By Prajakta Suryawanshi,
 
An article on Quality Standards which are useful for language professionals, translators and service providers.
 
FOCUS

The main focus of article is to:

• Understand the concept of quality standards.
• Maintain quality standard for meeting the customer requirements and expectations.
• Usefulness of Quality Standards for language professionals, translators and service providers.

Terminology:

Quality : In translation, quality could be defined as the success of the translation in accurately capturing and conveying the information and the intent of the source document.
Language professionals : language professionals are people who support authors in their quest to publish by helping produce documents of appropriate scope and quality (in any language). 
Translator : Translator is a person who translates from one language into another, especially as a profession.
Service provider : Service provider is a person who provides services according to customer requirement and expectation.
 
ELABORATION
 
Concept of quality standard:

The standards which stipulate translational standards to protect and educate translational consumers and help the translator develop professionalism is quality standard.
A standard language or standard variety may be defined either as a language variety used by a population for public purposes or as a variety that has undergone standardization. Language standardization is often linked to the formation, or attempted formation, of nation states , as language is seen as the vehicle of a shared culture. Standard languages arise when a certain dialect begins to be used in written form, normally throughout a broader area than that of the dialect itself. The ways in which this language is used—e.g., in administrative matters, literature, and economic life—lead to the minimization of linguistic variation.
 
Quality standards for translators:
The translators are supposed to cope up with the competitive world through maintaining the standards in quality assuring to fulfil the customer requirements.
The quality can be standardised by understanding the customer expectation and initiative taken to meet the customer requirements.
Translation Quality and Accuracy is one of the main reasons why the clients are attracted towards translators. The relationship should be built on trust and appreciation of the organization and must have control over the quality that the translators deliver. However, translation quality doesn’t come easy. Translators is supposed to built quality model around best practices and models in order to maintain the highest standards.

Quality standards for language professionals:
I agree that language cannot be standardized but it can be pushed to the level of satisfaction according to the expectation of customers. The language spoken and utilized during conversation during transfer of information must be not only understandable but errorless as well as in the correct form of context. Language professionals must not only consider the ethics related to effective communication language but also must understand the importance of improving the quality of language and maintaining its standard.
 
Quality standard for service provider:
Quality standards is a way to identify areas for improvement and growth and help the service provider focus on improved service outcomes, satisfaction of the persons served, and quality service delivery. As a service provider one must consider the changing demands of customers as well as customers. The intensity of customer demand and expectation helps you improve the quality. Each standard sets a guideline for the subject addressed. Standards provide a mechanism for continuous improvement to positively impact service providers and their consumers. Talking about the standardization in services provided, its quality can be improved by increasing the productivity under similar standard quality and also promote prolonged use of services provided.
 
QUALITY ASSURANCE
Quality Assurance is a key component of any translation management system. Our Quality Assurance process allows delivering excellent translations while continuously improving the overall quality.

Quality can be assured by the following process. Firstly Translation review must be taken followed by translation preparation. There also must be a check on glossary development along with the translation. Copy and editing can be done wherever necessary. The translator review can also be incorporated. Formatting, quality control and proofreading is must for the quality assurance process. And then only the final delivery of translation can be done.

Quality can be controlled by avoiding Misinterpretation of the terms, Occurrence of syntactic error, Omission of required letter or sometimes a meaningful word. Unstructured sentences should be corrected and must not be brought into practise. There must not be any misspell of words. Translator must be careful with grammatical errors and other Miscellaneous errors too.
 
CONCLUSION

When it comes to our focus, we understand that quality control is a product-oriented process. When it comes to quality assurance, it is a process-oriented practice. Quality control makes sure the end product meets the quality requirements, quality assurance makes sure that the process of translation does adhere to standards.

And to talk about the quality standard then it comes into existence when the quality is assured to meet the customer expectations and improve the quality. Quality must not only be improved but also assured and standerdized to maintain customer satisfaction and helps in cementing relations.

Hence quality standards are not only useful but must be brought into practise by the language professionals, translators and service providers for effective and efficient translation process.

KEYWORDS: Quality, Quality standards, Language professionals, Translators, Service providers

 
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