S03E15: Standards and Certification for Language Service Provider Companies

Leigh Turgut

Thanks, thanks for having me. I’ve been well, thanks for having me back. It’s good to see you. I’ve been well, how are you?

 

Sultan Ghaznawi

I’m very well, can’t complain, thank you so much. Well last time we had this interview it went very well, I mean it was eye-opening in terms of quality and everything we talked about. But let’s actually reset things because there might be a lot of new people listening to this podcast for the first time. Why don’t you just give them a brief introduction about yourself and what you do?

 

Leigh Turgut

Sure, so I’m Leigh Turgut, I’m the director of quality and compliance at a company called CQ Fluency. If you’ve not heard of us we’re a mid-sized translation or language service provider but we specialize in language services mostly for healthcare, healthcare insurance and life sciences. So I’ve been in the localization industry full-time about 11 years I would say. I started off as a freelancer, a freelance translator, that’s how I got my feet wet and then I moved into translation full-time. And yeah it just sort of organically took off from there, I moved into quality and quality control and now quality assurance management. But as the director of quality and compliance I guess what that means is I oversee the company’s quality management system or what we call QMS. So I make sure the company stays certified to all of our standards, that’s the quality part. The compliance part is that I also make sure that we meet all of our regulatory requirements and stuff like HIPAA for the healthcare industry, GDPR for Europe and take care of data security and privacy requirements. So that’s it in a nutshell.

 

Sultan Ghaznawi

You do quite a few things and I think each one of those areas of expertise requires its own podcast interview so looking forward to having you discuss more about things like GDPR and so forth. But what in particular keeps you busy these days Leigh, what are you working on?

 

 

Leigh Turgut

Well it’s kind of an exciting time, we’ve experienced some rapid growth at CQ Fluency so my job is just to make sure that the QMS can scale up with the company at the same time. So I’m just making sure you know all of our processes are documented, all the new people are getting trained and focusing on continual improvement and stuff like that. So just helping the company grow basically.

 

 

Sultan Ghaznawi

Well it’s been quite a while since we last spoke but the topic of pandemic always comes up and since 2020 there has been a new normal if you will. How is everything going with your organization and with you personally in terms of your role, do you still see people working conservatively in terms of being in the office? How are things there just to get an idea?

 

Leigh Turgut

I think that well for me personally I was a remote worker pre-pandemic so I’m based in Texas and my company headquarters are in New Jersey. But yes the company has been conservative in terms of the return to work so they implemented like a hybrid part-time schedule so that not all of the employees are in the office at the same time so they come in on key days if they need to meet or stagger the times and days that people are in the office.

 

Sultan Ghaznawi

Today I have invited you Leigh to speak about standards, a topic that people talk about more than they explain it and how LSPs get certified and so forth. In conferences we hear about this a lot. Since this is an area of your expertise I would like you to cover everything for example what it means for a language company to be certified. Let’s take a high level bird’s eye view of this specific topic. In terms of your perspective of the industry when it comes to standards and best practices please share your thoughts.

 

 

Leigh Turgut

It’s rare, it’s true, it’s rare to get the opportunity to talk about standards. I don’t know if it’s like a super you know engaging or you know passionate topic that people have but you know I say that with a bit of a sarcasm. But what it means if your LSP is certified to a standard it means that you have a framework in place to ensure that your product or your service is going to be consistent and the quality of your output is going to be consistent that’s what it’s for. I can start sort of with the basics. There are just many, many organizations in the world that develop and write these standards, what we call standards. They’re technical or non-technical and they all have the really important goal of creating uniformity within the industry and across industries and best practices like you said. So it’s to give us a baseline for services or product specifications, protocols and things like that. So that’s what they do now. I guess more importantly they came about because around after World War II they came about for a need for safety in manufacturing on the factory floor like you know people getting injured or you know in the factories and things like that. So there was a marked need for safety in manufacturing so that’s how they came up with the initial standards to I guess prevent people from blowing themselves up, equipment misuse and stuff like that.

