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.

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

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

Within the Tranquality community, there is an active discussion of the notion of service levels. In an ideal world, all translation projects are conducted are a high service level; however, sometimes, an analysis reveals that the risk associated with a lower level of service is tolerable. For more information on service levels and consumer labels, follow this link. 

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.