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Ycomm applies KAIZEN to the localisation process

Nathalie De Sutter explains how Ycomm Europe takes inspiration for its new QA Distiller and ColourTagger tools from the Japanese philosophy of quality thinking

Originally published in March 2005 issue of Localisation Focus. To learn more about Localisation Focus, click here.

Fighting the commodity magnet
All maturing industries try to beat the commodity magnet and localisation and translation service providers are no exception. In most cases translation does not pertain to the core business of the customer, who therefore considers it to be a “non-critical” purchase. This, combined with the declining complexity of the supply market, the increasing competition, and a more professional purchasing behaviour, results in the perception of localisation as a commodity. Customers demand increasing flexibility in handling higher volumes to be processed with shorter deadlines. One indicator is the practice of auctioning for the assignment of translation projects.

Many companies seek refuge by positioning themselves as a “highquality provider” and strive toward a conscious commitment to quality as a differentiator. However, since we operate in a perceived commodity market, we should be aware that companies are not necessarily willing to pay extra for this and that the trinity of quality, on-time, and at a minimum price, is often considered to be an essential minimum requirement. Offering a better- than-acceptable level of quality without missing any deadlines, but at a reduced cost, requires a considerable process innovation.

Evaluation equals quality?
Industrial and academic publications have tried to define translation quality. Studies on evaluation techniques, standards for distinguishing between severe and minor mistakes, and attempts to define what constitutes a good-quality translation have been argued and disputed by many scholars and industry professionals. And although the localisation industry should certainly strive toward the development of standards, what would really benefit translation companies, end-buyers and freelance translators is a useful, efficient and simple system to facilitate the struggle with day-to-day quality control.

Kaizen™ revisited
After having been out of style for more than a decade, and thanks to the great performance of companies like Toyota, there seems to be renewed managerial interest in Japanese management techniques and the Japanese philosophy of quality thinking. One of the principal concepts in the work of Masaaki Imai, the founder of the Kaizen Institute, is that quality improvement and cost reduction are, in fact, compatible.

What more has Kaizen taught us? First of all, that quality is the responsibility of everyone in the organisation and not exclusively that of the quality department. Indeed, fighting non-value-adding activities, or Muda, should be one of the key activities of all members of organisations striving for continuous improvement or Kaizen. A second insight relates to the fact that quality improvement, contrary to traditional belief, has a cost-reducing effect. “Doing it right the first time” may require an initial investment, but the impact in the long term generates many advantages outside the limited framework of quality. It seems to be inevitable that money be spent on quality; how much money, however, depends on when you intend to spend it.

Go to Gemba
The first implementation rule in Kaizen is “Go to Gemba first!” Gemba means “real place,” but in quality lingo it refers to “the workplace.” So “go to Gemba” means go to the work floor, observe, measure and take immediate action. The translation industry is very good at taking quick action, we are flexible and will solve or fix any problem. However, Mr. Imai takes us a step further. The immediate action for Mr. Imai is a temporary countermeasure, next he wants us to find the root cause and then standardise and create the necessary procedures and tools to prevent a reoccurrence. This is exactly what our industry should do. In our hurry to consolidate and become a value creator, many companies have lost touch with the Gemba.

Doing it right the first time
Traditionally, in order to verify the quality of a translation, a revision by a second translator is carried out, a practice that is certainly costly and time-consuming, especially because this work has traditionally been performed by senior translators. It is also possible to have the more experienced translator make the initial translation and a second person, who has yet to master the craft, proof the text to detect and eliminate inaccuracies and imperfections like incorrectlyformatted numbers, punctuation errors, omissions, and similar problems. It was precisely this approach that Ycomm was determined to automate. Eliminating most of the repetitive, measurable and predictable (formal) mistakes in advance would considerably reduce the time required for proofreading and correction work afterward.

The Ycomm Gemba
With this background and the notion that everything that is measurable is also traceable, we decided to start investing in tools and procedures to avoid Muda at Ycomm. QA Distiller™ enables us to locate omissions, inconsistencies (see fig. 1), formatting issues and terminology mistakes in bilingual files, and also allows the rapid correction of these mistakes by taking us directly from the reported error to the problem in the text. It is true that these errors only indicate the more formal translation mistakes. To a large extent other possible problems such as style, fluency, register and grammar are ignored, making this approach best suited to technical translations; proofreading may still be necessary after all. Formal mistakes, however, are usually indicative of severe quality issues in the translation and their detection allows us to evaluate our suppliers more objectively. Discussions about style preferences or the choice between equally correct terms have often led to neverending discussions, whereas formal mistakes such as inconsistent translation, untranslated text and incorrectly formatted numbers (for example 0.12 instead of 0,12) are objectively incorrect. Total quality assurance requires an integrated approach, but every single step toward a bettertranslation is progress. A check with QA Distiller™ also works for the verification and clean-up of translation memories, thus preventing the dreaded “garbage in, garbage out” effect that must always be considered when previous translations are reused.

Another solution helps to save time during proofreading. Proofreaders often revise text that already has been validated because the text was initially extracted from a translation memory or is the result of a pre-translation process. ColourTagger™ is a tool that colours translated text based upon its status in a Trados™ translation memory and presents the results in a laidout FrameMaker™ or HTML document, which includes illustrations. If 75% of a technical manual has been generated from a validated translation memory, the proofreader may want to skip these parts and concentrate on the sections containing new text.

Kaizen™ in Translation
These approaches are closely related to the insights provided by Japanese quality thinking described above. Everyone involved in a translation project monitors the quality at every stage of the process. (see Fig 2) Language engineers check translation memories before sending them to the translator, and the suppliers, in turn, perform a QA analysis on their translations before delivery. This also reduces costs. Problems and mistakes are detected early, so they can be fixed before they infiltrate the translation memory, preventing such dreaded scenarios as the realisation that a terminology list has been ignored when the final layout is almost complete. The client has the assurance that his translation partner takes quality seriously, and he spends less time proofreading because the “stupid” mistakes have already been automatically detected and eliminated. In the end, the DTP department has fewer corrections to implement and none that should require corrections to the translation memory.

Enough theory: it is time to go back to our Gemba!

Nathalie De Sutter holds a masters degree in Indology and a post-graduate in Business Communication. She is based in Ghent, Belgium and works as a Business Development Manager at Ycomm Europe (www.ycommeurope. com). The company was founded in 1998 as the centre of excellence for multilingual content management within the Japanese Yamagata Printing Group. She can be reached at NathalieNOSPAM@ycomm-europe.com (remove NOSPAM to email).