08/07/2024

As a DIN member, oneword has been actively contributing towards shaping new norms and standards in the translation industry since 2019. The German translation of ISO 11669, the updated standard for planning and commissioning translation projects, is nearing completion. Experts and future users now have the opportunity to comment on the German version in its draft form. We warmly invite you to do this.

The ISO 11669 standard has been around since 2012, but so far has received little attention in Germany. In 2020, the revision of the standard by the ISO committee for translation services began under the project management of Angelika Vaasa (European Commission) and Ingemar Strandvik (European Parliament). Our Head of Quality Management, Eva-Maria Tillmann, also contributed to this as one of the DIN representatives. The content of the standard has been significantly adapted and updated. New and important topics, such as machine translation and translation risks, have been added.

DIN ISO 11669 is an important tool for anyone who wants to identify, define or test their requirements for translations and for translation projects. It is also relevant for translation service providers. The standard provides them with many questions for advising customers and optimising their own process parameters. The standard is an important building block for a translation process that is standardised and well thought-out from the outset, starting with clear translation requirements from the client and ending in the highest translation quality. The updated version contains a lot of useful information on individual steps in the translation project, types of translation services, quality assurance, project communication and all the important issues regarding the use of non-post-edited machine translation. Above all, however, it enables users to develop structured specifications for their own translation projects. The standard serves as a guide for defining requirements, starting with the analysis of the basic requirements (text type, purpose, languages) and risk evaluation(with regard to translation errors and their impact) right through to the concrete definition of specifications based on multiple parameters. It also contains numerous appendices with checklists and questions to help you select a translation service provider, request a quote or decide whether terminology work would be useful.

The draft for the German-language version of ISO 11669 has already been published and can now be commented on by future users in the DIN draft standard portal until 21 August 2024. Experts who would like to help shape the German version can submit comments and suggestions for amending the translation of the standard section by section. Standards benefit from the input of different experts and everyone can get involved.

Registration and access to the online portal are free of charge. A post (only available in German) and the user guide (only available in German) provide a clear explanation of how commenting works.