The TranQuality Council accepts and applies the definition of translation used by the International Federation of Translators in its Position Paper on Translation, Localisation and Transcreation, published in January 2022, in which it clearly states that translation is an umbrella term that encompasses Conventional Translation, Localization and Transcreation.

What defines translation quality? What does it mean to have a good or bad translation? Disagreements about translation quality often arise because of the lack of an agreed on definition.

How does an end user (the “consumer” of a translation) know whether to trust that the target text they are reading corresponds to the source text?  They probably cannot read the source text, or else they would not need a translation. One answer is that every translation should have a label that gives some indication of how it was produced and whether a qualified professional has been involved, at least in the final stage before it reaches consumers. The 2023 edition of ASTM F2575 proposes two labels with acronyms BRT and UMT. The notion of labels is widely accepted, but not everyone is convinced that we have the best names for them and have clearly defined the boundary between them. Please see the GLO page for more information about the discussion regarding labels.

The most widely accepted definition of quality is found in the ISO 9000 series of standards. Although the complete documents must be purchased, some key definitions found in them are freely available. Please, download the Tranquality Guide to some key quality management (QM) terms as defined in ISO 9000, and as we have adapted them to the translation sector. A brief description is that quality is meeting appropriate stakeholder requirements, which are expressed as specifications. Please download a one-page list of translation parameters that allow the creation of structured specifications.

Quality is also known as fitness for purpose. Translation quality (TQ) is easier to discuss and measure when the purpose and other specifications are clearly stated. Multidimensional quality metrics (MQM) is a framework for measuring translation quality relative to a particular use case.

A translation use case includes at least the following elements:

• Type of source content
• Source and target languages (and geographic region, if relevant)
• Purpose of the translation
• Intended audience of the translation
• Delivery deadline

For further discussion on the definition of translation quality, we invite you to visit the Translation Quality Trilogy website (TTT).

After production, consumers, who often do not know which service level was requested, have the right to know whether correspondence between source and target has been professionally validated by a bilingual human, through a label.

At Tranquality, we aim to promote professional translation as a demanding and creative intellectual activity.