 

The most well-known standards body is ISO so I’ll talk about their standards since that’s what I’m most familiar with. But others that you may have heard of are ASTM is one, so that’s the American Society for Testing and Materials. There’s ANSI which is the American National Standards Institute and another one that’s pretty common is the CEN so that’s the European Committee for Standardization. You might see these acronyms on products so UL is one that you’ll see on products sometimes. Some standards bodies are regional, some are global, some are industry specific like for engineering or boating or agriculture they have something for everything.

 

So back to ISO that’s the International Organization for Standardization. So you’re probably thinking if the acronym is you know it shouldn’t probably be like IOS if it’s yeah International Organization for Standardization. So I don’t know if maybe Apple would have a problem with that but it’s actually not, it’s not an acronym so it’s derived from the Greek word isos which means equal and the reason that that’s important is because no matter what country you’re in it’s going to be referred to as ISO. They’re not going to you know translate it and have a different acronym and I guess that’s really key because the goal of the organization is really to be global and sort of like transcend borders. So the ISO name and logo are trademarks. They’re actually there’s only there’s over 24,000 ISO standards. It’s kind of overwhelming but the ones I’m well versed in or familiar with are the standards that relate to language services so I can talk a bit about those today.

 

Sultan Ghaznawi

We have talked about quality in the past and this is an area of expertise for you. You manage quality in your day to day job. What does the standards do for an organization, Leigh? What can an LSP expect or just a generic company building standards into their practice? What can they expect? What does it do for them?

 

Leigh Turgut

I think that a standard, if you’re certified to a standard it signals to your customers that they can have confidence in your service or your product because you have this framework in place and this framework has a goal of customer focus having a continuous cycle of self-evaluation, plans for corrective action improvement of your operations and things like that. One thing to note is that all the ISO standards can kind of work together. They’re all similarly structured and they have some overlap. So if you already have one ISO standard on your belt, say 9001, you’ll find it easier to acquire another one due to the sort of like harmonized structure that they have. For me personally, as a quality rep for my company, having an ISO cert saves me time when customers want to come and audit us or they want to inquire about our service capabilities, oftentimes they’ll forego like a long audit or a questionnaire if we can just present the certificate because that gives them a certain level of assurance that we have things in place that they’re looking for and it helps us gain new customers as well in an RFP situation. So yeah just being able to show that we have these credentials in place.

 

Sultan Ghaznawi

Is there a marketing angle to this as well?

 

Leigh Turgut

I think it can help. I mean it’s something that we display on our website and most companies who are certified will put the logo on their website as well. So and it’s something that I think some customers do look for.

 

Sultan Ghaznawi

There are many standard organizations you mentioned earlier such as ISO there’s the ASTM and you know there are ones for that that deal with the specific manufacturing standards and so forth. Give us some highlights in terms of what do each of these standard bodies do and what the role is. Do they focus on specific practices within specific industries or there are standards that could be applied across the board?

 

 

Leigh Turgut

So ISO offers standards for every single industry out there. You mentioned ASTM before. That’s another standards organization that has standards that we use. I think they’re non-profit but you can’t actually become certified to ASTM. You can incorporate ASTM into your methodologies, you can reference it, you can be compliant but you can’t become certified. So I’d say that’s one of the main differences between ASTM and ISO.

 

Sultan Ghaznawi

Let’s talk about accrediting organizations as well as audit firms because one checks what you do and the other one issues a certificate. Can you give some detailed differences in terms of what do they do, who they are and how do they apply to language industry?

