Quality testing, program checking, online QA... whatever you call it, it has become a very important part of the online survey creation process. Last night, Bieke and I got a chance to attend a presentation on quality testing by Nathen Garcia at Enlaso in Boulder. He has years of experience quality testing many different types of projects, from video games to mobile devices, and it was interesting to hear his perspective.
For us, program checking generally consists of running through the online survey created from a questionnaire we translated, and making sure that the programming of the survey did not create any new linguistic issues. It is something I started doing back in 2005 on English language surveys we created at LRW. There are new challenges that come with program checking in many languages like we are doing today.
The biggest, most important word that I heard last night was the first topic of the night: scope. I have no doubt that our clients always know what they are expecting when they send us an in-language survey for program checking. However, different clients actually have quite different expectations, and it is important for us to understand exactly what each client wants. Nathen's example last night was when a client asks, "how long will it take to test this program?" His answer is, "how long do you have?" because he could do it in 5 minutes or 100 hours, depending on the client's needs. That is very true: we can spend as long as someone wants us to looking for errors. So the scope boils down to: 1) what specifically do you want us to look for, and 2) how long do you want us to spend on it?
The other issue, which is something that has slowed down some translators in the past, is the test path. As market researchers (myself included), we tend to just assume that our program checkers will have no problem reading the programming instructions to keep from getting terminated and to make sure they check all screens. In reality, even though the linguists can usually decipher the (sometimes very complicated) programming language, figuring out programming instructions can take up a lot of time that they could be testing for errors. And it also creates a much greater chance that they miss something important. In an effort to avoid this, we are going to be focusing much more on creating an accurate test path for the linguists up front, especially in multi-language projects.
Overall, this event was a great experience for us. Nathen broke out the magnifying glass and looked in great detail at some of the biggest issues we face in program checking. Thanks to the CTA for organizing another great professional development event!
Best,
Geoff
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Friday, August 31, 2012
Wednesday, July 25, 2012
Improving our Capabilities
Big news at Global Accent - we have added a new project manager to help us become even more quick and efficient. Bieke Boden is joining our team and I am very excited to have her here. Not only is she a very responsible and organized project manager, but she also speaks a number of languages, including Dutch, English, French, and Spanish. This is obviously very beneficial for a lot of reasons, but one major impact it will have is adding one more set of well-trained eyes to the proofreading step for those languages.
Bieke will likely be posting on the blog as well from here on out. I am looking forward to having her input as we move forward. It is really an exciting time at Global Accent!
Tuesday, October 4, 2011
Positive feedback
We've been getting a lot of positive feedback from clients lately, and I thought I take take this opportunity for a shameless promotion. Here are some unprompted comments from recent clients:
9/9/11 Thank you so much for these. This has been going very smoothly. I really appreciated the awesome work your team did. (French [France and Canada], German, Polish, Spanish)
9/20/11 Everything went great! Our clients went through the translated links themselves (they have team members fluent in each language) and were very happy with the results. Please thank your translation teams for us! (Dutch, Polish)
10/3/11 We *just* heard back from the client on the Hindi translation. They were quite happy with it (thanks!), so no other adjustments needed. (Hindi)
Friday, September 30, 2011
Happy International Translation Day
Hello everyone. I'm back on the blog after just a little bit of time off. :) What better day to come back than International Translation Day? I have a quick story to share about in-person contact.
In this industry, it is actually rare to have met the people that you work with in person. We work together via email on a daily basis but rarely meet due to distance. Last summer, I took a trip to the Bay Area (see previous blog entries) because I work with a large number of translators from that area. At the time, I had a few people ask me if I thought it would be worth the time and money to make the trip.
Fast forward to last week. I had a client tell us they had an upcoming survey on cycling for translation. We always try to line up translators that have personal experience with the subject matter, and from my SF trip last year, I knew that I had a translator that was once a professional cyclist in Europe. So we managed to rearrange her workload so that she could take on that project, as opposed to someone else that didn't have as much experience with bicycles. I mentioned it to my client, and he was very happy to hear this, and passed the info along to his end client.
