Better business</tile> <meta http-equiv="Content-Type" content="text/html; charset=utf-8"> <meta http-equiv="description" content="Better business"> <meta http-equiv="keywords" content="Better,business"> </head> <body> <table width="100%" border="0" cellspacing="0" cellpadding="0"> <tr> <td width="10" height="39"> </td> <td width="99%" height="39"> <table width="100%" border="0" cellspacing="0" cellpadding="0"> <tr> <td width="16%"><a href="http://inttranews.inttra.net"><img src="http://inttranews.inttra.net/images/inttranews_grey_2.jpg" width="192" height="37" border="0"></a></td> <td width="50%" valign="middle"> <p><font face="Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif" size="2"><b><font color="#CCCCCC" face="Verdana, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif" size="1">KNOW.<br> HOW.</font></b></font> </p> </td> <td width="34%" align="right" valign="top"><font face="Verdana, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif" size="1" color="#666666">17-05-2005</font></td> </tr> </table> </td> </tr> <tr> <td width="10"> </td> <td width="99%" > </td> </tr> <tr> <td width="10"> </td> <td width="99%" > <table width="100%" border="0" cellspacing="0" cellpadding="0"> <tr> <td width="100%"><font face="Verdana, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif" size="2"> <b>Better business</b></font> </td> </tr> <tr> <td width="100%"> </td> </tr> <tr> <td width="100%"> <font face="Verdana, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif" size="2">This is the first in a series of articles Inttranews will be regularly publishing on all the pragmatic issues involved in quality assurance for translation. <br>Before we go any further, a few misconceptions need to be dispelled about quality assurance, perhaps the first of which is that quality “management” to use the politically correct expression only concerns or applies to companies: that is not the case. Whether you like it or realise it, quality assurance is a subject that concerns every translator, whether freelance or employed in a large-scale company or institution. Why? Because a “good” translation is a quality concept, and a good translation is what customers want, all the time. Because ultimately that is what quality assurance is all about: getting and keeping customers. So quality concerns you, because your business, your job, your livelihood depends on it, no matter who or where you are. Convinced? <br>The second misconception is that you cannot ensure the quality of a translation. That is quite true. No matter how many procedures and processes you develop and apply, ultimately it is the customer who determines whether it is a good translation or not. If it’s good, they pay for it and they come back for more. That’s the only sure-fire verification method. <br>But for precisely the same reason, customers do not qualify a translation as good or bad on the same technical or terminological basis as other colleagues. They take other criteria into account as well. And there are a large number of procedures and processes you can use to improve the quality of your translations, and eradicate a lot of the errors that spoil the end-result, no matter how much work you put into it. <br>The third misconception is that quality assurance is all just a lot of paperwork and talk. There is paperwork, and there is talk, but if you adopt the right approach, both are minimal, necessary and useful. <br>The fourth misconception is that quality assurance does not improve quality, it simply ensures that the quality of what you produce is constant: if you produce poor translations, they will remain so. That is not completely false, because translation, like every process involving cognition, at some point depends on talent: there are naturally good translators, and naturally there are some bloody awful ones. But talent can be developed and nurtured and even poor translators can improve if they follow a number of simple steps. <br> <br>So what are they? <br> <br>Perhaps the very first step leading up to quality assurance certification is realising that it is necessary. In the case of my company, prior to certification, we had a certain number of procedures for doing things, but they were not organised or written (i.e. formalised) and people basically did whatever they liked as long as the translations got to the customer on time. So inevitably we made mistakes and lost customers and time and money. Whenever a new employee joined the company, they brought in whatever ways they had of doing things, and the situation sometimes improved, but usually got worse. In short, without quality assurance, things were a mess, and there was no assurance that we were going to stay in business, which is what quality assurance is really all about. Better business. <br> <br>The second step is taking the decision to change. Stay tuned… <br> <br>Malcolm Duff <br> <br>[HTT was first certified ISO 9001 (v2000) by BVQI in March 2001 (the certification is valid 3 years). The company was recertified in 2004, and passed the annual audit in March 2005 without any remark or non-conformity]. <br> <br>(c) HTT. This material may reproduced in part or in full as long as an HTML link to Inttranews is included in the reproduced material. <br></font></td> </tr> </table> </td></tr> </table> <script type="text/javascript"></script> <script type="text/javascript" src="<http://pagead2.googlesyndication.com/pagead/show