Tweet
Translation Quality Control for Documentation
In the past, quality measurement of language translation was to a certain extent subjective, if such a measurement was undertaken at all. Cost and efforts go into obtaining translations from suppliers and using these translations as the base for the internal localization department. This is the same as for any manufactured product. It is necessary to have a tangible method for measuring the quality of translation deliverables as precisely as for any manufactured product.
The objective of the metric described thereafter is to establish a standard against which the quality of the translation can be objectively measured regardless of the source language, regardless of the target language, and regardless of how the translation is performed.
Using this metric allows the evaluator to tag errors in a translation and compute a weighed numeric score that represents the quality of the translation. The metric consists of four parts.
Using a consistent metric across the board will allow a tighter control of translation quality.
The risks of low-quality translations of service information include erosion of reader confidence, higher maintenance costs and (at an extreme) damage or even injury to people.
REMEMBER, WHEN YOU TRANSLATE A MARTIAL ARTS BOOK, SOME READER WILL TRY OUT ANYTHING YOU DESCRIBE!!!
Important
This Quality Control policy is language-neutral and therefore can be applied to all languages, including the source.
Quality Control - General
This QC policy should be regarded as only one element in the quality control process, albeit an important one.
Note: This policy does not measure errors in style.
This section of the policy defines the quality control policy and should be used as a reference. In using the policy, each error found by the evaluator should be marked in two ways. First, it should be classified into one of the seven categories, for example "wrong term". After the primary category has been established, it should then be indicated whether it is a "serious" or a "minor" error. This will depend on how severe the evaluator considers the error. Both, the primary (category) and the secondary classification (serious/minor) are judgment calls by the evaluator. While reasonably complete definitions are given to help establishing the major categories with a certain degree of consistency, there is room for ambiguity and final selection can become very well arbitrary. For example, the English word "replace" may be translated into French as either replacer" (to but back in place) or remplacer (to replace with another item). That is, the English verb replace is ambiguous with respect to French. If a French text for example describes a situation where a seatbelt must be replaced after an accident, because the belt may be weakened by the first accident and fail in a subsequent accident. If a French translation then uses the word replacer an evaluator should mark this verb as an error. However, is it a wrong term error, a misspelling error or a miscellaneous error? Without talking to the translator it is practically impossible to know, whether the term was misunderstood or simply mistyped.
Tip
In such cases where the primary category classification is ambiguous and there is no evidence as to which category an error belongs, the evaluator should place it into the category that appears the earliest in the list. Although arbitrary, following this simple rule a greater consistency of classification will be the result.
The secondary classification of an error as either "serious" or "minor" is always a judgment call and rightly so. Although it is almost impossible to define the notion of a serious or minor error, as a general guideline if an error is serious in its consequences for the end user or its effect on the meaning of the translation, then it should be marked as "serious". otherwise, it should be classified as "minor". Naturally, there will be cases, where the evaluator hesitates. In this case, again the guideline to sub-classify the error as "serious" should be used. Although arbitrary, it seems the safer alternative, since safety can be an issue.
Caution
The categories in this section of the policy are meant to tag linguistic errors. Thus, a translation free of any errors described in this policy can still be unacceptable due to other problems, such as formatting errors.
Once the primary and secondary classifications have been assigned, a numeric weight between 1 and 5 is looked up in the definition and assigned to the error. 5 corresponds to the most severe error, while 1 indicates an error with relatively small consequences. The numerical assignment is a mechanical process and there is no room for judgment. While this assignment will sometimes over-value the severity of an error, at other times it will under/value the error. The underlying assumption of this policy consists in the deviations canceling each other, meaning "regression to the mean" will normalize the deviations in a large evaluation text or a large number of evaluation texts.
Also, this policy is designed for the evaluation of translations of martial arts books where the style, tone and others are not as important, since these aspects are covered in the style guide for the respective language.
The general concept is that once an error has been identified by category, the evaluator decides whether the effect of the translation of that error is severe or not. If severe, it is classified as a "serious" occurrence of this error type, and otherwise it is regarded as a "minor" occurrence. This will always be a judgment call by the evaluator.