The moral of the story is that we, as linguists, should be trying to bridge the distance gap as often as possible. While the benefits may not be immediate, bit by bit, they add up to make a huge difference in the quality we offer as businesses.
In this industry, it is actually rare to have met the people that you work with in person. We work together via email on a daily basis but rarely meet due to distance. Last summer, I took a trip to the Bay Area (see previous blog entries) because I work with a large number of translators from that area. At the time, I had a few people ask me if I thought it would be worth the time and money to make the trip.
Fast forward to last week. I had a client tell us they had an upcoming survey on cycling for translation. We always try to line up translators that have personal experience with the subject matter, and from my SF trip last year, I knew that I had a translator that was once a professional cyclist in Europe. So we managed to rearrange her workload so that she could take on that project, as opposed to someone else that didn't have as much experience with bicycles. I mentioned it to my client, and he was very happy to hear this, and passed the info along to his end client.
The moral of the story is that we, as linguists, should be trying to bridge the distance gap as often as possible. While the benefits may not be immediate, bit by bit, they add up to make a huge difference in the quality we offer as businesses.
Wednesday, November 17, 2010
Transatlantic Relations in the New Decade
Hello again...
I wanted to post something about a very interesting speech that I was able to attend last Friday (12 November). I attended a discussion with the German Ambassador to the US, Dr. Klaus Scharioth (here is a link with a brief synopsis: http://www.ceuce.com/features/diplomacy.html, and a picture of him in the White House).
His topic was simply "Transatlantic Relations in the New Decade", and in it he basically outlined the 10 most important issues in German-American relations. It was mostly appealing to my "inner political scientist", but he did touch on one very important language issue toward the end. This was the issue of language and immigration, something that we also face here in America. It has been a hot topic in Germany lately, with Chancellor Merkel recently commenting that "multiculturalism has failed in Germany". She was basically referring to the fact that the German government's policy of integrating Turkish (and other) immigrants has not been successful. Their new policy is going to be to provide up to 600 (yes, 600) hours of language training to non-German speaking immigrants. That way, they will have a much easier time assimilating into German society - particularly the German job market. Not a bad idea, no matter what continent you are on, if you ask me.
Dr. Scharioth had actually studied in Idaho many years ago, so he shared some good stories about travelling through the American West as well - it was a very entertaining hour and a half.
Next on the agenda: I am going to be in LA visiting clients the week after Thanksgiving, so it's about time to prepare for that. Hope to see a lot of clients and old friends between Santa Monica, Century City, South Bay, and Orange County.
Best,
Geoff
I wanted to post something about a very interesting speech that I was able to attend last Friday (12 November). I attended a discussion with the German Ambassador to the US, Dr. Klaus Scharioth (here is a link with a brief synopsis: http://www.ceuce.com/features/diplomacy.html, and a picture of him in the White House).His topic was simply "Transatlantic Relations in the New Decade", and in it he basically outlined the 10 most important issues in German-American relations. It was mostly appealing to my "inner political scientist", but he did touch on one very important language issue toward the end. This was the issue of language and immigration, something that we also face here in America. It has been a hot topic in Germany lately, with Chancellor Merkel recently commenting that "multiculturalism has failed in Germany". She was basically referring to the fact that the German government's policy of integrating Turkish (and other) immigrants has not been successful. Their new policy is going to be to provide up to 600 (yes, 600) hours of language training to non-German speaking immigrants. That way, they will have a much easier time assimilating into German society - particularly the German job market. Not a bad idea, no matter what continent you are on, if you ask me.
Dr. Scharioth had actually studied in Idaho many years ago, so he shared some good stories about travelling through the American West as well - it was a very entertaining hour and a half.
Next on the agenda: I am going to be in LA visiting clients the week after Thanksgiving, so it's about time to prepare for that. Hope to see a lot of clients and old friends between Santa Monica, Century City, South Bay, and Orange County.
Best,
Geoff
Friday, November 5, 2010
Wrapping up the ATA Conference #51
Well the ATA Conference has come and gone - what a great event.
