A data driven approach to translation outcomes

Using Technology & Data to Improve Translation Outcomes

Translation Outcomes

Smartling Supports Leading Brands Across All Industries Smartling By The Numbers

Billions of Words Processed Smartling By The Numbers

Translation Outcomes Traditional Translation Focus Is On Speed, Quality, & Cost

Speed Quality Cost

+ +

Quality Drives Translation Option Choices

High Cost

High Speed

Transcreation Professional

TEP

One-Pass Translation

MT Post-Edit

Machine Translation

Adaptive MT

Quality Drives Translation Partner Choices

OR

OR

OR

Agency A Agency B

In-House

Agencies

Outsourced

Freelancers

Quality Drives Translation Process Choices

Should I have internal reviewers?

How should I provide context to translators?

How often should I build and update glossaries?

Translation Quality is Top of Mind for Buyers…

of customers say translation quality is the most important factor in their decision

making

...Yet the Least Understood Outcome

of customers say

translation quality is

the most important

factor in their

decision making

of customers

understand how to

measure, track, and

improve translation

quality

Translation Quality Management: Current State

Quality Management Greatly Dictated by Translation Maturity

Ask for certified translators


Ask about vendor quality assurance

process


ISO Certifications

Sample TranslationsError reporting


Data-driven quality measurement


ü  Variety of frameworks based on content types,

industries and use cases

ü  Error Typology Framework: most widely used

ü  Standardization of error categorization, weighting,

reporting, and benchmarking

TAUS DQF Gold Standard for Quality Measurement

The Challenge with Today’s Gold Standard

Reactive Resource Intensive

Sampling Driven

Delayed

A Reactive and Manual Approach to Quality is Growing Increasingly Impractical

More content

More languages

Less time

Less budget

Status Quo

Manage translation quality in a black box

OR

Compromise speed and cost to partially measure quality

Traditional Approaches Have Forced Stakeholders to…

Translation Quality Management: A New Approach

Defining the Ideal State

Predictive Automated Real-time Census

Reactive Resource Intensive

Sampling Driven

Delayed

What Factors Predict Translation Quality?

People

Content

Process

People

Content

Process

•  Number of (and time spent in) workflow steps

•  Engagement (issues raised and answered)

•  Mechanical errors corrected


Content

Process

People

•  Past performance of translator/editor

•  Industry expertise

•  In-country presence


People

Content

Process

•  Length/complexity of string(s)

•  Presence of visual context

•  Extent of TM leverage


Translation Quality Factors

75+ DATA POINTS

Glossary

adherence

Placeholder

use Visual

context

available

Edit

distance

Linguist

rating

String

length

Target

locale

Spell

check

Grammar

check

Translation

re-use

Time

spent

Content

type

Smartling’s platform automatically compiles

and analyzes hundreds of metrics, in real-time…

Smartling’s Solution Quality Confidence Score

QCS: A multinomial logistic regression model that uses 75+ variables collected during the translation process to predict the probability of a translation achieving a professional quality

threshold

QCS

Glossary

adherence

Placeholder

use Visual

context

available

Edit

distance

Linguist

rating

String

length

Target

locale

Spell

check

Grammar

check

Translation

re-use

Time

spent

Content

type

… to provide a single, unified metric of translation quality

Quality Confidence Score in Action Sample QCS Calculation

The Quality Confidence Score…

Is predictive, automated and real-time

Focuses on the causes of good/ poor translation quality, not the effect

Distributes the burden of translation quality between buyer and supplier

Compliments existing quality evaluation frameworks

Tying Quality Confidence Score to Translation Outcomes

Leveraging the Quality Confidence Score An Objective Measure of Translation Quality Across Locales & Projects Over Time

Improve Quality Outcomes

Understand root causes of low

quality resulting from content,

people or process 96% Percentage of translations published without requiring correction

Leveraging the Quality Confidence Score

Leveraging the Quality Confidence Score Accelerate Time To Market

6x Improvement in time to market since implementing Smartling

Workflow changes and velocity

reports allow you to bypass

unnecessary internal review

steps that are not improving

overall content quality

Leveraging the Quality Confidence Score Reduce Costs

Remove agency steps that are

incurring additional expense and

delaying content delivery but not

improving quality 33% Reduction in annual expense within one year of implementing Smartling

Leveraging the Quality Confidence Score Establishing measurable SLA around quality

A Quality Confidence Score is calculated for every translation job

Smartling offers Quality Confidence Score SLAs with money-back guarantees

Key Takeaways

What data does our process and software offer as leading predictors of translation quality?

Are we appropriately sharing the responsibility of translation quality with our vendors?

Is our translation process dynamic enough to respond to and benefit from real-time indicators of translation quality?

Key Takeaways Translation Buyers

What information are we providing customers to objectively understand translation quality over time?

Do we have visibility into our own supply chain to identify drivers of translation quality?

How do we move from reactive error correction to proactive quality measurement?

Key Takeaways Language Services Providers

For more information visit smartling.com/language-services

[email protected]

@sardakunal

A data driven approach to translation outcomes

Business