Quality Control - Elements
While the remainder of the quality control policy defines the error categories and classification, the reader should keep in mind that the metric itself consists of four elements. These are:
1 When an error is ambiguous, choose the earliest primary category.
2 When in doubt, always choose "serious" over "minor".
The numeric weights.
The evaluator should be thoroughly familiar with the definitions of the seven categories as well as the comments in the general section of this quality control policy.
Quality Control - Guidelines for Evaluators
An evaluator should be thoroughly familiar with the definitions of the seven categories explained thereafter, as well as the general comments. This policy does not offer any guidelines on how to select texts for evaluation. The selection will be done according to the criteria set by the leader.
We will describe here the actual procedure for using this policy. This policy assumes that the evaluator has access to the source text and the target text, as well as any reference material necessary. Below you will find the quick reference table for categories, sub-classification, and the weight scores.
Quality Control - The Process
From a procedural point of view, the task is actually rather simple, because there are only five steps to be taken. When the evaluator locates a non-stylistic error, then he or she should take five actions. Note that if the same error occurs one or more times in a text, it should be marked each time it occurs.
The five actions are:
Mark the location of the error in the target text. This should be done by circling the error in the target language text. An empty circle indicates an omission. If markups are performed electronically, then an equivalent, overt form of the markup should be devised.
Indicate the primary category of the error. That is, mark whether it is a "wrong term", an "omission", etc. Use the abbreviation of the category for this action.
Meta-Rule 1: If more than one category is possible for a given error, select the category that appears earliest in the table.
Indicate the sub-classification of the error as either "serious" or "minor". Write out the sub-classification abbreviations immediately following the primary category. For example, to indicate a serious syntactic error write "SE - s" above the circled text.
Meta-Rule 2: If you are not sure which sub-classification to use, then choose "serious".
Look up the numeric value of the error. These are listed at the end of each definition and in the reference table.
Compute the normalized score. Sum up the individual numeric weights and divide by the number of words in the source language text. Use the Sheets provided for this procedure. If you do not have a sheet, contact the localization group.
Quality Control - Categories
Following you fill find the detailed definitions for each category.
Wrong Term - WT
This category can only be defined after the concept of "term" has been defined. A term is defined as:
a. Any single word.
b. A Multi-word phrase used as a single lexical constituent (i.e. part of speech).
c. An Abbreviation.
d. An Acronym.
e. A number or Numeral.
f. A proper name, including trade names, brand names registered trademarks, place names, and personal names.
Therefore, "computer" is a single word, "computer networking components" is a multi-word phrase, "Hz" is an abbreviation, "UPC" is an acronym, "3.14" is a numeral, "three" is a number and "Microsoft Development Corporation" is a name. All are terms, as are function words, such as prepositions, conjunctions, determiners and articles.
Given the definition of a term, we define a "wrong term" to be any target language term that:
a. Violates the terminology database of Interwoven, Inc.
b. Is in clear conflict with the de facto standard translation(s) of the source language term in the field of document content management.
c. Is inconsistent with other translations of the source language term in the same document or type of document, unless the context for the source language term justifies the use of a different target language term, for example due to ambiguity of the source language term.
d. Denotes a concept in the target language that is clearly and significantly different from the concept denoted by the source language term.
An example of (b) for the automotive domain would be "Parking Brake" translated as " Parkbremse " (aircraft term) in German rather than " Handbremse " (automotive domain).
Clause (c) is important because it captures the error of inconsistency, which is a very frequent error. An example of (c) in German would be a translation of "odometer" sometimes as " Odometer " or sometimes as " Kilometerzähler ".
An example of (d) would be "black interior" translated into Spanish as " interior blanco " (white interior).
Serious Weight is 5.
Minor Weight is 2.
Syntactic Error - SE
A syntactic error comprises the following cases:
a. A source term is assigned the wrong part of speech in its target language counterpart.
b. The target text contains an incorrect phrase structure, e.g. a relative clause when a verb phrase is needed.
c. The target language words are correct, but in the wrong linear order according to the syntactic rules of the target language.