 

 

Leigh Turgut

Yeah you said it, ISO doesn’t certify you, they can’t. I don’t know if that would be like a conflict of interest or something but they only write the standard, they develop it. It’s a group of representatives from you know hundreds of member countries who contribute to writing these standards to make them international. But in order to get certified you have to go through a registrar or an accrediting organization there are tons of these like literally hundreds. Some of the best known ones in our industry I would say are BSI, the British Standards Institute, TÜV-SUED out of Germany, Bureau Veritas from France and there’s probably more that I’m forgetting. But your selection of registrar will really vary depending on what industry you’re in, what standard you need to certify to because they don’t all offer the same certifications. It’s going to depend on your location as well. These organizations can help you prepare for certification and then audit you to become certified and then maintain it.

 

So to maintain certification you have to be audited every year. There’s two types of audits to maintain certification, there’s surveillance audits and recertification audits. Generally a surveillance audit is less involved, it maybe doesn’t look at every single department or process or vertical, it just sort of you know does a sample and then a recertification audit is more comprehensive. And yes so for ISO 9001 the recertification audits every two years. If you get a finding or findings it doesn’t mean that you automatically will have your cert revoked, it just means that you have to show improvement or corrective action the following year, you have to fix it basically. You can lose your certification if a registrar concludes that your QMS is consistently failing to meet the requirements or if you just stop meeting the requirements, you stop getting audited, you can lose your cert.

 

Sultan Ghaznawi

Going back to basics, Leigh, and there are several types of standards as you just mentioned. I would like you to elaborate if possible about each one and what it means for the fact in terms of relevance for our industry in practice like we’ve got translation, services that we offer interpreting, transcription and machine translation, all kinds of stuff related to languages. Which ones are the prominent ones that you would like to see people certified for?

 

Leigh Turgut

Yeah you hit on a couple of those main ones for our industry. So I think the one that everyone has heard of or is one of the most prominent ones which is actually not industry specific is this ISO 9001. So it’s industry agnostic, it’s just a general quality management standard. So regardless of what your company does you can apply this framework to your operations. It was initially made for manufacturing like I mentioned earlier. So I have a mentor who says that the single biggest missed opportunity for 9001 was calling it a quality standard instead of a business standard. Because it’s not really as much about quality as it is about general business operations like just how to run a business. So it just ensures management involvement from the top down, you keep a focus on your customers, you make sure you respond to customer complaints and resolve their issues and then you’re just sort of looking at your process efficiencies and how you can improve. So it’s just a really good blueprint for running a business. So that’s 9001.

 

But in terms of the ones for our industry specifically, so the most prominent one would be ISO 17100. That’s the main standard for the translation industry. So it defines specifically qualifications for translators, editors, reviewers, even project managers and it defines the minimum standards for workflows. So something to note, that one specifically for translation and not interpretation. There is an interpretation one though, so it’s 18841. So this is the basic standards for interpretive services. There’s actually a ton of interpretation standards. There’s one for community interpreting, legal interpreting and so on. There’s a brand new one that came out this year called ISO 23155 and that one is specifically for conference interpreting. So it’s pretty neat to see them come out with these standards.

 

Other ones I’ve seen in the industry, well since you’re in Canada, you’re probably familiar with this CGSB 131.10. So that one specific for Canadian companies, the national standard to certify translation service providers. And I think the objective of that one was to kind of level the playing field and then make sure that clients or purchasers of translation services are better protected. 18587 is relatively new, so that’s well 2017 I think new, but that is super relevant right now given how our industry is changing. So this one sets the requirements for post editing of machine translation. So that’s another one that’s gaining a lot of popularity right now. Oh, another new one that came out in 2021 is ISO 12616. I feel like this one is lesser known, but this one is a standard for best practices for terminologists. So how to create a glossary or a term-based research and maintain it.

 

There’s just one last one that I want to mention, which is not really a translation standard at all, but if you work with highly regulated companies such as medical device companies, oftentimes those companies will seek for you to have ISO 13485, which is the general standard for medical device companies to maintain their quality management system for the manufacture of medical devices. And by medical devices, I mean, you know, pacemakers, artificial joints, implants, you know, blood pressure monitors and things like that. The reason that they value translation service providers that have that standard is because the stakes are really high. You need your translation to be highly regulated. You don’t want the instructions for some, you know, in vitro diagnostic tool to be incorrectly translated and cause, you know, loss of life or something like that. So yeah, the stakes are high. The translation process is vital to ensure that the devices are safe for their intended purpose.

