MINISTRY OF JUSTICE
OF THE REPUBLIC OF ARMENIA
TRANSLATION
CENTRE
STATE NON-COMMERCIAL ORGANISATION
Quality Assurance Mechanisms
At the Translation Centre, translation tasks are organised on the basis of the AST EN:15038 standard - Translation Services-Requirements for Translation Services (the standard was put in action in Armenia in 2008 within the scope of the activities for establishment of the Translation Centre). The mentioned standard lays down 95 individual requirements that should be implemented by those providing translation services. Those requirements refer to general management of the translation process, human and technical resources included therein, quality assurance mechanisms, management of translation projects, as well as the contractual sphere and the procedures for service provision.
In particular, in accordance with the requirements set by the standard, a specialised staff of the Translation Centre works with the widely and internationally used SDL Trados software, which is a translation memory and terminology database that stores all translation units and used terms, providing the opportunity to ensure consistent usage of terms and maximally guarantee uniformity of translations, while raising the level of effectiveness of the translation process and, in case of identical orders, ruling out double spending of resources.
The translation process is composed of the following phases:
-initial technical processing of a text (conversion of paper versions into electronic format, *PDF and *JPEG files into *DOCX format, conversion of fonts, and in case of diagrams — preparation for their translation, etc.);
-pre-translation research (familiarisation with the professional literature related to the given sphere, harmonisation of terms and concepts, research on national and supranational concepts);
-translation;
-bilingual revision of the translation by identifiers, administrative and, if necessary, field specialists;
-linguistic editing and proofreading by native speakers;
-verification with quality assurance tools;
-ensuring of final formatting of the translated material (receipt of the bilingual working version of the translation memory in one language, adjustment of the translation with the format of the original, adjustment/importation of tables and diagrams, etc.).
To raise the level of effectiveness of the work, the Translation Centre has developed an automated system for management of translation orders and assurance of traceability, providing the opportunity to effectively manage and monitor the translation process and store all translations; receive various kinds of statistical reports with regard to document form and language pair of a translation, translated pages, performance, etc.; monitor the workload, deadlines and specialisation of every employee for optimal management of works. The system also serves as an archive and provides the opportunity to identify identical orders (identical orders submitted by different government agencies in different periods of time), ruling out repetition of work and ensuring effective use of resources.
This multifaceted approach, laid down by the AST EN 15038 standard, is of utmost importance in the translation process from the perspective of translation quality assurance, as the Translation Centre translates legal acts regulating all spheres, technical standards and regulations, judicial cases and hard, narrow specialized texts (starting from road construction norms up to forensic medical examinations), which must be reviewed in detail in order to correct the possible omissions, mistakes and misprints, reduce the factor of human error to a minimum, ensure uniformity of the translations and guarantee accurate translation of professional terms and legal concepts, as well as translate voluminous texts within a short period of time.