5 Steps to Drive High-Quality Translations in Localization Programs with Frequent Updates

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Low-quality localized content can harm your brand reputation, confusing customers and even exposing you to legal and regulatory risks in severe cases. That's why a quality assurance process should be integral to every localization project.

So, how to drive quality across your localization program?

1. Create a comprehensive localization kit

Create and share key product documentation with your language-service provider (LSP) so they can train their translators. In order to properly translate materials for you, they will need to dive in and deeply familiarize themselves with the product.

The information to provide to your LSP would include:?

• references to the product,?
• screenshots of your product,?
• whether there are line limits,?
• what kind of address to the user we use, formal or informal, etc.

2. Compile a glossary

A glossary is a special dictionary with definitions, translations, and usage examples of key product and industry terms. It helps to ensure consistency of tone and choice of words by sticking to the same terminology throughout the project, especially when more than one translator is working on the same language.?

Note down all the terms specific to your product, service, or company that appear in your documentation, UI, website, etc.?

3. Support the translation process with technology and participation

While the localization team engages in translation, you need to provide active support by providing references and answer their questions about context, terminology, and product features.

As translators move through the text, they use a set of tools to drive collaborative discussion and ensure consistent quality:

• Glossary highlights the terms throughout the text
• Screenshots are automatically displayed next to the relevant strings for the translators to see the context?
• Translation memory (TM) tells the translator if they have previously translated the same text and suggests a translation, if they have
• Comments allow the team to discuss any questions with the stakeholders: for example, clarify context or suggest a choice between two or more translation options
• QA check warns of errors like typo or a missing punctuation mark at the end of a sentence
• Once translators complete their work, they switch to the proofreading mode and double-check each string. If all looks good, they approve the strings and send the localized text back to the client.

4. Double-check the quality through proofreading

We recommend getting proofreading as an additional standalone service, in addition to the translation work and self-checking done by the main translators. This gives you a second set of eyes on the content.

The proofreading process is where an editor "brushes up" the text, checking for grammar, style, and other potential issues. This translator-plus-editor combo is especially valuable for customer-facing business content, like dialogues and creative marketing copy where the language needs to be lively and polished.

5. Execute a language quality assurance (LQA) post-build

The last and final stage in your quality process is deploying a test version of the application and checking the texts directly in the already running application - localization quality assurance, or LQA. This is a very important step that helps to eliminate many problems in the future, such as broken links, text overlapping with UI elements, etc.

As testers go through your product, they enter each bug into a bug tracker indicating the problem string, describing the error in detail, and proposing a corrected version.

Alconost's mission is to help companies grow their revenue in foreign markets through tech-enabled localization solutions, from technical setup to creative translation, into over 100 languages.

Have a project in mind? Let’s talk about it.