A creative summary by Vatya Raina and Smita Shenoy

Lecture on Grammarly and Modlingua Rubric by Mr Ravi Kumar

The launch of the Modlingua Quality Control Rubric—Error Control Mechanism in Content Writing and Translation—by Mr Ravi Kumar was a landmark event for current and potential translators and content writers.

After an extensive analysis of possible errors and suggestions on how to improve quality by minimizing errors—minor and major—the founder of Modlingua introduced Grammarly, an AI (Artificial Intelligence) tool for error minimisation and quality control.

Undoubtedly, technology has made the work of human beings less tiring and more effective; these days, apart from manual intervention, there are several AI tools which offer help with grammar, spelling and syntax.

Grammarly (with a rating of 4.6) is one such tool that helps in improving content in tune with the Modlingua Rubric. It also saves precious time by proofreading articles in a matter of minutes, even seconds. Mr Kumar strongly recommended Grammarly as a medium of quality control and content improvement.

One can simply go to Google to download 'Grammarly for Chrome' and add the extension. The Grammarly logo (a circular green arrow) gets added to the right-hand corner, next to the address bar, indicating that the tool is installed and ready for use.

There are two versions of Grammarly: free and paid. The paid version is much more comprehensive. It improves sentence formation, plagiarism, and more. However, to start with, the free version should be adequate for quality control as it corrects errors related to spelling, punctuation, spacing, syntax—important aspects that we tend to overlook or treat as inconsequential.

Mr Kumar demonstrated the ease of using the tool with a sample article. The steps involved are:

1)    typing a title

2)    copying and pasting the article from MS Word (which already does a preliminary spell and grammar check) onto the Grammarly ‘online editor’ window.

In a matter of seconds, a series of red lines highlight the errors. Click on the errors and suggested corrections will pop up.

This app is also available for mobile phones. It can be easily downloaded from Play Store. Grammarly keeps at bay all the silly mistakes that we often make.

Although it is a great tool, Mr Kumar enumerated some important points:

1) Grammarly for Chrome will only function online—for Gmail, Hotmail, etc. For offline applications, say, MS Word, Grammarly for MS Word has to be installed. Or, the 'online editor' option can be used, which allows copying and pasting content before it is saved and published.

2) Grammarly may not recognise words from foreign languages and may incorrectly suggest alternatives (For instance, vacancies for the French term vacances).

3) It is an AI tool; so, the errors highlighted and suggestions offered should be carefully reviewed. 

To conclude, apart from linguistic capabilities a six-sigma standard of error control is a must in any domain, and more particularly in the field of translation and content creation. Looking at one’s own work, again and again, tends to make the author complacent. This increases the possibility of errors. The need of the hour is to get the work objectively reviewed and proofed by a friend. Grammarly is such a friend—a friend for life. If we combine Modlingua Rubric and Grammarly, we will certainly be able to improve our quality of work and at the same time reduce the time involved in editing and project management.