The best translation company in the world...

I recently came across a translation agency’s website where they boldly claimed to be “probably the best translation agency in the world.” To back this claim up, they went on to say that they “work only with carefully selected native speakers and have every translation proofread by a second native speaker”.

If this strikes you as a completely new way of translating, then please keep reading to find out how things are done as standard in the translation world!

At STAR Servicios Lingüísticos, we ensure that the “native speaker” we employ as an in-house or freelance translator has a translation degree or an equivalent academic qualification, can prove they have experience in translation and subject matter expertise, and we normally ask them to complete a translation test. If the translator passes the translation test, we then provide them with our translation technology and training on this system, style guides, terminology management guidelines, as well as client-specific terminology, reference material and instructions with each project.

All translations are proofread according to the best practices set forward by the ISO 17100 quality standard for translation services, and evaluated according to a set of criteria based on the J2450 translation quality metric: correct use of terminology, correct comprehension and interpretation of the source text, precision, grammatical correctness, spelling, punctuation, format and style (adherence to the appropriate register and text conventions). All of our translators thus undergo a continuous quality assessment and are informed of any non-conformities so that they can learn from their mistakes and ensure that they apply corrective and preventive measures to future assignments. In addition to this revision process, we use our computer-assisted translation technology to carry out automated quality assurance checks to ensure the correct formatting, numbers and number formats, punctuation and spacing, as well as to search for unmodified words or strings, etc.

A final sign-off before delivery completes our quality assurance procedure.

So what does all this hard work and our comprehensive QA procedure make us? Not the best translation company in the world, in my humble opinion. It makes us just one of many translation companies out there trying to comply with the existing quality standards and best practices, and an old-fashioned thing called work ethics. Nothing more, nothing less.

If you have had the patience to keep reading until now, you will have amped up your localization maturity level by gaining more of an insight into standard translation processes. Also, if you do happen to be searching for the right language services provider and you are faced with such bold claims, you will now have a set of questions that will allow you to drill a bit deeper and find out for yourself if those claims are based on a solid foundation or not!