Translation Standards

There is, however, a view within the translation industry that while not doing any actual harm, an over-reliance on such standards can give a false sense of security. Following translation standards blindly cannot on its own possibly provide real assurance regarding final translation quality. The argument is that the path to quality in translation is by focusing more on providing on-going training and feedback to translators and the quality assurance tools and general tools available to the linguists, such as terminology tools.

Pangeanic was a leader in the implementation of European translation standard EN 15038 (now ISO 17100) in Spain, its QA processes being recognized to ISO 9001 and ISO 17100 after an independent audit. Pangeanic was awarded a post-editing contract by the European Union in 2007. Other ISO standards include:

• Post-edition ISO 18587:2017, which provides requirements for the process of full, human post-editing of machine translation output and post-editors’ competences.
• ISO 14001, which provides requirements with guidance for use that relate to environmental systems and specifies the requirements for an environmental management system that an organization can use to enhance its environmental performance. Pangeanic wants to do whatever is in its hand to revert climate change in all its operations, from managing waste at its facilities to reducing electricity use.
• ISO 27001, which is widely known as the gold standard for an information security management system (ISMS). Pangeanic is one of the few language industry companies in the world to demostrate a fully operational Information Security Management System. ISO/IEC 27001 is a security standard that formally specifies an Information Security Management System (ISMS) that is intended to bring information security under explicit management control. As a formal specification, it mandates requirements that define how to implement, monitor, maintain, and continually improve the ISMS. It also prescribes a set of best practices that include documentation requirements, divisions of responsibility, availability, access control, security, auditing, and corrective and preventive measures. Certification to ISO/IEC 27001 helps organizations comply with numerous regulatory and legal requirements that relate to the security of information.

Since Quality Management systems first hit the translation industry early this century and particularly since the advent of the European Translation Standard enormous importance has been placed on translation quality metrics as a result of the development of the language industry at a world scale. For the protection of all parties involved in the translation process, standards have been developed seeking to spell out their mutual duties.