By Ravi Kumar

Watch the video below, then read the summary.

Watch on YouTube (about 30 minutes)

Summary

In this session, Ravi Kumar presents the results of a data analysis done on the profiles and career goal essays submitted by Modlingua summer interns. The aim of the research was to raise the overall efficiency of content writing, editing and publication at Modlingua.com. He uses the Modlingua Rubric, a ten-point agenda for error control, to count and classify the errors.

What the analysis found

• Scope. 85 of the 135 summer interns of 2018 took part. Their draft and published profiles and career goal essays were compared.
• Words and time. The original documents had 34,218 words, which fell to 33,821 after editing. Interns spent about 1,505 minutes identifying errors and 1,939 minutes preparing the report.
• Errors by rubric category. Punctuation (196) and choice of words (128) led, followed by formatting (110), omissions (79), articles (73), sentence structure (70), consistency (67), spelling (47), grammar (45) and factual errors (18).
• Photo instructions. The required profile photo size was 250x250 pixels. By the speaker's count, only about 40% followed the instruction, and those who did also did better overall.
• Editing team assessment. On attention to detail, 20 profiles were excellent, 20 good and 20 satisfactory. The remaining 25 were poor or very poor. The team edited the poor ones itself and sent the very poor ones back.
• Editing time. The editing team spent about 1,200 minutes (20 hours): 500 on editing, 200 on fixing photographs, 300 on data preparation and 400 on this analysis. With more careful submissions, he says this could have fallen to about 500 minutes.

Advice for writers and translators

• Follow the client's and project manager's compliance parameters strictly, and follow the ten Modlingua Rubric points: articles, punctuation, omissions, spelling, choice of words, facts, consistency, grammar, sentence structure and text formatting.
• Most errors were in punctuation and articles, which writers can control without outside help.
• Read the final draft carefully before submitting, and take help from friends or family if needed.
• Use AI spell and grammar checkers as a passive aid that suggests improvements, while you keep the final judgment.
• Be professional. Careless work wastes your time and the time of everyone who depends on it. In a professional setting, a wrong-sized or blurry photo can cost you the job.

He ends by thanking the interns who took part and says the next session will show how to improve, using a sample.

Related reading

Read Grammarly and the Modlingua Rubric: control errors in writing and translation and Why IT is relevant in translation.