At Lingwella, we got used to doing our job well, and we simply cannot do it otherwise. We always exert every effort to ensure that the end result meets all client’s requirements and expectations. This is why we do not offer to choose between several quality categories, such as “low-budget”, “standard” or “expert”, like some other translation companies do.
We have only one “expert” standard by which we mean a professional translation that performs its function — to comply as closely as possible to the original document’s meaning, style and visual appearance with focus on effective cross-cultural adaptation.
Our quality policy is based on the international standard ISO 9001:2015 “Quality Management Systems – Requirements”. This standard focuses on meeting customer requirements and expectations, ensuring high professional competence of human resources, involvement of a company’s top management into the workflow, risk-based thinking and “Plan-Do-Check-Act” process approach, and continuous improvement of the products manufactured or services rendered. Our commitment to this standard shows that we take quality assurance seriously.
Our employees follow the latest edition of the “Recommendations to Translators, Customers and Editors”, developed and approved by the Union of Translators of Russia. This document investigates the principles of cooperation between a customer and a translator, makes suggestions on how to evaluate volume, turnaround time and cost of translation, sets procedures for dispute settlement, establishes requirements to the translated text and provides recommendations for editing and quality improvement actions.
The quality of translation has always been and will always be our top priority. We prefer to translate one project well rather than two projects poorly.
No matter the size or complexity, for each translation project we take a number of steps to ensure that our quality standards are consistently maintained:
1. We employ only professional and trusted translators.
Our greatest asset in ensuring the best quality of our translations is our in-house staff — a team of highly qualified linguists with extensive practical experience, loving their work, responsible and conscientious.
Each translator and editor of Lingwella’s team holds an equivalent of a Master’s degree in linguistics or foreign languages from a reputable university, has at least 5 years of experience in translation and has been tested repeatedly for professional competence and reliability.
All remote translators we cooperate with are required to undergo a mandatory testing procedure which involves trial translations in their language pairs and specific areas of expertise. Most of our freelance colleagues are comfortable with translation memory software and have other specialist skills. With some of our freelance translators we’ve been collaborating on an ongoing basis for over 6 years by now, and we know for sure that they will not fail or disappoint us.
2. Our project managers are experts in translation industry.
For each translation project we assign a manager who is in charge of all process steps from the moment of receiving a new order till the date of delivery of the ready work to the customer. A project manager resolves all organizational and disputable issues and bears personal responsibility for compliance with deadlines and meeting a client’s individual requirements. He draws up a work schedule, selects appropriate specialists and creates a work group consisting of translators, an editor, a proofreader and a layout designer (if professional page layout is required). After that the manager distributes the work in parts between the selected translators according to the set schedule.
Carefully thought-out distribution of translation projects between professionals, who are well familiar with a certain branch of knowledge, science or technology, allows us to guarantee the highest quality of translation of various types of texts and documents without charging extra fees “for complexity” or for the so-called “specialized translation”.
3. All translations are carefully revised and proofread by in-house editors.
As the project manager receives new parts of translation, he forwards them to an in-house editor, who thoroughly revises and edits all translation parts, controls the uniformity of style and terminology, draws translators’ attention to possible or apparent errors and discrepancies. After the translation is edited, the project manager forwards it to a proofreader for a second revision. The proofreader corrects all grammar and punctuation mistakes, eliminates misspells and odd gaps, etc.
If a source document has a complex layout that needs to be fully preserved in translation, the project manager forwards the edited parts of translation to an in-house layout designer, whose task will be to bring the translated document’s appearance into full compliance with the original document layout.
To sum up, before a ready translation is delivered to the customer, every project undergoes a multiple-stage quality control that includes mandatory revision and proofreading by our in-house editors, and the translated pages are formatted to preserve the original document appearance.
4. We use CAT tools and other specialized software.
We keep up with the times and actively implement state-of-the-art mechanisms of automation of translation processes, including the so-called CAT tools based on the advanced Translation Memory technology.
All large-scale projects (first of all, in technical translation) are carried out with the use of specialized translation memory software. We prefer to work in SDL Trados Studio, which allows us to speed up the translation processes, ensure maximum consistency in style and terminology, manage term bases and store previously translated texts for future use.
When we deal with high-volume texts with a large number of repetitions, 100% matches and fuzzy matches, we provide discounts from 30% to 75% off the regular rate.
Besides, we use electronic dictionaries, special programs for analysis of text statistics of various file types, optical character recognition software, graphic editors and page layout software, as well as a cloud-based project management system.
At the same time, we never use machine translation software. At Lingwella, all translations are made by living humans.
5. We are constantly working on improvement of quality and service.
We strive to become number one in our market niche. We analyze the needs of our customers, pay due consideration to their comments and suggestions, and relentlessly work on increasing the quality of our translations and improving the level of customer service.
Each client is equally valuable for us, regardless of his average check or location. What’s really important for us is to make a positive impression on a client and to do our work in such a way that you would be willing to apply to us again.
In case of reasonable claims to translation quality, we are always ready to consider a client’s remarks or complaints and take immediate actions to correct mistakes.
Our company provides a lifetime guarantee on all translations we ever did. This means that if a translation does not meet a client’s expectations, he can reach out to us at any time with a requirement to eliminate revealed defects, and we will do this promptly and free of charge.