To show an example of a clause (a) error, the English sentence "The throttle valve connects to the accelerator pedal" could be mistranslated into French as Le papillon de gaz connecte à la pédale d'accélérateur. In this example, the French verb connecter is transitive and should take a direct object, not a prepositional phrase complement.
A clause (a) error may or may not appear as an incorrect inflection on the target term, depending upon the language, but a part of speech error should be assigned to this category nonetheless.
A clause (c) error could occur, for example in Romance languages, if an adjective that was supposed to be follow its noun were instead placed in front of the noun and the placement was not driven by reasons of style or emphasis.
An example would be "This car was built in Germany" translated into German as Dieses Auto wurde gebaut in Deutschland.
Serious Weight is 4.
Minor Weight is 2.
Omission - OM
An error of omission has occurred if:
a. A continuous block of text in the source language has no counterpart in the target language text and, as a result, the semantics of the source text is absent in the translation.
b. A graphic which contains source language text has been deleted from the target language deliverable.
By "a continuous block of text" is meant everything from a term to a sentence to a paragraph or to any larger block of text. The corresponding missing text in the target language may or may not need to be continuous.
For example a verb in English may translate to a so-called separable verb in German (where the verb is supposed to appear first, followed later in the sentence by a preposition) and that preposition is then missing in the German. For example, the German ablesen is such a verb that is a translation of the English "to read off" (instruments), where the verb lesen would normally appear, then be followed by the direct object, and finally by the preposition ab.
In Spanish, it would be an omission to translate "Remove the wheelnuts and the wheel" as Desmonte la rueda (Remove the wheel).
Please note that the previous definition implies that even if a large section of text were absent from the target language text, that would only constitute one occurrence of this error, albeit a very serious one in its implications.
Part (b) of the definition implies that if the missing graphic does NOT contain any source language text, then there is no occurrence of an error in respect to this policy. This would still be, of course, an error and a problem that requires corrective action. However, the point is that this policy (at this time) is limited to linguistic errors, and does not therefore encompass all potential problems with a translation deliverable.
Important
Omission does not imply that the source and target language words must be in a 1:1 correspondence.
Serious Weight is 4.
Minor Weight is 2.
Word Structure or Agreement Error - SA
a. An error of incorrect word structure has occurred, if an otherwise correct target language word (or term) is expressed in an incorrect morphological form, e.g., case, gender, number, tense, prefix, suffix, infix, or any other inflection.
b. An error of agreement has occurred when two or more target language words disagree in any form of inflection as would be required by the grammatical rules of that language.
Note: Clause (a) implies that an article of the wrong gender/number/case would be tagged in this category and not as a Wrong Term Error.
An example of this could be the use of the wrong Dutch article De (rather then: het) gekozen voertuig wordt niet ondersteund.
An example of clause (a) would be the English "The vehicle selected is not supported" translated to Gewählte Fahrzeug wird nicht unterstützt in German.
An example of (b) would be the German Der Motor läuft translated into English as "The motors is running" or "The motor are running" rather than "The motor is running". In Spanish "fog lights" should be translated as luces antiniebla rather than luces antinieblas.
The intent of part (b) of this rule is to assure that even though more than one word may be wrong, there is only one occurrence of the error, rather than one for each word that has the incorrect inflection. This is to recognize that the error is a single error in the mind of the translator and that this error simply manifests itself in several words. However, if the same error occurs in a separate phrase elsewhere in the document, it will again count as a new occurrence of the error.
Serious Weight is 4.
Minor Weight is 2.
Misspelling - SP
A misspelling has occurred if the target language term:
a. Violates the spelling as stated in the glossary.
b. Violates the accepted norms for spelling in the target language.
c. Is written in an incorrect or inappropriate writing system for the target language.
Note: Clause (a) assumes that the glossary is correct.
An example in German of a misspelling could be in the compound Stromkreis Kraftstofffreigbae Bereich for "Fuel Enable Circuit range" where the characters b and a were reversed in Kraftstofffreigabe. The English "Screw on" could be misspelled in Portuguese as Atarrachar instead of Atarraxar. Clause (c) is intended to flag as an error words in target languages such as Japanese that use more than one writing system and the word in question was written in that (wrong) writing system. For example in Japanese if a foreign term, normally written in Katakana, were instead written in Hiragana, albeit with the correct syllabic symbols in Hiragana for that words pronunciation, it is still a misspelling.
