Translation projects must be micromanaged carefully, in order to ensure good results.
A good translation PM quality plan should:
In order to maintain high standards, best practices demand strict quality assurance both before and during the translation process.
- Define the scope of the translation project.
- Provide examples of previous translations that meet quality expectations (as well as common mistakes to avoid).
- Provide all necessary information about the product, including brand guidelines.
- Define target audience and text type.
- Create a glossary, if necessary.
- Include the customer’s style guide.
- Include translator and reviewer checklists.
- Communicate regularly with the linguist and make sure that all issues have a plan for correction.
- Deliver a “Verifika report” to customers with the deliverables, if necessary.
- For product lines, no team member should be replaced without permission from the customer.
- For large translation projects, special kickoff steps should be taken to ensure consistency and unity of output.
- Final checks can be either automated or non-automated.
Most localization testing is manual as text needs to be read, layout needs to be checked and localization needs to be verified, all of which require a human to manually do it.
However, there are still cases in which automation can be used; for example:
Automated checks:
Web localization testing
Forms can be submitted using automation and links can be verified.
Software localization testing
Functional validation can be performed via automation.
Also, for cases where advanced software knowledge is necessary for testing, taking screenshots for review by localization testers may be a more efficient approach.
Although automation testing solutions may not be feasible for all software localization projects, for some big software localization projects and website translation services that have high-volume recurring testing requests, automation testing may be a good solution for long-term cost-saving considerations. This method is typically used in projects which have lots of legacy features and functions and where there are high volumes of screen capturing workload for each release. Automation testing is commonly used for the screen shooting, UI testing, and functional testing, which can all be adapted to both web testing and normal software testing.