Sponsor

This podcast is made possible with sponsorship from Hybrid Lynx, a human in the loop provider of translation and data collection services for healthcare, education, legal and government sectors. Visit HybridLynx.com to learn more.

 

Sultan Ghaznawi

Compliance with these standards give you some level of confidence that certain steps were followed as audited basically and the right type of people and qualifications were used. But at the end of the day, realistically, what does it mean? Does it mean that a translation that comes out of an organization that’s certified or the translations process is certified, it is actually in real world better than a non-certified standard or that comes down to, you know, actually whether you need the checklist and you still put the right effort because translation is a very subjective type of output.

 

Leigh Turgut

Yeah, that is true. I think it’s definitely a matter of how well you apply and use the standards. So it’s not to say that the output from a company that doesn’t have a certification is going to be inferior to one that does. It’s just globally overall the chances of there being consistent quality are higher if you have a standard in place with processes that interact well and work well together.

 

Sultan Ghaznawi

Leigh, what does that mean for people doing work in an organization? If your organization is ISO 17-100 certified, if you’re an LSP, how should the management, project managers, even your freelance colleagues and others carry out their work? Is there a difference?

 

 

Leigh Turgut

I think the main difference is that they should know how they fit into the quality picture, how they contribute to quality, what their role is. They should definitely know the company’s quality objectives because, you know, that’s a requirement to have quality objectives, to have something to work towards. It also means that each department will have standard operating procedures to follow. So that’s kind of the main thing is ensuring that you know the processes and the workflows and you follow them. And also everybody in the organization can take the opportunity to suggest improvements or notice things about processes that could be optimized and anyone can have a hand in helping streamline processes.

 

 

Sultan Ghaznawi

You mentioned ISO 9001 and this is something that people see everywhere in the media. You know, logos from different organizations and different industries and so forth. These are generic standards that can be applied, as you mentioned, to any organization. And that also applies to our industry or basically our businesses. But I’m curious to know what are the advantages or disadvantages for LSPs specifically to get certified against these generic standards?

 

 

Leigh Turgut

I think the advantage is it kind of just sets a baseline. And I do believe, like I said, that there’s some overlap. So that having ISO 9001 in place would make it much easier for you to then certify to 17100 because they’re meant to work together. There are a few other generic standards that are useful and that also give customers a certain degree of confidence, I suppose. And one major one is ISO 27001, which is an information security standard. And I see that also across tons of industries. Customers want to know that their data is secure. So that one, yeah, it’s also industry agnostic. And it’s not just for information security companies. So it’s sort of like to have a security management system in place. So banks will care about that. Insurance companies will care about that. So there’s a whole family of standards in the 27000 family range that enable companies to sort of manage security assets. So again, it’s just it depends what your customers care about.

 

 

Sultan Ghaznawi

Leigh, you mentioned earlier and in even our previous conversation, you talked about the quality model. I think that’s something that you manage in your current work. A lot of people are confused about what a quality management system or a QMS actually is. I would like you to explain that. And why is it important for getting certified?

 

 

Leigh Turgut

The concept of quality, I think it rests on its management. Your quality model is and it’ll look different for every company, but it’s focused in on the evaluation of your specific product or your service. It’s how you determine that you’re giving good quality to your customer. So to take a simple example for translation, let’s pretend that it’s having no more than one error in a thousand words. You can achieve that consistently because you know what you have to do to make sure there are no errors in the end product. You have to have these steps. But the efforts required to get to that end quality goal can be different because the inputs can vary wildly or they can be sporadic. So what I mean is, if all things are equal and your translator provides really good work and your editor is great and your proofer or your QC-er is great, then you get that high quality at the end.

