Our 12-step TQA approach guarantees the highest possible quality translations conducted by our teams of certified linguists who are tested, screened and selected based on industry specialization.

1. discovery
During this phase, we familiarize ourselves with client goals, objectives, specifications, products and services, volumes and levels, languages and dialects, target markets and audiences and other considerations in order to determine the most efficient direction for the entire translation process. Establishment of client contacts including in-country review teams is important in this phase to know who to contact should questions arise and to approve translations as competed.

2. planning
Document analysis, consultation and review of reference materials, leveraging of previous translations and translation memories, acquisition and review of competitive translation assets (if available) allocation of resources. Understanding the entire scope of the project allows us to construct a plan of action and timeline for the overall translation, production and quality review process.

3. preparation
File preparation, document statistics and alignment, creation of glossaries, lexicons, style guides, databases, team selection, designation of team leaders.

4. execution
Initiate the translation and localization process with first-draft translation by subject-specialized team of linguists, population of translation memories with non-repetitive, repetitive and "fuzzy matches" in text. The use of computer assisted translation (CAT) tools such as translation memory (TM) software and steps such as text alignment and leveraging will help minimize cost and greatly improve efficiency and consistency.

5. review
Detailed proofreading, editing and linguistic quality assurance reviews are conducted by our proofreaders and editors for accuracy, technical precision, completeness, grammatical integrity and cultural authenticity. Special attention is given to the tone, style and flavor of the translated copy to make sure that our translators effectively capture the nuances of the text. Reviews of other issues such as programming code, character sets, meta tags, etc., are included in the translation and localization of software code and websites.

6. incorporation
Proofed files to translation teams for review and incorporation of proofreader edits; translation memories updated and archived, second round QA reviews.

7. approval
Pre-production translation review by designated client reviewers (when and if available) for approval. We typically ask clients to designate a reviewer, generally someone within the client’s network who is a native-speaker of the language, has excellent editing skills and who is intimately familiar with the industry and product specific terms. Any edits made by the reviewers are returned to our translation teams for review and incorporation.

8. production
Formatting, typesetting and desktop publishing in native application source files such as InDesign, Illustrator, FrameMaker, QuarkXPress, Dreamweaver, AutoCad, RoboHelp, etc. During the production process, translated text is flowed into existing template files with the objective of limiting changes to the layout, design and graphic elements in order to resemble the source language document as closely as possible. Special care and attention are given to fit, flow, word breaks, proper hyphenation, pagination, leading, kerning, indexing and overall typographical integrity.