Translation Standards

A translation agency follows some particular standards when it comes to the formation of its corpus of personnel and translators; the processes involved in translation, and of course, the translation itself and the review thereof. There are three main standards in translation, coming from Italy and Germany.

The Italian standard delineates the cyclical and systematic processes involved in the day to day operation of a translation agency. This involves the regulation of the cycle of production, which involves assessment and the management of projects. These standards also involve the actual infrastructure that the translation agency has at its utilization at the moment. This standard also takes into consideration the various criteria that should be put in place by the translation agency upon its hiring of employees and specialists and translators. This particular standard in translation would assure clients of high quality translated texts in the most efficient amount of time.

The German standard of translation actually involves the act of translation itself, and the processes that would be in place to ensure that everything is systematic. The first part of the German standard of translation states that the primary materials that would be given to the translation agencies should be of high quality themselves, and should be checked beforehand for any inconsistencies such as misprints and the like.

The second section of the German standard for translation states that the human translator should have prior knowledge and training for the specific tasks that he or she would be accepting as projects. This section also states that the translator himself should be provided with the proper tools, such as TRADOS to carry out his tasks efficiently as a translator. The third part of the German standard of translation states that the contract between the agency and the client should be delineated very clearly to improve the facility of the translation. The contract should contain all the necessary information that the translator would need at the moment that he or she begins the task of translation.

The fourth section of the German standard of translation involves the quality of the output; it should meet the particular standards of the specific natural language that it the client had intended for the text to be translated to. The final section covers the process of proofreading, and review of the final translation of a primary or source text. The text should have corrected terms.