empower Their Team
- The performance of your people.
- Taking responsibility for your relationship with others.
- Establishing and maintaining your relationship with others.
- Accountability for results.
- Relationship with your manager.
- Assignment control and staffing.
When you have completed this analysis, you may want to ask yourself one more question: When I leave this organization, what will be different because I was there?
From Ask The Experts, I have picked up a question that relates to how much (of process details / documentation) is enough so as not to jeopardize the ISO certification. The answer is demonstration of objective evidence for the process being implemented ‘under controlled condition’ (Clause 8.5.1 of ISO 9001:2015)
We do not have anything of note in the ASQ CEO, Bill Troy at present. In the last issue we had proposed to take up the detailed view of Industry 4.0. I submit that we carry forward that proposal for the next month’s episode.
We now watch one of the latest ASQ TV episodes:
- Customer Journey Maps: Tool and Example – Lisa Custer, Firefly Consulting, discusses how to create a customer journey map, how it becomes more than a robust voice of the customer tool, and provides a real-world example of a customer journey map in action.
Jim L. Smith’s Jim’s Gems for the month of July, 2017:
- The Role of Specification Limits – They are primarily for interactions with customers and management – Many people, from engineers to managers to quality professionals to technicians, possess limited understanding of product and process (manufacturing) limits. The third types of limits are:
disposition limits… The specification limits are defines as – The general definition is limits within which a product would be expected to perform its stated and intended function for customer use. Specification limits, therefore, are related to product design. They should be set in the product design phase and effectively fixed for manufacture.. The specification limits may not play a direct role in process control limits within the manufacturing environment, but they do facilitate determination of useful product disposition limits. Additionally, they can even play a role in determining required sensitivity levels in setting process control limits.. Furthermore, specification limits are primarily for interactions with customers and management. Also, they are very useful in the calculation of Process Capability Index (Cpk) statistics.
I look forward to your active participation in enriching the blog carnival as we pursue our journey in exploring the happenings across quality management blogs…………
Note: The images depicted here above are through courtesy of respective websites who have the copyrights for the respective images.
The world is too small? or Is it? 