Poor translations = bad user experience, brand erosion, costly/embarrassing mistakes, and potential legal issues.
This is why linguistic quality assurance (LQA) is so important. It’s a system of processes that ensures your translated content is error-free. But what does an LQA process look like and how do you create one? What tools can you use to facilitate this process?
Before we continue, let’s explain what LQA is and why it matters.
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Linguistic quality assurance (LQA) is the process of evaluating the linguistic accuracy and quality of translated content. It involves checking:
The stakes for mistranslations can be high when you’re entering a new market. Mercedes-Benz’s launch campaign in China is a great case study for this.
When the company decided to enter the Chinese market in 2009, they settled on “奔死” which reads as “bensi” — a term that phonetically sounds like “Benz.” However, the characters roughly translate to “rush to die.” Mercedes was unknowingly telling its customers to pass away.
Mercedes could’ve avoided the embarrassment of mistranslating its name with some simple due diligence, which is where LQA comes in.
⚡Build your localization quality assurance program
Find experts’ take and hands-on advice on setting up your LQA program from the ground up.
For people working in localization, it’s obvious why translation quality matters. It’s the key that unlocks great multilingual customer experience.
The problem? Most internal stakeholders don’t view it this way.
The key to getting people to care is refocusing our attention on the primary objective of a linguistic quality program: providing a great customer experience for end users around the globe.
Nataly Kelly, VP of Localization at HubSpot has a great way of reframing how we talk about translation quality:
Instead of saying: Machine translation alone won’t work for this scenario, because translation quality will suffer. We should say: Machine translation alone won’t work for this scenario, or customer experience will suffer.
Deprioritizing translation quality = deprioritizing customer experience. That’s how you should frame it when talking to your colleagues in customer support, product, marketing, and sales.
Broadly speaking, a translation error is any lack of consistency between the source and target text. We divide errors into objective or subjective mistakes. Here are some examples of both:
| Subjective errors | Objective errors |
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Now, the bigger question is: How do you categorize these types of errors when localizing content?
Here, we can take a page out of Slack's localization playbook. It follows three bug categories for translation errors:
Defining the categories for translation errors and educating stakeholders is important so that when errors occur, the right person can escalate the issue appropriately.
Once you’ve made a commitment to creating a great multilingual customer experience and have clearly categorized translation errors, build the processes for error handling, translation review, and continuous improvement.
Let’s look at the three core components of LQA essential for a flawless launch in a new language/market.
Your LQA process should focus on setting quality expectations and tracking user reactions to make sure the translated content creates a real impact.
Keep these things in mind when building your LQA process:
Translation quality is often subjective. A translated text may sound fine to one person but unnatural to another. Remove subjectivity in the translation process by creating a well-defined style guide. This will lead to consistent terminology use and maintain your brand voice across translated works.
When launching in a new language, do a kickoff overview for cross-functional teams on what they need to know about the market.
Addressing a lot of potential challenge points (e.g., date and time formatting, or plurals and possessives) and sharing some initial knowledge of the language will make it easier to address them as work begins.
LQA scores are calculated based on the number of mistakes made in a translation, as judged by a linguist.
User research using surveys and focus groups is the most effective method of improving your translation quality. Work with your UX team to include the multilingual customer experience in their research.
Once your company has the right processes in place, you need the right people to continually refine them and make improvements. Team structure varies wildly from company to company, but the localization process typically involves four primary groups of stakeholders.
Here’s how each of them can impact quality:
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You don’t need all these stakeholders to create an efficient translation process. Learn more about what you need for strategically building a localization team.
Usually, translation workflows are managed using a patched-together, siloed system that relies heavily on good old spreadsheets.
Mario Pluzny, currently the Localization Program Manager at Twitter, shares the biggest challenge around ensuring quality without the right tools and processes:
The quality of global content cannot be assured without everyone looking at the same source. I think that versioning is one of the biggest challenges we face in localization. Even once things are in translation, the English source will often still change. The use of a translation management system (TMS) will allow you to make changes more easily.
