Measuring Translation TAUS RoundtableBarcelona

May 12, 2016

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Why measure?

To know something unknown. To learn what to measure. To reduce uncertainty and the risk of wasting

money.

Measuring Translation

Measuring Translation

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Basic questions

What decision a measurement is supposed to support?

What is the definition of the thing being measured?

How does this thing matter to the decision? What is the current level of uncertainty? What is the value of additional information?

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Measurement categories (scales)

Nominal Excluding statements; no ordering among responses

Translation

Ordinal To say whether one value is more than another, but not

by how much Hotel ratings

Interval Homogeneous units to express a numerical difference

between two values Temperatures

Ratio Interval scale with a zero position indicating absence

Kelvin scale

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Baselines, thresholds and benchmarks

Baselines The starting point for comparison

Hotel rating Pricing

Thresholds The value for something to come into effect

Acceptance Quality Levels Maximum tolerable number of deviations from a predetermined

level

Benchmarks A performance average

Alignment or outdoing

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Areas for measurement

Area Primary measure Related measure

Sales Price Cost of service

Operations Cost of service Customer satisfaction

Procurement Vendor rating Payments

Human resources Resource development Vendor rating

Quality Quality index Vendor rating

Production Productivity Vendor capacity

Finance Cash flow Invoicing

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Basic measures

Financial Operational Sales

• Revenues• Cash flow• Profits• ROI• Timely invoicing• Labor cost

• Staff• Number• Empowerment• Turnover

• Efficiency• Complaints• Projects closures• Automation

• New customers• Customer size• Customer profitability• Customer satisfaction• Complaints• Loyalty

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Expected measurements

Buyer

Vendor reliability & capability Average Outgoing Quality

(AOQ) DIFOT (Delivery In-Full, On-

Time) rate OFCT (Order Fulfillment Cycle

Time) FPY (First Pass Yield) Rework percentage

Vendor

Specs & requirements Sampling lot size Acceptance Quality Level

(AQL) Source content profiling Source content ranking Translatability score

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Translation data

Most requested domains What about profitable domains?

Most requested language pairs What about revenues per language pairs?

High volume customers What about most profitable customers?

Translation time What about productivity per vendor?

Numbers of jobs per linguist What about deadline, volume and compensation?

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How is content measurable?

Modular Reusable

Standard Unambiguous

Simple Translatable

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Predictive quality

Profiling Weighted quality score

Comparison with reference corpus Translatability score

Vendor rating Common business intelligence criteria

Performance data

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What gets measured gets managed

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Gràcies