Linguistic Quality Assurance (LQA)

Our approach to linguistic quality assurance can be summed up in 6 words – “Get things right the first time.” It’s led us to adopt a lean manufacturing concept known as Quality at Source (QaS) in our pursuit of error-free translations.

Linguistic Team

Our experienced and creative linguists are constantly developing in-house solutions to produce better quality output, while providing tools that help translators and reviewers prepare brief but detailed instructions based on your requirements. These instructions are then passed on to translators, reviewers, and final verifiers who carry out the specialized work and contact us whenever further support is required.

Independent In-Country Review

Looking to improve your time to market? Let our experts handle the review process for you, leaving your employees to do what they do best. Our subject matter experts are selected, tested, and classified in our resource management system to make sure they specialize in your field. Our independent in-country review process serves as an additional guarantee, making sure that your multilingual content says everything you need it to say.

As your business grows, so does the amount of your published content, which makes controlling the quality of your global localization program a time-consuming challenge. That’s why we offer an in-country review as part of your translation process. An unbiased assessment of your translated content will help us identify gaps and develop a plan to improve quality, and there are a variety of other benefits to consider:

• Your current translation suppliers are independently and objectively assessed
• Consistent messaging and terminology are introduced to build your brand identity
• Quality improvement plans can be created and implemented
• Your employees are free to concentrate on other pressing matters

How does our independent in-country review services work?

An Argos project manager conducts a current state analysis to understand your current translation process and quality metrics. Using your linguistic assets and files, the project manager will then establish quality criteria and a “Pass/Fail” threshold that meets your expectations.

What metrics do we use?

We perform in-country reviews in our Argos Online Review Tool, which allows us to extract data related to changes made by selected reviewers. Each change made requires the reviewer to specify the type of error and level of severity, and each error is assigned a classification (terminology error, mistranslation, omission, etc.) with each having its own predefined effect on an overall quality score, that’s based on the SAE J2450 standard.

Who is involved?

Our independent in-country review service is overseen by experienced project managers and performed by experts who go through rigorous testing to become certified reviewers. This guarantees the right personnel for your project based on your industry and languages.

In-Country Review Management

Our expert project managers work directly with your in-country reviewers to reduce the amount of content that needs to be reviewed, communicating the schedule and any challenges to your team and scheduling all reviews and communication. Our in-country collaboration (ICC) process guarantees up-front agreement on terminology and cultural requirements and drives a timely final sign-off. Our in-country review management service simplifies the review process by reducing the amount of content that needs to be reviewed wherever possible.

A typical in-country review exists to provide a final sign-off on translated content to make sure it appeals to a targeted audience and communicates a company’s brand, products, and services as accurately as possible. If it’s not done correctly, reviewers can spend too much time changing content or terminology that has already been approved or making corrections that go against your corporate style guides, delaying the launch of your global products and services.

The Argos difference

At Argos Multilingual, we work directly with your in-country reviewers to manage the entire process. An Argos Project Manager communicates the schedule and any challenges to your team and handles all linguistic and language discrepancies between the in-country reviewers and linguistic teams, while scheduling all reviews and communication. Our in-country collaboration (ICC) process guarantees up-front agreement on terminology and cultural requirements and drives a timely final sign-off.

Outsourcing the management of in-country review brings a host of other benefits as well:

• Faster time-to-market – reviewers are aware of the schedule and deadlines in advance and are trained on what exactly needs to be reviewed and approved, reducing the volume of content needing approval
• Improved quality – linguistic quality is monitored throughout the process, and reviewers can focus on approving the brand’s message and voice
• Reduced cost – reviewers are trained up front, reducing the number of changes and the need for costly rework
• Resource optimization – in-country reviewers spend less time on approval tasks and more time completing their primary tasks, preventing delays in other areas of your business
• Partnership building – bringing in-country reviewers into the process allows for seamless work as a global team as well as increased trust between reviewers and linguists

Argos Multilingual’s in-country review management service makes sure that your translated content communicates your company’s brand, products, and services accurately for your global audience. Let us manage your in-country review process and feel the difference.

In-country collaboration

ICC is a perfect example of how we apply our Quality at Source (QaS) ethos – our processes and methodology are all underpinned by the principle that addressing quality from the very beginning decreases the likelihood of mistakes. ICC (like QaS) is all about guaranteeing that your in-country reviewers are incorporated into the process from the beginning, so they can use their extensive knowledge of new products and services to make sure linguistic teams are conveying the correct concepts and using the right terminology.

Linguistic Toolkit

Our linguistic team lives to innovate, and they are constantly developing a range of new tools to help with different parts of the translation process and produce better-quality output:

• A quality management system that gathers data on the changes made and the severity of the errors caught in translated documents, then provides information via a built-in reporting function.
• A quality check tool for translators and clients that offers real-time quality data tracking and an error classification/annotation service that highlights not only what changes to the text are made but goes into granular detail about why they are made.
• A tool designed to automatically identify and extract common terms from content, such as repeated words or corporate trademarks.
• An automated back translation comparison tool built into our TMSQA system that compares the original source material with a back translation of the target using a secure, licensed neural machine translation (NMT) engine API to ensure data safety. By highlighting differences between the source and the back translation, this tool helps our QA specialists target areas that need to be reviewed.

Ready to get started?

We are happy to answer any questions you have and get your project on its way.