 

So what happens if you have a mediocre output from your translator and then your editor spends double the time trying to get the quality up to par and has to touch every single segment and then due to that your QC-er has to spend that additional time. So you’ve lost out on efficiency and budget because you didn’t have eyes on the quality output of your first step or maybe you didn’t have a good evaluation of the translator’s qualifications or their suitability for the job. So it’s really kind of about having a framework in place to make sure that you kind of have eyes on everything. It’s like all the ingredients that you need for the soup. If you think about volume, for instance, you know, all it takes is one massive, you know, millions of words job or you land one massive customer and you might start to see cracks in your quality model just because you need a system in place to be able to scale up. So a QMS, a quality management system, is more looking at the overall processes and how they interact together with each other, how you can be effective, how you can do things consistently, how you can mitigate risk. So that’s a really big one, mitigating risk and reduce effort.

 

So you already know that you have to have a process in place to define the roles that you need, the credentials that people need, the work instructions, you know, glossary, spellcheck, so that the product at every step of the way can hit your quality model metrics. And if it doesn’t, then the QMS insists that you have corrective actions to get you there.

 

 

Sultan Ghaznawi

Obviously, you can’t just get certified and forget about the standard. You mentioned this earlier that there are two types of audits and so forth. Can you explain to us the process, what it takes to become certified? And after that, how do you maintain your certification and basically what that verification process looks like?

 

 

Leigh Turgut

I do remember we spoke about this a bit last time. And I think my main point was that just because you go through the motions to get a certification, it doesn’t mean that you’re home free or that you’re off the hook. You don’t have instant quality. So you have to apply it and really use it to its full potential. When I talk about this, I wonder if I start to sound like I’m in a cult, like a cult of ISO. But no, don’t treat your standard like a burden, like these annoying steps that you have to go through every year, this audit and then, you know, but really, you know, dig deep and see, you know, where are those tweaks? Where can we show improvement? Where are those efficiency gains that you can make? And then how can you communicate what this is and involve everybody in it? And also, you know, maybe just don’t fulfill the minimum of what the standard says. Maybe there are areas where you can go above and beyond. One example is for 17100, the requirement for a qualified translator is someone with a degree and two years full time experience. So maybe your company is going to require three times or three years full time experience or something like that. Maybe that’s something that can set you apart. I’m not sure. But to maintain it, like I said, you have to be audited every year. Any finding from a previous audit has to be remediated or corrected or improved upon by the next audit. And above that, I guess auditors are going to look at how your quality system is maturing, how you’re seeking to innovate and improve.

 

 

Sultan Ghaznawi

Most of us, Leigh, have processes in place. Most organizations, LSPs, I mean, they have to deliver an output that’s consistent. So there is repeatability and what they’re doing. We all want to deliver good quality products to our customers. I mean, it’s become a cliche that we all promise our customers, oh, we’re providing the best quality. But obviously that’s a whole different debate. Now how do standards ensure that we do actually deliver good quality?

 

 

Leigh Turgut

I would say that standards don’t ensure that. But how well you implement and apply the standard will have positive returns on your business or your service. And it sort of relates back to that earlier question about just getting certified is not going to give you the instant quality. But the standards in themselves, they give you the opportunity to constantly be evaluating your output and looking to increase the quality. So I think that’s key is sort of knowing your metrics, knowing how well your processes are performing and being able to pinpoint or identify where you can improve.

 

 

Sultan Ghaznawi

That’s a good segue to my next question. And for LSPs that say, oh, we do all of that. We provide good quality. We have repeat processes that are repeatable and so forth. What do you say to them? Why should they get certified?