Serious Weight is 3.
Minor Weight is 1.
Punctuation Error - PE
A punctuation error occurs, when the target language text contains an error according to the punctuation rules for that language.
For example, in German Am 2 Zylinder for "On the 2nd cylinder" there should be a period following the "2" to indicate an ordinal number. A serious punctuation error could involve a missing decimal point or comma according to the target language, e.g., "116" instead of "11.6" or "11,6".
In French, an error of this type would be Figure 3: instead of Figure 3 :
Serious Weight is 2.
Minor Weight is 1.
Miscellaneous Error - ME
Any linguistic error related to the target language text, which is not clearly attributable to the other categories should be classified as miscellaneous error.
This rule recognizes that not all errors fall neatly into the other six categories, and that some evaluators may proofread a translation and recognize it as clearly wrong, yet not be able to say precisely what it is that is wrong.
Caution
Do not use this category to tag style errors. Style errors are handled in the style guide for the respective language.
Examples of miscellaneous errors are:
A literal translation of an idiom, e.g., the English idiom "to push the envelope" meaning "to perform beyond existing boundaries".
A lexically correct, but culturally offensive honorific (as in Asian and African languages).
A superfluous or "extra" block of text that has no relevance in the source text.
A mistranslation, that reverses the meaning of the original.
Note: Generally, the process of translation is performed as part of the localization process, which makes a product culturally appropriate for the target audience, as well as linguistically correct. With this in mind, the translator may be perfectly justified in adding text to a translation to explain some cultural reference that may not be familiar to the target audience of the translation. Such additions should not be regarded as superfluous, and no error should be marked.
Serious Weight is 3.
Minor Weight is 1.
Remaining to come tomorrow...
In the past, quality measurement of language translation was to a certain extent subjective, if such a measurement was undertaken at all. Cost and efforts go into obtaining translations from suppliers and using these translations as the base for the internal localization department. This is the same as for any manufactured product. It is necessary to have a tangible method for measuring the quality of translation deliverables as precisely as for any manufactured product.
The objective of the metric described thereafter is to establish a standard against which the quality of the translation can be objectively measured regardless of the source language, regardless of the target language, and regardless of how the translation is performed.
Using this metric allows the evaluator to tag errors in a translation and compute a weighed numeric score that represents the quality of the translation. The metric consists of four parts.
- Seven error categories.
- Two sub-categories.
- Two meta-rules to help decide ambiguities on the assignment of an error to the categories and sub- categories.
- Numeric weights.
Using a consistent metric across the board will allow a tighter control of translation quality.
The risks of low-quality translations of service information include erosion of reader confidence, higher maintenance costs and (at an extreme) damage or even injury to people.
REMEMBER, WHEN YOU TRANSLATE A MARTIAL ARTS BOOK, SOME READER WILL TRY OUT ANYTHING YOU DESCRIBE!!!
Important
This Quality Control policy is language-neutral and therefore can be applied to all languages, including the source.
Quality Control - General
This QC policy should be regarded as only one element in the quality control process, albeit an important one.
Note: This policy does not measure errors in style.
This section of the policy defines the quality control policy and should be used as a reference. In using the policy, each error found by the evaluator should be marked in two ways. First, it should be classified into one of the seven categories, for example "wrong term". After the primary category has been established, it should then be indicated whether it is a "serious" or a "minor" error. This will depend on how severe the evaluator considers the error. Both, the primary (category) and the secondary classification (serious/minor) are judgment calls by the evaluator. While reasonably complete definitions are given to help establishing the major categories with a certain degree of consistency, there is room for ambiguity and final selection can become very well arbitrary. For example, the English word "replace" may be translated into French as either replacer" (to but back in place) or remplacer (to replace with another item). That is, the English verb replace is ambiguous with respect to French. If a French text for example describes a situation where a seatbelt must be replaced after an accident, because the belt may be weakened by the first accident and fail in a subsequent accident. If a French translation then uses the word replacer an evaluator should mark this verb as an error. However, is it a wrong term error, a misspelling error or a miscellaneous error? Without talking to the translator it is practically impossible to know, whether the term was misunderstood or simply mistyped.