On Friday morning, I did end up choosing "The End of Translation as we know it: Were the Luddites Right?". The speaker was Jost Zetzsche. He was referring to the "Luddites", who went around England and destroyed the looms that took their jobs. Are translators losing their jobs to machines? The question is an extremely hot topic in our industry. There are certain new technologies that are capable of replacing certain translation situations, this is true. And for a company like ours, it is important to keep an eye on these tools and use them when appropriate. However, with all the tools that I've seen, I have yet to find anything that has close to the capabilities of my native-speaking human team. The great thing is that tools, such as Trados or Wordfast, can be helpful to my translators in providing more consistent translations - faster. An interesting point he brought up is that there is - and has been since the 1950's - the "5 year rule". Since the first machine translation of 12 Russian sentences in the 1950's, people have been saying that "in 5 years, there will no longer be a need for human translation". Well, let's be honest, we're making some serious progress right now... but we're not there yet.
Lunch was with two great Spanish translators that I have been working with for a while now, Marta and Cecilia. Cecilia made it all the way from Córdoba, Argentina for the conference - I hope she enjoyed Colorado!
My afternoon session on Friday was on social media for translators with Marsela A. Jenney. I may have even gotten a few tips for this blog (thanks Marsela!) Some of it was a review for me but there were some very good tips mixed in as well. Apparently I should "write with passion in an authentic voice"... we'll see how it goes! :)
I spent the rest of the conference networking and catching up on work. I even got to direct someone to a day trip in the Rockies in German, and I met many of the "locals" - other members of the Colorado Translator Association.
The ATA conference was well worth it this year - I'm REALLY looking forward to the annual conference next year in Boston.
Best,
Geoff
On Friday morning, I did end up choosing "The End of Translation as we know it: Were the Luddites Right?". The speaker was Jost Zetzsche. He was referring to the "Luddites", who went around England and destroyed the looms that took their jobs. Are translators losing their jobs to machines? The question is an extremely hot topic in our industry. There are certain new technologies that are capable of replacing certain translation situations, this is true. And for a company like ours, it is important to keep an eye on these tools and use them when appropriate. However, with all the tools that I've seen, I have yet to find anything that has close to the capabilities of my native-speaking human team. The great thing is that tools, such as Trados or Wordfast, can be helpful to my translators in providing more consistent translations - faster. An interesting point he brought up is that there is - and has been since the 1950's - the "5 year rule". Since the first machine translation of 12 Russian sentences in the 1950's, people have been saying that "in 5 years, there will no longer be a need for human translation". Well, let's be honest, we're making some serious progress right now... but we're not there yet.
Lunch was with two great Spanish translators that I have been working with for a while now, Marta and Cecilia. Cecilia made it all the way from Córdoba, Argentina for the conference - I hope she enjoyed Colorado!
My afternoon session on Friday was on social media for translators with Marsela A. Jenney. I may have even gotten a few tips for this blog (thanks Marsela!) Some of it was a review for me but there were some very good tips mixed in as well. Apparently I should "write with passion in an authentic voice"... we'll see how it goes! :)
I spent the rest of the conference networking and catching up on work. I even got to direct someone to a day trip in the Rockies in German, and I met many of the "locals" - other members of the Colorado Translator Association.
The ATA conference was well worth it this year - I'm REALLY looking forward to the annual conference next year in Boston.
Best,
Geoff
Friday, October 29, 2010
Good morning from Denver
Just wanted to check in quickly with an update from yesterday. It was such a busy day that I did not even have a break. The first session I attended was a German>English financial translation seminar. Very specific, but very interesting for me. After that, I had lunch with a great Italian translator that I work with from San Francisco. We talked about translation... and guitars. That was followed by some networking and looking for new translators at the "translator marketplace". The afternoon session I attended was about international payment methods, and it will literally probably save me hundreds of dollars each year - very informative!
As I'm typing this, I just got done speaking with the linguist who translates Hillary Clinton's texts into French. What a job! At 10:00 this morning, I will have to decide between a session about the finances of a translation company and a session about "the end of translation as we know it" - both sound very interesting. Lunch today is with two Spanish-speaking native South American linguists... should be fun!
That's it for now. So far, this conference has been well worth the effort.
Best,
Geoff
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