Quality Assurance for the Freelance translator: A Primer
You see a job listing that wants someone to translate French into English. What do you do?
Running your own translation business can be hard enough, but if you want to stand any chance of success in the profession, then its quality assurance is crucial. It is about preventing errors from being introduced into your translation when translating for a client or when self-publishing. In this article we have compiled some helpful tips that you should keep in mind when conducting a quality assurance process for your work as a freelance translator.
They are especially important if you are providing translation services remotely, since there may be no one on hand to make sure that everything goes smoothly and there is minimal risk of error throughout the process.
These tips are also vital for freelancers who are not offering translation services and would like to use a translation agency so that they can benefit from a quality assurance process handled by professional translators.
The tips presented in this article will help you with:
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A Primer on Translation Quality Assurance , which is a stand-alone article, is also published on the Translator's Cafe blog. If you do not have the time to read it all, we have picked out one tip to give you an idea of what we are saying.
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A Primer on Translation Quality Assurance from Translator's Cafe on Vimeo . Please note that: We have provided the full text of this article from a pdf file on the Translator's Cafe blog on Vimeo on 18th October 2014. It is not possible to reproduce any part of this article without permission from someone who has put it up on their blog or website. Therefore we ask you to contact us in writing if you want to reproduce any part of it online.
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Informative Articles about Translation Quality Assurance for Translators
Useful Online Resources for Translators about Translation Quality Assurance .
Our free translation tools and resources are also loaded with articles relevant to translation quality assurance.
Or, if you like, you can read our informative and useful articles about translation quality assurance on the main Translator's Cafe page.
Articles related to Translation Quality Assurance on the Translator's Cafe Blog:
Tips for Translators: To start, this is an article specifically about translating and how the particular requirements of that profession affect the quality assurance process. It has a great deal of information that is specific to translators. You could read it first, before reading this article about freelance translators' quality assurance.
The 6 factors affecting translator-client interaction from Translator's Cafe Blog . This is an article about how the client-translator relationship affects the translation process. It covers a lot of ground and some of it is related to freelance translators' quality assurance, but you may find it takes you off in a different direction.
A Primer on Translation Quality Assurance from Translator's Cafe Blog . This is an article specifically about freelance translators' quality assurance. We suggest that you read that first before reading this one.
The 6 factors affecting translator-client interaction from Translators Cafe Blog on Vimeo . This is an article about how the client-translator relationship affects the translation process. It covers a lot of ground and some of it is related to freelance translators' quality assurance, but you may find it takes you off in a different direction.
A Primer on Translation Quality Assurance from Translator's Cafe Blog on Vimeo . This is an article specifically about freelance translators' quality assurance. We suggest that you read that first before reading this one, which is more general in nature, although the 2 articles overlap quite a bit.
An Introduction to Quality Assurance for Freelance Translators from the Virtual Linguist. This article focuses on translation agencies and how they can improve their translation quality assurance processes. It is mainly written for bilingual agencies that employ freelance translators.
Translation Quality Assurance for Translators and Interpreters at the UN from MultilingualWebResources.com . This article focuses on the translation quality assurance processes at the United Nations Office for Project Services (UNOPS). Bilingual agencies can learn a lot from it, but so can freelance translators.
This article is related to translation quality assurance and is published on the same Translator's Cafe blog where A Primer on Translation Quality Assurance is posted. It doesn't go into as much detail, but it covers the main issues and explains how agencies should conduct quality assurance for translation services. It is useful for people who want a quick overview of these issues.
An Introduction to Quality Assurance from the Virtual Linguist . This is a general article about quality assurance, mainly geared towards project managers.
Quality Control for Translators I: Why Quality Control Is Important (and how to do it) from ProZ.com . This article can be read online or downloaded for offline reading in pdf format. It focuses on the reasons why translation agencies should conduct quality control checks on translations submitted by their freelance translators, and how they should carry out these checks.
Quality Control for Translators II: How to perform a translation review from ProZ.com . This article can be read online or downloaded for offline reading in pdf format. It expands on the reasons given in Quality Control for Translators I to explain why translation agencies need a system of quality control checks, and how these checks should be done.
Getting More Out Of Website A/B Testing from GetElastic . This article describes website A/B testing in general and explains exactly how A/B testing works. This is important because freelance translators can use the same techniques when testing alternative translated sentences or passages during their quality assurance processes.
How to Conduct Website A/B Testing with Google Website Optimizer from GetElastic . This article explains how freelance translators can conduct website A/B testing themselves. It covers the same ground and ties in with the other article about website A/B testing but provides more practical examples of how websites can be tested.
Freelancers' quality assurance: How translation agencies are improving their processes from Translator's Cafe Blog . This article shows how translation agencies are increasing their translation quality by adopting strategies for freelance translators' quality assurance that have been developed by independent professional associations and native-speaking review services for translators.
This article is a guest post by Benjamin Lingel on Daily Blog Tips .
Conclusion:
The authors of this article have researched the subject of freelance translators' quality assurance extensively, and we encourage anyone who is interested in the topic to look at the links we have provided above.
Workplace for translators: Freelance or employee? from Translator's Cafe Blog . This article covers some of the advantages of working as a freelance translator and some of the problems that you may encounter in that profession. It's useful for people who are trying to choose between working as a freelance translator or an employee for a translation agency.