Translation Quality Assessment: Quality that Fits (Beyond the Words)

In this Blog Series, we’re exploring the many aspects of assessing translation quality. So far, we’ve discussed the importance of assessing translation quality (Part 1), learned how to measure errors or defects (Part 2), gained an understanding of the categories and severity levels of errors (Part 3), surveyed ten critical success factors for planning quality translations (Part 4), and distinguished between the subjective and objective (Part 5). In this Part 6, we’ll look at quality that fits. By this, we mean looking beyond the words within your content to assess whether the finished product meets the intended purpose and use of the material.

The Who, What and How?

We use content in so many different ways. When we buy a new product, we might download instructions for how to put it together, install it, or operate it (or, better yet, look for video tutorials!). When we need to learn about a new topic – let’s say Translation Quality Assessment – we might read blogs like this one from industry experts. When we start a new job, we usually need to read and sign off on several HR policies and forms and undergo new employee training. The point is that every piece of content – written words, images, audio and video – was created for a purpose to be used in one or more ways by the end user.

When you create your content, you understand its purpose and how you intend the end users to use it. You choose your words and images carefully, and depending on the content, you may even test it out by asking a few end users to test it out and make sure your message is coming through clearly. You make sure the content is in the right format for your end users. Will it be a streaming video in YouTube embedded in your website subtitled so end users can watch on mute (which many social media viewers will do)? Or is it a document that must be downloaded, so you put it in a protected .pdf? In other words, you create your content based on who will use it, what they will use it for and how they will access it. When it comes to translating the content for a different audience, you must consider these exact same factors.

The Who

The question of who will use your translated content of course includes the questions of language and culture. But “the who” goes far beyond just language and culture. Several factors must be considered when creating content, such as:

• Age: Is your target audience in primary school or are they retirees? Terminology choices, sentence and paragraph length, overall length of content (whether pages or minutes), colors, images, and more are deeply affected by the age of your target audience.
• Reading level: While age and reading level are loosely connected, they are not the same. Literacy rates among adults varies substantially from country to country. Consider, for example, that in India, nearly 30% of individuals age 15 or older cannot read or write, while Latvia leads the world with a 99.9% overall literacy rate. Further, there are different levels of literacy. Typical U.S. adults read at around the 7th to 8th grade level. But this varies from country to country as well as between native speakers and non-native speakers.
• Subject matter knowledge: Content is crafted based on assumptions of the target audience’s basic level of knowledge on a subject. For example, product assembly instructions aren’t likely to explain what a hammer or screwdriver are. Rather, it’s presumed that the consumer knows what these tools are and how to use them.

The What

When creating content, we must ask ourselves, “what will the end user do with this content?” In other words, what is the purpose of the content? To educate? To instruct? To persuade? To entertain? To create a record? To warn? To inspire action?

Understanding the purpose of your content shapes the content itself. And when it comes to content that will be translated for different audiences, the same purpose might dictate different content. Let’s explore an example. Your goal is to educate your production workers on safety procedures within your plant to prevent occupational injury. You know that boring safety training will not be effective. Your team is much more likely to be engaged if the training is educational, entertaining, and interactive.

So, your safety team comes up with a training plan that mimics a game show that it’s calling “Safety Squares” after the famous game show, Hollywood Squares. A mix of managers and fellow workers will fill the squares and offer up answers to safety-related questions while two teams (X’s and O’s) decide whether to agree or disagree. It’s educational, its entertaining, and its interactive. Perfect, yes? Well …. yes, so long a Hollywood Squares is part of the employees’ pop culture. Let’s say your have a number of Hispanic workers, primarily from Mexico, where no local version of Hollywood Squares was ever produced, along with several workers from China, where a local version lasted just one year … back in 2003. Not to mention that fact that in some cultures, disagreeing with a manager or executive just isn’t done. So, it may be that your content won’t live up to its intended purposes.

The How

Beyond considering your audience and the purpose of your content, in today’s technology-driven world, you must also consider how end users will access and use your content, keeping in mind that the same content may need to be accessible in many different formats. A hard copy book, for example, may also need to be available through various eReaders. Your translated content may well be accessed through different channels, and may require different formatting. Did you know that 8.5 x  11 inches, or “Letter” sized paper isn’t standard? Internationally, A4 is the standard, which is 8.27 x 11.69 inches.  Some key considerations include:

• Computer operating systems of your end users
• Mobile operating systems (e.g., IOS vs. Android) of your end users
• File size requirements for easy distribution via email or SMS messaging
• Whether you want your end users to be able to edit or cut-and-paste from the content
• Whether your need a “print friendly” version
• Physical size of the characters in the target language, which may affect pagination and/or layout
• Left-to-right versus right-to-left text orientation of the target language

Assessing Quality Beyond the Words

When assessing the quality of translated content, its important to assess more than the words. In the end, the overall delivery of your message to your target audience in the formats they need is what matters. This takes careful planning, collaboration with your translation team (they can’t deliver on your who, what and how if they don’t know them!), and perhaps the most critical factor: considering your global audience at the content creation step. This will be the subject of the next Blog in this series. Stay tuned!