Here’s what a typical quality review workflow looks like when using a TMS like Lokalise, a localization platform designed to track and manage your entire translation pipeline in one place:
Optimize this workflow by building a layer of automation on top. Build automations in Lokalise to make your localization workflows seamless. What’s more, Lokalise also offers automated spelling and grammar checks for over 20 languages.
Now that you have your processes, team, and tools in place, it’s time to put it all together. Here’s a tried-and-tested LQA process to maintain high quality standards for your translations.
The pre-translation phase is key to successfully launching in a new market and overcoming potential challenges.
Outline the scope of the localization project. Who is the target audience and what are the languages involved? Are there any specific guidelines or standards that need to be followed? Be sure to outline the timeline and deliverables of the project.
Next, identify the stakeholders who will make up your localization team. These roles include:
Make sure that each member understands their responsibilities and how they will contribute to the success of the project.
The last thing you want is to leave your translators to their own devices.
Provide translators with comprehensive reference materials, such as style guides, glossaries, and other documentation to help them maintain consistency across localization projects. Be sure to identify localization challenges (e.g., using industry-specific terms) and provide guidelines on addressing them.
With Lokalise, you can easily create and share a style guide with your team.
Translators can access the style guide and track the progress of their work.
Next comes the translation phase.
Look for translators who are fluent in the target language and have a strong understanding of the subject matter. They should be able to provide insights into the linguistic and cultural relevance of the translated content.
Establish a “quality pillar.” This team will be in charge of maintaining quality standards at scale. Develop a scoreboard for each language so that all quality evaluations take place objectively, with clearly defined rules instead of opinions.
For new languages, this pillar will run linguistic quality assurance (LQA) processes, intaking errors and feedback from internal stakeholders, partners, and beta testers.
Localization projects are coordinated efforts. Without the right tools, project managers and translators can easily lose track of their work.
A TMS like Lokalise can help streamline the localization process, keep your team aligned, and improve visibility across your projects. It even features built-in AI translation and machine translation capabilities. Simply provide context and get natural-sounding translations in just a few clicks.
🔍Find the right TMS for your needs
Check out our top five recommendations for the best translation management systems to choose one that best aligns your localization needs.
The review and editing phase is a critical step for preventing translation mistakes.
While machine translations can help you lower localization costs and translate content at scale, the human element is a key component of LQA. Machine translation post-editing (MTPE) combines the efficiency of machine translations with the linguistic expertise that human editors offer.
Linguistic experts should review grammar, syntax, and style. They should also review the cultural relevance of any localized content. In some cases, you may need to call in other experts (e.g., a medical expert to review medical content).
Of course, human reviewers can still make mistakes. With AI LQA, you can perform an LQA check on your translations and it will automatically identify linguistic issues. The tool even provides AI suggestions.
Consider bringing on actual users to do a “test run” of your content. Collect their feedback and make any necessary revisions to correct errors or inconsistencies. Make sure to update your style guides and other reference materials.
Functional testing involves ensuring that translated content works in the intended context.
Translating text to another language can “break” existing designs. For example, “Buy now” translates to “Comprar ahora” in Spanish. While the English version can fit inside a button, the Spanish version may not.
When localizing content, make sure to perform functionality tests. This includes checking that hyperlinks and user interface elements function properly.
If translations are too long, you can use Lokalise's AI suite to create shorter versions. This helps you quickly generate translations that display properly across different platforms and devices.
Before you publish the translations, there are a few things left to do.
After you conduct an LQA check and implement revisions, you’ll perform a final review and double check that all issues were addressed.
With a TMS like Lokalise, you can collaborate with your team and keep discussions in one thread. You can also add comments to individual translations.
Once everything looks good, you can prepare the localization for release and deliver the final product.
Even after performing a final review, your job isn’t done yet.
Translation mistakes can still fall through the cracks. Get feedback from your users to identify any issues and address them promptly. You’ll also want to collect usage data, so your team can quickly rectify any functionality issues that may impact the user experience.
Remember that LQA is a constant work in progress. How effective was the LQA process? What steps can you improve and make more efficient? Get feedback from the rest of your team and document any lessons learned.
