Unfortunately, The Arabic translation market lacks solid practices in terms of Quality Assurance (QA). In this brief post, we will illustrate House of Content’s English to Arabic QA guidelines followed by our in-house QA officers.

QA Checklist

When performing QA, are required to follow the following checklist.

1. Quick look: Go through the text, and make sure it is of acceptable quality. If it is not, i.e. if it sounds like machine translation or if it is of a quality that is too bad to be edited and submitted to customer, please let your line supervisor know ASAP.
2. English vs Arabic 1: Go through the original and translated texts, and make sure the translator was faithful to the original, and that all ideas are conveyed correctly.
3. English vs Arabic 2: Another run focusing on:
   1. Numbers
   2. Dates
   3. Units
   4. Missing phrases/sentences/paragraphs if any
   5. Titles and headings
4. Arabic 1: Go through the translated text, and make sure it is at the best quality for the target language. Focus on:
   1. Syntax
   2. Typos

Style and terminology

5. If you are provided with a glossary and style guidelines, please make sure to follow them strictly.
6. Arabic 2: Beautifying the text: As time permits and as deemed necessary by the editor.
7. Final look: To make sure:
   1. The flow is nice, and that it sounds Arabic not translated.
   2. File formatting is good, and mirroring the original formatting.

Special QA concerns when editing the work from multiple translators:

1. Consistency of terminology.
2. Consistency of style.
3. Consistency of formatting.

Continuous improvement

QA Officers have a vital role to play in continuous improvement, via:

• Feedback: To be discussed with the Head of QA/Head Linguist Trainer before sharing with the translator.
• Training: Suggest translator training when necessary.
• Team awareness: Inform the PM team of any issues you face with any task.