Quality: A Continuous Journey

For those who see clearly the true fabric of business and industry in the future, the path ahead includes dogged pursuit of quality in every aspect of daily operation and final product. Quality is understood as “crucial” in today’s business world, and is pre-ordained as an “absolute” in tomorrow’s.

Shewhart, Deming, Taguchi, Juran, Six Sigma, LEAN, ISO-xxxx, and numerous other individuals, organizations, quality theories and standards have established increasingly higher benchmarks for business quality and performance. These quality theorists and disciplines are recognized guideposts for domestic and global business.

OmniLingua tracks, measures and continuously enhances the quality of our performance and product. Our processes, services and day-to-day operations sharply focus on the continual improvement of quality principles espoused by Dr. W. Edwards Deming.

Clearly, quality is not a simple destination – it is a continuous journey guided by a number of quality theories and processes. Achieving one quality benchmark is simply a stepping-stone to achieving the next.

OmniLingua has defined quality metrics for each process in our language management system. Our processes are statistically measured to ensure predictability and minimal variation among outputs.

Quality initiatives within the process consist of an accurate, complete and technically and culturally acceptable translation by a specialized, native speaking translator and a full edit of each translation by a second, independent, equally qualified linguist.

Proofreading by a professional proofreader proficient in the target language is conducted to review the text for mechanical correctness. Completeness checks at each step of the process verify accuracy. A final complete text validation ensures consistency throughout the document, and is the final quality review before delivery to our clients.

These are our standard quality processes, however OmniLingua language management professionals always welcome input from client teams concerning their preferred methods.

The journey along the OmniLingua quality continuum doesn’t end here. The next step -- OTIS·quality.

OTIS·quality – The Next Step

Taking language management to the next level of excellence, OmniLingua provides an additional process called OTIS·quality. OTIS·quality is one of the tools OmniLingua uses to help ensure continuous improvement over time.

OTIS·quality is one of six components of the OmniLingua Translation and Information System (OTIS), a fusion of technology, human expertise and quality service. OTIS·quality is a process in which statistical theory and translation and language management know-how interact successfully as cost-effective predictors of quality levels and areas for improvement of translation, composition and software localization.

The OTIS·quality process for a specific project is managed by a team including the client, OmniLingua and other professionals. The team develops a sampling plan and analyzes process outputs based on predetermined quality metrics such as terminology, spelling, truncated text, syntax, mistranslations and more. These are just a few examples of quality metrics we use. Your team may have other important factors it desires to track. The flexibility of our system enables us to easily accommodate tracking these factors for you.

In short, OTIS·quality:

• Measures and analyzes performance at every level of the translation process
• Eliminates subjectivity
• Quantitatively samples and evaluates
• Is completely customizable to individual OmniLingua client parameters

Effective quality management and improvement requires much more than recording data and giving it a cursory review. OTIS·quality provides the tools for the all-important next step – detailed evaluation of collected data.

Providing data for analysis in the form of control charts and detailed feedback for learning to team members is crucial. OmniLingua’s objective in sharing data in the form of control charts is to provide our clients who are entrenched in sophisticated quality initiatives, a view of quality that is familiar and easily understood.

OmniLingua has extensive experience in the creation and implementation of quality metrics. We are committed to continual improvement and know that it only comes by having intimate knowledge of the process as well as being able to predict its outcomes.

OmniLingua provides these services to numerous multi-national clients. We are recognized as an industry leader in statistical process control and in the adherence to quality metrics. Our documented quality system is in place and fully operational. Let us put it to work for you.