What is Translation Quality (TQ)?
If you are not familiar with the idea of translation quality (TQ) and its measurement, the following key terms are foundational:
- What is translation? “Translation … is a cover term for the creation of written output that corresponds to source content according to agreed-upon specifications” (International Federation of Translators).
- What are specifications? They are a detailed blueprint produced by a pre-production dialog between stakeholders (the requester and the provider’s project manager):
- Translation parameters are standardized aspects of a translation project to be addressed in the pre-production dialog.
- Translation specifications are the use-case-specific requirements developed, agreed upon, and documented before a translation project begins. They are used to guide the production of a translation, as well as to guide evaluation of the translation in a post-production phase.
- It may be useful to look at this list of translation parameters.
- What is translation quality? The degree to which a translation meets the agreed-on specifications.
For example, parameter 6a in the above list of parameters is “target language,” including locale. A translation’s target language specification might be “British English,” and so a high-quality translation would be careful to adhere to British linguistic standards of the language (e.g. using “colour” instead of “color”).
For more information, see the following articles on the definition of translation, the general measurement of quality, and the application of quality measurement to the translation industry: