| Pages in topic: [1 2] > | LISA QA Model Thread poster: Hipyan Nopri
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Hipyan Nopri 
Indonesia
Local time: 06:51
Member (2005)
English to Indonesian
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Recently, someone asked me for translating/reviewing three English documents to Indonesian. Previously, the client has told him that they apply LISA QA model to their quality control. In fact, the Indonesian translation is so nice that it sounds like natural Indonesian rather than a translation result.
Unfortunately, he said that the client rejected his translation because it did not meet the LISA standard. Therefore, he asked me whether I am familiar and experienced with the LISA QA mode... See more Recently, someone asked me for translating/reviewing three English documents to Indonesian. Previously, the client has told him that they apply LISA QA model to their quality control. In fact, the Indonesian translation is so nice that it sounds like natural Indonesian rather than a translation result.
Unfortunately, he said that the client rejected his translation because it did not meet the LISA standard. Therefore, he asked me whether I am familiar and experienced with the LISA QA model.
Frankly, I am not familiar with the model altogehter. However, as far as I know the software costs extremely expensive (about US$600).
Through this forum, I invite everyone who is familiar and experienced with the model to share his knowledge and experience.
Finally, I wish you all Prozcomers Merry Christmas and Happy New Year.
Thanks in advance. ▲ Collapse
| | | | Harry Hermawan
Indonesia
Local time: 06:51
Member
English to Indonesian
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SITE LOCALIZER
Hipyan Nopri wrote:
Recently, someone asked me for translating/reviewing three English documents to Indonesian. Previously, the client has told him that they apply LISA QA model to their quality control. In fact, the Indonesian translation is so nice that it sounds like natural Indonesian rather than a translation result.
LISA QA: Localization Industry Standards Association Quality Assurance?
What exactly is it?
| | | | | Here is the URL | Dec 20, 2005 |
http://www.lisa.org/products/qamodel/
I am familiar with LISA, but not the QA Model specifically. However, you can see from the screenshot on the page above that all sorts of criteria are taken into account - perhaps the translation failed based on layout and other formatting considerations rather than language quality. For example, I translate tagged files for a software customer - if ... See more http://www.lisa.org/products/qamodel/
I am familiar with LISA, but not the QA Model specifically. However, you can see from the screenshot on the page above that all sorts of criteria are taken into account - perhaps the translation failed based on layout and other formatting considerations rather than language quality. For example, I translate tagged files for a software customer - if I were to mess up the tags while translating, it doesn't matter how good my translation sounded: it wouldn't be usable by the customer.
Good to hear, though, that you got to edit a translation that was a pleasure to read - that doesn't happen too often! ▲ Collapse
| | | | Jeff Allen
France
Local time: 01:51
Multiplelanguages
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Hipyan Nopri
Indonesia
Local time: 06:51
Member (2005)
English to Indonesian
+ ...
TOPIC STARTER | Thanks Daina and Jeff | Dec 22, 2005 |
Thank you very much Daina and Jeff for your information. It has paved the way for me to widen and deepen my knowledge of LISA QA model.
| | | | | LISA QA information online? | Oct 5, 2011 |
Hi everyone,
I just had a translation request for a highly technical/legal text that needs to be a "specialist and ensured that they are quality guaranteed under LISA QA".
Does anyone know where I can find the relevant information now that the LISA website is closed down?
Many thanks,
Lila
| | | | english-germ (X)
Local time: 01:51
English to German
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| LISA QA - still up to date? | Aug 6, 2012 |
Recently I met a new agency client who wanted to use the LISA QA for evaluation purposes.
However there were some issues with the use of LISA QA as follows below.
1.) The client did not tell me before my delivery of the translation that they would use LISA QA for evaluation. Although the client had me sign extensive paperwork with NDA, instructions, agreement, etc. in advance before even giving me a small test translation, they did not mention the LISA QA method in any ... See more Recently I met a new agency client who wanted to use the LISA QA for evaluation purposes.
However there were some issues with the use of LISA QA as follows below.