 

 

Leigh Turgut

Well, yeah, you’re right. I’ve kind of talked about the benefits of certification. But even if you choose not to get certified because of costs or whatever, I think having a structure in place for being compliant will just give you a better understanding of your process interactions in your company. And as you scale up, making sure there’s no overlap, there’s no waste. And kind of like what I alluded to earlier, even if your quality is great right now, that could change in a second if you get some huge contract or a huge client. You have to hire new people. You have to they need to understand what they have to do. They have to train and how they’re going to fit in. And then in an RFP situation, I would say if a customer wants certain metrics tracked or specific quality information, it’s a lot easier for you to answer that on the spot if you already have those processes in place. And if you don’t, if you have to sort of like start from scratch, you’re looking at a period of implementation, nine months or more to give you time to accumulate that data. So I think those are kind of some of the main benefits of having a certification on hand.

 

 

Sultan Ghaznawi

In the eyes of the customers, are two organizations the same one, one is certified and the other is not, but they’re both doing the same thing. In fact, you know, the output is the same. I’ve seen and I mean, this is a whole different debate because in certain RFPs there’s a requirement for you to be certified for a specific standard. But what do customers feel like when they look at standards? Do they even know about standards?

 

Leigh Turgut

I mean, not all customers do. I think it really depends. And then, well, you have people who might tell you that perception is everything. So if I’m a customer and all things being equal, one LSP certified and one is just compliant, I might opt to go for the certified one. But I’m not a client, so I work on the LSP side. So I think my advice is that if you know you’re compliant to a standard, but for some reason you’re not certified, maybe the cost is prohibitive or you don’t have the resources, then first of all, prove you’re compliant by providing your SOPs or your quality metrics and so forth. And then find something else that sets you apart, like find something that differentiates you just to give you a little edge.

 

 

Sultan Ghaznawi

Leigh, let’s talk about those LSPs that are interested in getting certified, for example, for something like ISO 17100, but they don’t know where to go and where to get started. One thing that’s prohibitive to people is this phobia from cost. What is the cost of getting certified in terms of dollars and time? How much overhead should an LSP budget to get certified and maintain that status on top of what they do and their day-to-day operations?

 

Leigh Turgut

Well, this is one of the criticisms of ISO, that there is a cost associated with getting certified, you have to pay for your copy of the standard, you can’t just download it, there’s an annual fee and then there’s the cost of the audits, but the actual bottom line number depends on the size of your LSP, it depends on the size of your organization, because larger companies are going to require more time to perform a gap analysis, they’re going to need lengthier audits, you have to cover auditor travel expenses, if any, so it really could range anywhere from a few thousand dollars to tens of thousands of dollars. On the flip side, I think you could ask yourself, what’s the cost of not being certified? Are you losing out on customers to another certified competitor? Are there inefficiencies in your processes that could be costing you time and money? There’s a lot to consider, so you kind of just have to do the pros and cons. But yeah, I think that one thing that is a shame is sometimes the cost is prohibitive for smaller companies.

 

 

Sultan Ghaznawi

How do you see the future of standards in our industry? What areas of practice would you like to see standardized both in terms of process and practice?

 

Leigh Turgut

In the last publication of 9001, we saw some big changes already. So they removed the requirement for preventive action, and they moved more towards like a risk-based model. And so that one is subject to review every five years, and they opted to keep it the same the last time. So I don’t think we’re going to see any big changes to that until the next review cycle. But for 17100, for instance, I know this is specific, I don’t know if you’re asking generally, but I think there’s something that LSPs struggle with, and it’s the training requirements for linguists. So I’d like to see some clarification around that, perhaps. The requirement is, I think it’s section 3.1.8, that the TSPs shall have a process in place for documenting ongoing training of linguists. So if you’re using freelancers, you can’t actually require a freelancer to take your training. Of course, it’s in their best interest if they want to work with you, but you can’t actually require it. So it puts a burden on linguists or, you know, a linguist might decide, you know, if company A, you know, has all this required training and company B doesn’t, then maybe I’m going to go to company B.

