What do you (or your clients) call revision with error categorisation? Thread poster: Samuel Murray
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Samuel Murray 
Netherlands
Local time: 07:10
Member (2006)
English to Afrikaans
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Hello everyone
What is the term that you or your clients use to describe a type of revision (or proofreading) that specifically involves having to categorise errors by type and by severity in a spreadsheet? This type of revision often involves having to copy text from other files into the spreadsheet, and the error severities often add up to some kind of a score that is automatically calculated, if the reviser doesn't foul it up.
Thanks
Samuel
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Some of my customers call it QA.
I've got some documents titled "Quality manager checklist", so one can also name it QM, I guess.
[Редактировалось 2013-10-29 11:25 GMT]
[Редактировалось 2013-10-29 11:26 GMT]
| | | | Natalie
Poland
Local time: 07:10
Member (2002)
English to Russian
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MODERATOR SITE LOCALIZER | | "Pointless exercise" | Oct 29, 2013 |
is the term I'd use. You can't turn subjective opinions into spreadsheets.
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Samuel Murray
Netherlands
Local time: 07:10
Member (2006)
English to Afrikaans
+ ...
TOPIC STARTER
philgoddard wrote:
"Pointless exercise" is the term I'd use. You can't turn subjective opinions into spreadsheets.
Well, the revisions I refer to usually involve objective opinions, not subjective ones.
For example, if the translator misspelt a word, then that word can be added to the spreadsheet, with the error category "spelling". Depending on the brief, the reviser can also evaluate the error's severity (and "severity" can be defined in any number of ways, e.g. how noticeable the error would be, whether the error would render the entire paragraph meaningless to the average reader, etc). The severity is subjective, yes, but the translator is often asked for his opinion, so in the end it doesn't matter that the grading is subjective as long as both victim and aggressor agrees on it.
| | | | Kay Denney
France
Local time: 07:10
French to English
| time-consuming QA | Oct 29, 2013 |
philgoddard wrote:
is the term I'd use. You can't turn subjective opinions into spreadsheets.
thanks for the chuckle!
Of course it depends on the type of translation being reviewed. If it's a press release for a new perfume you can't help but make subjective judgments, but if it's a handbook for a factory making nuts and bolts maybe a spreadsheet could be useful.
Still time-consuming, but maybe not a total waste of time if you're paid properly to do it!
I'd say it was quality analysis so QA.
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But you can still have a poor-quality translation that doesn't contain any errors as such.
I think the only valid criterion is how long it would take to make the translation commercially usable. It's still a subjective opinion, but it's much more easily quantifiable.
[Edited at 2013-10-29 19:24 GMT]
| | | | Samuel Murray
Netherlands
Local time: 07:10
Member (2006)
English to Afrikaans
+ ...
TOPIC STARTER
philgoddard wrote:
But you can still have a poor-quality translation that doesn't contain any errors as such.
True, and that is why these types of revisions deal mostly with describable errors.
Most of the time when I'm asked to perform such a task (and these days I simply refuse such jobs) the brief was very clear: report only errors. And when I as a translator get such a revision report back, the brief is also clear: acknowledge only errors. In other words, it doesn't matter if you agree that the reviewer's wording is better -- you must only accept the error if the original truly contained an error.
The revision is often not on the whole translation but only on a sample of it, so reporting preferential changes wouldn't really be useful anyway. The point of these QA tasks, it would seem, is to assure the quality of the translator, not the translation.
That is my experience, anyway.
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Kay Denney
France
Local time: 07:10
French to English
| subjective assessment | Oct 30, 2013 |
I agree that a translation can be poor even without mistakes that can be easily fitted into a spreadsheet.
When I worked in-house we had a simple assessment form and one of the items we had to rate was "style". Very vague and subjective of course, but a poor rating in that column basicially ruined the translator's chance of doing any of the "arty-farty" translations we managed.
The only stuff we would send someone with poor style would be instruction manuals and even ... See more I agree that a translation can be poor even without mistakes that can be easily fitted into a spreadsheet.
When I worked in-house we had a simple assessment form and one of the items we had to rate was "style". Very vague and subjective of course, but a poor rating in that column basicially ruined the translator's chance of doing any of the "arty-farty" translations we managed.
The only stuff we would send someone with poor style would be instruction manuals and even then we would reword stuff during proofreading.
But generally speaking, translators who rated poorly style-wise also tended to leave more silly copy-paste errors or typos so even without that column we could sort the chaff out without too much hassle. ▲ Collapse
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