Tip
In such cases where the primary category classification is ambiguous and there is no evidence as to which category an error belongs, the evaluator should place it into the category that appears the earliest in the list. Although arbitrary, following this simple rule a greater consistency of classification will be the result.
The secondary classification of an error as either "serious" or "minor" is always a judgment call and rightly so. Although it is almost impossible to define the notion of a serious or minor error, as a general guideline if an error is serious in its consequences for the end user or its effect on the meaning of the translation, then it should be marked as "serious". otherwise, it should be classified as "minor". Naturally, there will be cases, where the evaluator hesitates. In this case, again the guideline to sub-classify the error as "serious" should be used. Although arbitrary, it seems the safer alternative, since safety can be an issue.
Caution
The categories in this section of the policy are meant to tag linguistic errors. Thus, a translation free of any errors described in this policy can still be unacceptable due to other problems, such as formatting errors.
Once the primary and secondary classifications have been assigned, a numeric weight between 1 and 5 is looked up in the definition and assigned to the error. 5 corresponds to the most severe error, while 1 indicates an error with relatively small consequences. The numerical assignment is a mechanical process and there is no room for judgment. While this assignment will sometimes over-value the severity of an error, at other times it will under/value the error. The underlying assumption of this policy consists in the deviations canceling each other, meaning "regression to the mean" will normalize the deviations in a large evaluation text or a large number of evaluation texts.
Also, this policy is designed for the evaluation of translations of martial arts books where the style, tone and others are not as important, since these aspects are covered in the style guide for the respective language.
The general concept is that once an error has been identified by category, the evaluator decides whether the effect of the translation of that error is severe or not. If severe, it is classified as a "serious" occurrence of this error type, and otherwise it is regarded as a "minor" occurrence. This will always be a judgment call by the evaluator.
Quality Control - Elements
While the remainder of the quality control policy defines the error categories and classification, the reader should keep in mind that the metric itself consists of four elements. These are:
- The seven primary error categories.
- The two secondary subcategories.
- The two meta-rules:
1 When an error is ambiguous, choose the earliest primary category.
2 When in doubt, always choose "serious" over "minor".
The numeric weights.
The evaluator should be thoroughly familiar with the definitions of the seven categories as well as the comments in the general section of this quality control policy.
Quality Control - Guidelines for Evaluators
An evaluator should be thoroughly familiar with the definitions of the seven categories explained thereafter, as well as the general comments. This policy does not offer any guidelines on how to select texts for evaluation. The selection will be done according to the criteria set by the leader.
We will describe here the actual procedure for using this policy. This policy assumes that the evaluator has access to the source text and the target text, as well as any reference material necessary. Below you will find the quick reference table for categories, sub-classification, and the weight scores.
Quality Control - The Process
From a procedural point of view, the task is actually rather simple, because there are only five steps to be taken. When the evaluator locates a non-stylistic error, then he or she should take five actions. Note that if the same error occurs one or more times in a text, it should be marked each time it occurs.
The five actions are:
Mark the location of the error in the target text. This should be done by circling the error in the target language text. An empty circle indicates an omission. If markups are performed electronically, then an equivalent, overt form of the markup should be devised.
Indicate the primary category of the error. That is, mark whether it is a "wrong term", an "omission", etc. Use the abbreviation of the category for this action.
Meta-Rule 1: If more than one category is possible for a given error, select the category that appears earliest in the table.
Indicate the sub-classification of the error as either "serious" or "minor". Write out the sub-classification abbreviations immediately following the primary category. For example, to indicate a serious syntactic error write "SE - s" above the circled text.
Meta-Rule 2: If you are not sure which sub-classification to use, then choose "serious".
Look up the numeric value of the error. These are listed at the end of each definition and in the reference table.
