Translating in accordance with ISO 17100 and
MTPE in accordance with ISO 18587

We believe the customer’s specific quality requirements take top priority, which is why we tailor our quality assurance workflow to your precise needs. Our multi-stage quality assurance process, based on the relevant ISO standards and supplemented by our own comprehensive measures, regularly exceeds our customers’ expectations – at no additional cost.

As a DIN member of the Standards Committee for Terminology and Translation Services, we are involved in setting industry standards and actively contribute to their development.

We work in accordance with the following standards:

• As a basis for translation services, we are certified to DIN EN ISO 17100:2015, formerly DIN EN 15038.
• We are certified to DIN ISO 18587:2017 for combining machine translation and post-editing, known as MTPE for short.
• In addition to ISO 17100, our quality management is based on DIN EN ISO 9001:2015.
• Our quality measurements are based on multidimensional quality metrics (MQM) and, for technical sectors, also on SAE J2450.

The quality of our translations is influenced by four factors:

As a family-run company, we are aware of our responsibility towards our customers, internal and external employees and partners every day. The well-being and trust of our fellow human beings is particularly close to our hearts: a high level of customer focus, long-term partnerships, lasting employee loyalty and work concepts, and respectful communication at all times are important values for us and contribute significantly to our quality at all service levels.

Our translation process, certified to ISO 17100, includes quality assurance and all the ISO 17100 specifications as a minimum requirement. The standard outlines that the translator must check their own work and a second translator, the reviser, must revise the translation as mandatory minimum requirements for high-quality translation. At the very least, your translation is checked for linguistic, terminological, stylistic and grammatical errors, including consistency and conformity with the source text. But for us, this ‘two-person principle’ is no less important to quality assurance and the verification process than the linguistic qualifications, professional experience and specialised knowledge of the translator and reviser. In this sense, quality assurance begins even before we start working on a translation project with you, because it starts with the careful selection and qualification of our native-speaker professional translators.

Here, we focus particularly on our translators having the following characteristics:

• Native speaker in the target language with expert knowledge of the target country and culture
• At least five years’ professional experience as a translator or a university degree in translation, in a specialist field or equivalent
• At least four years of subject area skills in a subject area
• Technical skills and familiarity with translation technology
• Additional qualifications for post-editing, revision, transcreation
• Signing of a comprehensive confidentiality agreement
• A passion for language and a high level of motivation, resulting in translation excellence in the interests of the end client

Each step of the value-added chain is founded on our ISO 17100-compliant quality management system. We also offer further optional quality assurance steps as well as processes in accordance with ISO 18587 for MTPE (machine translation + post-editing). Regular quality measurements and assessments ensure a consistently high level of quality.

The final check and verification is carried out by our in-house translators and linguists in project management, who scrutinise your content based on the specific project specifications (client instructions, style guides, terminological and linguistic requirements, other quality targets). In addition, further requirements are recorded using a professional query management process and an integrated feedback process.

Our quality assurance measures at a glance:

At oneword, quality assurance is not complete even once the text has been revised and further assurance stages have taken place. We have always aimed to deliver the best translation quality, and so additional quality assurance measures in accordance with and beyond the requirements of ISO 17100 are also part of our standard workflow in project management when translating in accordance with ISO 17100.

Goal-oriented and early communication: A chain of process steps prevents errors so that they do not have to be fixed again later on. That is why we work with translators, the client’s reviewers and editors, and other people involved in the process right at the beginning to optimise the definition of the requirements, expectations and the general framework. In addition, we are in constant contact with our customers and always have a solution ready, which prevents delays and optimises process steps and therefore also ensures high quality levels.

Project analysis: Every project is first analysed by our experts to make sure that any difficulties are identified before work begins and to give the client a reliable idea of the time required as well as costs and a deadline. In detail, the analysis consists of recording the client’s project specifications, checking the materials and formats provided, checking the source text, scope and desired deadline. For projects with machine pre-translation, the project is also checked for feasibility and suitability. Detailed project plans and documentation ensure general traceability and transparency.

Flexibility for customer requirements: Even though our processes are standardised, we will, of course, tailor our quality assurance to your individual requirements. We can design different translation processes and quality assurance steps for individual departments, document types or temporary requirements. This also includes coordinating additional data protection regulations that your company specifies when working with external partners.

A solid team that thinks the way you do: Contrary to the trend of working with a division of labour and flexible staff organisation, we use holistic, highly qualified project management teams with permanent contact persons, a permanent back-up contact and permanent translation teams for our clients. We value employees who are proactive and are highly trained in all areas of project management, client communication and the technologies used. These unshakeable commitments help us to prevent errors from the outset and ultimately deliver an excellent product.