 

But I think the standard, it allows for linguists to self-report their training, which I think is great. But it’d be great if we had some sort of like training exchange or accept the training from other companies as valid, you know, professional development, show sort of mutual cooperation, because I think that as LSPs, we’re all kind of maybe using the same pool of linguists, you know, a lot of linguists are freelance from multiple agencies. So and then one of the tenets of ISO is for the company to get the feedback of interested parties and linguists are interested parties. So I’m always going to advocate on the side of linguists. That used to be one. They’re the backbone of our industry. So you know, we want to be careful if we sort of keep cutting rates and require more throughput and more, you know, more words per hour, you know, who’s going to want to be a translator anymore?

 

Sultan Ghaznawi

Do you think that standards can also be prohibitive for business because now you don’t have access to a certain pool of people or they don’t want to work with you or even some customers may ask you to do things that may fall outside the standard? How do you deal with those situations?

 

Leigh Turgut

It’s true. There are some requests to do things that would go against best practice. And so you have to inform the customer of that. You have to educate them because I don’t think they always know about best practices in the language industry. But you know, ultimately, if you if the customer wants something a specific way, then our goal is to, you know, is to please the customer in essence. So I think you can implement something even if it deviates from the standard, as long as you’re you make sure you’re mitigating risk. That’s all you need to do. Just make just make a risk analysis and make sure that that risks are mitigated and you can you can deviate if you need to.

 

Sultan Ghaznawi

As we reach the end of this conversation, Leigh, can you please share a few words of advice to LSP executives thinking of achieving certification for their organizations? What would you like to tell them? Where should they start?

 

Leigh Turgut

The C level people. I think that it all it all starts with you. Your attitude, your personal attitude towards an ISO standard or quality is going to determine the company’s attitude towards it. So if you can garner enthusiasm, which is probably easier said than done, how do you get really hyped up about an ISO standard? But maintain at least maintain a positive outlook towards it and just view it as a tool and not a burden. And then people in your organization will too. I just think in the long run that works wonders for change management and when it comes to implementation and then celebrate your victories together. And if you if you fall short, then focus on improvement.

 

 

Sultan Ghaznawi

Once again, it was an amazing conversation and I learned so much about standards, although my own company is certified for ISO 17100, but your perspective is much, much better. I learned so much. I would like to invite you to cover another related topic in the quality space in the future. And this podcast, of course, remains open to you as a platform to share this wisdom with our industry. And I appreciate that. And with that, I want to thank you for your time and for sharing your perspective today.

 

Leigh Turgut

You’re welcome. Thanks for having me. Like I said, it’s few and far between are the opportunities to talk about quality, but you know, quality is such an integral part of our of our industry. So thanks a lot.

 

 

Sultan Ghaznawi

OK, it’s time for my roundup of the interview and my analysis as to what has been discussed. It is no secret that the translation and localization industry is a fragmented space. No two translation companies implement the exact same processes to deliver their services. Fragmentation is, in fact, even favored and promoted as a form of differentiation. I think that is flawed logic in the sense that our industry doesn’t benefit from standards which are supposed to bring consistency in service delivery, but also give the translation buyers the confidence that certain processes and tasks are followed and the creation of the translation product and those processes have been audited by an independent organization.

 

While the seal of certification of standards bodies such as ISO does bring some degree of confidence, at the end it is up to the service delivery organization to uphold all the requirements and specifications mandated by a standard such as the ISO 17100. Our industry is in need of significant shifts in terms of standardization of our business processes and service delivery without reinventing the wheel. I am hopeful that language service companies see the benefits of standards and benefit the industry and pursue certification to reduce duplication of effort, confusion on the client side and to attract the right talent for delivery of our services.

 

That is it for today. I hope you enjoyed my conversation with Leigh Turgut. She is a seasoned language industry quality systems veteran and she knows this space really well. You are able to find at least one key takeaway in the standards and compliance area that you could apply to your own business.

 

Don’t forget to subscribe to the Translation Company Talk podcast on Apple Podcasts, iTunes, Google Podcasts, Spotify or your platform of choice and give us a five star rating for this episode.

 

Until next time!

 

 

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