Here’s our advice on building a business case for your LQA program to secure stakeholder buy-in and a suitable budget.
📊The LQA ROI formula
ROI = (Value created by LQA - Cost of LQA program) / Cost of LQA program × 100
Keep this formula in mind to document the right data for calculating your localization quality ROI.
Document everything you're spending on quality assurance. This could include:
Direct LQA costs
Indirect LQA costs
Your LQA program creates value in two ways: by saving costs and improving revenue. Estimate the value of your LQA setup by tracking metrics under these two buckets.
For instance, localization quality assurance can save money spent on:
At the same time, your LQA program can also improve your bottom line by:
While most of these metrics might not have a direct value you can track, work with estimations to calculate the ROI.
Now combine your costs and value metrics into a compelling business case. Here’s an example to see this calculation in action.
Monthly LQA costs: $7,500 (Annual: $90,000)
Value created: $262,900/year
Annual LQA ROI = ($262,900 - $90,000) / $90,000 × 100 = 192% ROI
That means, for every dollar spent on LQA, you earn $2.92 back in value.
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Not sure how to calculate the value of your localization efforts to prove its ROI?
Catch this insightful webinar featuring Alex Terehov (Senior Product Manager at Lokalise) and Kevin O'Donnell (CEO of Global10x) to position localization as a revenue driver.
Performing LQA checks on your translated content isn’t always an easy process. Follow these best practices to set yourself up for success.
Identify the key stakeholders, including project managers, marketing teams, and product owners. Maintain regular communication throughout the LQA process. Set clear objectives and define the scope of the project to keep everyone on the same page.
Localization projects have a lot of moving parts, making it difficult to keep track of everything.
With Lokalise, you can manage your translations, track progress, and share feedback in real-time from one place. These features enable efficient collaboration throughout the localization process.
As your team grows, you can add and manage users and assign different roles.
Define quality metrics to maintain uniform quality across your localization projects. Examples include:
Create a scoring system to quantify different aspects of the localization quality. Standardize the review process and provide training to ensure reviewers consistently follow the system.
Your time can be better spent elsewhere instead of performing the same tasks. With automations in Lokalise, you can automate your workflows and reduce turnaround times. This means linguists can focus on the more complex and nuanced aspects of localizing content.
Foster a culture that prioritizes quality at each step of the localization process. Encourage your team to take ownership of quality and provide regular training to enhance their skills. Be sure to also recognize and reward those who contribute to maintaining high linguistic quality.
Ultimately, language quality shouldn’t be treated as another checkbox to complete at the end of a project. More than a review step for translations, you need a “quality mindset” (and the right tools) that include language as a key component of the end-product experience.
Here’s how Lokalise can help.
With Lokalise, you can apply translation memory — a database of approved translations for common sentence pairs — and pre-translate target languages that meet certain thresholds (e.g., 95% match).
Using translation memory eliminates the need to translate the same phrases.
The stakes are high when localizing for a global market. Poor localizations can damage your brand reputation and affect the user experience.
Lokalise includes a host of QA checks that automatically check for things like:
And more.
You can also use AI LQA to automatically identify linguistic issues and have it generate a detailed report with detected errors and their severity levels.
Finally, Lokalise provides automation tools that save your team valuable time and keep your localization projects moving in the right direction. For example, you can set a rule that translates assets in Figma using machine translation without leaving the design tool. This is just one example of how you can use automation in Lokalise to speed up your workflows.
Expanding into new markets can help your company reach more customers and unlock revenue opportunities. But as we’ve seen with Mercedes, any mishaps in the localization process can reflect poorly on your company. The right processes combined with tools like Lokalise can help you create an LQA process that delivers accurate and culturally appropriate content.
Start a free 14-day trial of Lokalise or check out our interactive product tour.
Author
Valentyna is a Product Manager at Lokalise. She has 15 years of experience in the language service industry as a translator, project manager, quality expert, LSP owner, and localization tool product person. Her interests include podcasting, productivity, and strength training.
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