Video: The Future of Language Quality Management

As localization evolves, so does the challenge of quality assurance. So what’s new in language quality management, and what innovations are waiting around the corner?

In a recent Beyont webinar, leaders from three global corporations addressed this question while sharing their strategies for ensuring localization quality:

• Andrea Munoz, Senior Localization Quality Strategist, Slack
• Charlie Keating, Director of Localization, Pegasystems
• Edith Bendermacher, Head of Globalization Strategy and Localization Operations, NetApp

Drawing on this discussion, we can make some reasonable predictions about the future of language quality management. Let’s take a look at some trends to watch, based on key points from the webinar. 

1. Language quality review is becoming integrated organization-wide.

As localization becomes more automated, businesses such as NetApp are integrating their translation management systems with many other internal platforms and applications. As a result, translation and linguistic review are no longer siloed off from other activities. Instead, they are being built into processes across the organization. 

2. Review is taking place earlier than ever before.

When producing and distributing content, businesses often treat linguistic quality review as the very last stage of the process—typically coming just before launch, or even after launch. Now this is changing, with impacts on multiple units within the organization. 

In digital marketing, for instance, translation and review are taking place at an earlier stage. In turn, this changes the workflows and timelines for the marketing teams that create, prepare, and stage the content. Language quality assurance is thus becoming more deeply embedded with content production and is even altering the process itself.

3. Language specialists will become directly involved in content creation. 

For now, linguists still tend to have little contact with the creators of original content in English. This poses challenges for localization quality, as the content may not align with what local stakeholders want to communicate in their language or market. 

In the future, internal linguistic teams will seek to take a more active role in original content creation. By working with creators, language specialists will be able to influence content development from the outset, ensuring a closer fit with the needs of local-language audiences. More and more, localization may involve transcreation, not just translation.  

For example, marketers and copywriters with local language expertise may be involved in creative conversations at an early stage, so they can figure out how to express the company’s message for their markets. Such changes will make localization easier and improve the quality of the final product. 

Key Takeaways

Today, the boundaries between localization and other business activities are blurring. This also has implications for language quality review and management. 

With greater automation, localization and linguistic review will continue to be integrated into diverse systems within the enterprise, and they will influence content production and distribution at earlier stages than before. The next step may be direct collaboration between language specialists and content creators, aimed at improving communication across languages and markets.

In this changing environment, global companies will need to address language quality review earlier in the content lifecycle and build it into a wider range of processes. A comprehensive plan for language quality management, tailored to the organization’s unique workflows, will become even more vital to localization success. 

If you enjoyed this first panel discussion, we will be releasing our second panel discussion from May in the next few weeks!