Compute the normalized score. Sum up the individual numeric weights and divide by the number of words in the source language text. Use the Sheets provided for this procedure. If you do not have a sheet, contact the localization group.
Quality Control - Categories
Following you fill find the detailed definitions for each category.
Wrong Term - WT
This category can only be defined after the concept of "term" has been defined. A term is defined as:
a. Any single word.
b. A Multi-word phrase used as a single lexical constituent (i.e. part of speech).
c. An Abbreviation.
d. An Acronym.
e. A number or Numeral.
f. A proper name, including trade names, brand names registered trademarks, place names, and personal names.
Therefore, "computer" is a single word, "computer networking components" is a multi-word phrase, "Hz" is an abbreviation, "UPC" is an acronym, "3.14" is a numeral, "three" is a number and "Microsoft Development Corporation" is a name. All are terms, as are function words, such as prepositions, conjunctions, determiners and articles.
Given the definition of a term, we define a "wrong term" to be any target language term that:
a. Violates the terminology database of Interwoven, Inc.
b. Is in clear conflict with the de facto standard translation(s) of the source language term in the field of document content management.
c. Is inconsistent with other translations of the source language term in the same document or type of document, unless the context for the source language term justifies the use of a different target language term, for example due to ambiguity of the source language term.
d. Denotes a concept in the target language that is clearly and significantly different from the concept denoted by the source language term.
An example of (b) for the automotive domain would be "Parking Brake" translated as " Parkbremse " (aircraft term) in German rather than " Handbremse " (automotive domain).
Clause (c) is important because it captures the error of inconsistency, which is a very frequent error. An example of (c) in German would be a translation of "odometer" sometimes as " Odometer " or sometimes as " Kilometerzähler ".
An example of (d) would be "black interior" translated into Spanish as " interior blanco " (white interior).
Serious Weight is 5.
Minor Weight is 2.
Syntactic Error - SE
A syntactic error comprises the following cases:
a. A source term is assigned the wrong part of speech in its target language counterpart.
b. The target text contains an incorrect phrase structure, e.g. a relative clause when a verb phrase is needed.
c. The target language words are correct, but in the wrong linear order according to the syntactic rules of the target language.
To show an example of a clause (a) error, the English sentence "The throttle valve connects to the accelerator pedal" could be mistranslated into French as Le papillon de gaz connecte à la pédale d'accélérateur. In this example, the French verb connecter is transitive and should take a direct object, not a prepositional phrase complement.
A clause (a) error may or may not appear as an incorrect inflection on the target term, depending upon the language, but a part of speech error should be assigned to this category nonetheless.
A clause (c) error could occur, for example in Romance languages, if an adjective that was supposed to be follow its noun were instead placed in front of the noun and the placement was not driven by reasons of style or emphasis.
An example would be "This car was built in Germany" translated into German as Dieses Auto wurde gebaut in Deutschland.
Serious Weight is 4.
Minor Weight is 2.
Omission - OM
An error of omission has occurred if:
a. A continuous block of text in the source language has no counterpart in the target language text and, as a result, the semantics of the source text is absent in the translation.
b. A graphic which contains source language text has been deleted from the target language deliverable.
By "a continuous block of text" is meant everything from a term to a sentence to a paragraph or to any larger block of text. The corresponding missing text in the target language may or may not need to be continuous.
For example a verb in English may translate to a so-called separable verb in German (where the verb is supposed to appear first, followed later in the sentence by a preposition) and that preposition is then missing in the German. For example, the German ablesen is such a verb that is a translation of the English "to read off" (instruments), where the verb lesen would normally appear, then be followed by the direct object, and finally by the preposition ab.
In Spanish, it would be an omission to translate "Remove the wheelnuts and the wheel" as Desmonte la rueda (Remove the wheel).
Please note that the previous definition implies that even if a large section of text were absent from the target language text, that would only constitute one occurrence of this error, albeit a very serious one in its implications.
Part (b) of the definition implies that if the missing graphic does NOT contain any source language text, then there is no occurrence of an error in respect to this policy. This would still be, of course, an error and a problem that requires corrective action. However, the point is that this policy (at this time) is limited to linguistic errors, and does not therefore encompass all potential problems with a translation deliverable.
Important
Omission does not imply that the source and target language words must be in a 1:1 correspondence.
Serious Weight is 4.
Minor Weight is 2.
Word Structure or Agreement Error - SA
a. An error of incorrect word structure has occurred, if an otherwise correct target language word (or term) is expressed in an incorrect morphological form, e.g., case, gender, number, tense, prefix, suffix, infix, or any other inflection.
b. An error of agreement has occurred when two or more target language words disagree in any form of inflection as would be required by the grammatical rules of that language.
Note: Clause (a) implies that an article of the wrong gender/number/case would be tagged in this category and not as a Wrong Term Error.
An example of this could be the use of the wrong Dutch article De (rather then: het) gekozen voertuig wordt niet ondersteund.
An example of clause (a) would be the English "The vehicle selected is not supported" translated to Gewählte Fahrzeug wird nicht unterstützt in German.
An example of (b) would be the German Der Motor läuft translated into English as "The motors is running" or "The motor are running" rather than "The motor is running". In Spanish "fog lights" should be translated as luces antiniebla rather than luces antinieblas.
The intent of part (b) of this rule is to assure that even though more than one word may be wrong, there is only one occurrence of the error, rather than one for each word that has the incorrect inflection. This is to recognize that the error is a single error in the mind of the translator and that this error simply manifests itself in several words. However, if the same error occurs in a separate phrase elsewhere in the document, it will again count as a new occurrence of the error.
Serious Weight is 4.
Minor Weight is 2.
Misspelling - SP
A misspelling has occurred if the target language term:
a. Violates the spelling as stated in the glossary.
b. Violates the accepted norms for spelling in the target language.
c. Is written in an incorrect or inappropriate writing system for the target language.
Note: Clause (a) assumes that the glossary is correct.
An example in German of a misspelling could be in the compound Stromkreis Kraftstofffreigbae Bereich for "Fuel Enable Circuit range" where the characters b and a were reversed in Kraftstofffreigabe. The English "Screw on" could be misspelled in Portuguese as Atarrachar instead of Atarraxar. Clause (c) is intended to flag as an error words in target languages such as Japanese that use more than one writing system and the word in question was written in that (wrong) writing system. For example in Japanese if a foreign term, normally written in Katakana, were instead written in Hiragana, albeit with the correct syllabic symbols in Hiragana for that words pronunciation, it is still a misspelling.
Serious Weight is 3.
Minor Weight is 1.
Punctuation Error - PE
A punctuation error occurs, when the target language text contains an error according to the punctuation rules for that language.
For example, in German Am 2 Zylinder for "On the 2nd cylinder" there should be a period following the "2" to indicate an ordinal number. A serious punctuation error could involve a missing decimal point or comma according to the target language, e.g., "116" instead of "11.6" or "11,6".
In French, an error of this type would be Figure 3: instead of Figure 3 :
Serious Weight is 2.
Minor Weight is 1.
Miscellaneous Error - ME
Any linguistic error related to the target language text, which is not clearly attributable to the other categories should be classified as miscellaneous error.
This rule recognizes that not all errors fall neatly into the other six categories, and that some evaluators may proofread a translation and recognize it as clearly wrong, yet not be able to say precisely what it is that is wrong.
Caution
Do not use this category to tag style errors. Style errors are handled in the style guide for the respective language.
Examples of miscellaneous errors are:
A literal translation of an idiom, e.g., the English idiom "to push the envelope" meaning "to perform beyond existing boundaries".
A lexically correct, but culturally offensive honorific (as in Asian and African languages).
A superfluous or "extra" block of text that has no relevance in the source text.
A mistranslation, that reverses the meaning of the original.
Note: Generally, the process of translation is performed as part of the localization process, which makes a product culturally appropriate for the target audience, as well as linguistically correct. With this in mind, the translator may be perfectly justified in adding text to a translation to explain some cultural reference that may not be familiar to the target audience of the translation. Such additions should not be regarded as superfluous, and no error should be marked.
Serious Weight is 3.
Minor Weight is 1.
Remaining to come tomorrow...