1.) The client did not tell me before my delivery of the translation that they would use LISA QA for evaluation. Although the client had me sign extensive paperwork with NDA, instructions, agreement, etc. in advance before even giving me a small test translation, they did not mention the LISA QA method in any way. Thus we never agreed using it and it came as a surprise as they send back a LISA QA based evaluation without any introduction. They also had not used LISA QA forms for the test translation.
2.) After my research I came to this forum thread and realized that LISA does not exist any more as the website links posted above by other proz users / members have been transferred to a different company. Having said this, I had to conclude that the use of a method and software by an closed organisation must be strictly illegal as the copyright is saveguarded for the copyright holder for at least 72 years in the EU, no matter if the copyright owner goes out of business.
Therefore I had to conclude that the company used an illegal download of LISA and could not provide a licence upon my request.
I would be interested to hear if other translators made experiences with agencies using LISA QA and how justified the usage of this method is regarded.
Is LISA QA really free to use for the publice domain without a LISA membership?
How up to date and justified is the use of the LISA QA method although the organisation closed down altogether? ▲ Collapse
| | | | | What is your problem? | Aug 6, 2012 |
I am just assuming:
The LISA results were not favourable for you.
You are looking for some support to discredit the use of LISA in your case.
My opinion:
I don't like LISA at all and have stopped proofreading/editing for various agencies that wanted me to use LISA as a method. - But LISA works, it provides a metric of translation quality wether you like it or not. The LISA report should give you a clear list of the errors in your translation and it might make sense... See more I am just assuming:
The LISA results were not favourable for you.
You are looking for some support to discredit the use of LISA in your case.
My opinion:
I don't like LISA at all and have stopped proofreading/editing for various agencies that wanted me to use LISA as a method. - But LISA works, it provides a metric of translation quality wether you like it or not. The LISA report should give you a clear list of the errors in your translation and it might make sense to take this list seriously. It will help you to improve your translation skills.
Why should your customer not use LISA if they got it several years ago, and if LISA went out of business in the meantime. Not you problem - Your problem are the results in the LISA report. ▲ Collapse
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english-germ (X)
Local time: 01:51
English to German
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| What is LISA's problem? | Aug 7, 2012 |
Siegfried Armbruster wrote:
I am just assuming:
The LISA results were not favourable for you.
You are looking for some support to discredit the use of LISA in your case.
I was aware that it would not need a psychoanalytical genius to read between the lines that I do not like LISA QAs and to guess that the results did not support my view of "acceptable translation quality" for large but very urgent translation jobs.
The issue I have with LISA standards is that it is not a democratic standard representing the common sense in the translation community but rather a standard that was imposed by mainly US-based IT businesses on the translation industry through an commercial organisation based in Switzerland. It is thus not only designed as a QA but also a commercial management tool in order to press rates down.
My opinion:
I don't like LISA at all and have stopped proofreading/editing for various agencies that wanted me to use LISA as a method.
That is a good point to mention as this LISA QA is also an issue for proofreaders, who have to copy & paste all marked and updated phrases.
By the way, I did not find any request in DIN EN 15380 that a proofreader should mark and justify his/her editing for the translator. On the contrary, DIN EN 15380 puts an emphasis on the in-house production and quality assurance and even limits the translator's responsiblity for the final result, therefore LISA QA is also not corresponding to the new DIN EN 15380.
Abusing LISA QA as tool for penalizing translators is therefore certainly unethical.
[Bearbeitet am 2012-08-07 16:50 GMT]
| | | | | LISA works - but there might be better ways to improve quality | Aug 7, 2012 |
english-german wrote:
The issue I have with LISA standards is that it is not a democratic standard representing the common sense in the translation community but rather a standard that was imposed by mainly US-based IT businesses on the translation industry through an commercial organisation based in Switzerland.
Sorry, quality and quality assessments have nothing to do with "democratic standards".
LISA is a tool to measure the quality of a translation and this is exactly what it does.
The reason why I don't like LISA is based on my own opinions:
a) Translating is a team effort and it makes no real sense to measure the translation step, but not the other steps in the process. Most errors caught with LISA can easily be corrected by the proofreader/editor
b) Investing in the process and providing translators/editors/proofreaders with style guides and glossaries, carefully selecting the members of the translation team for a given job and paying decent rates (perhaps using the money spend on LISA etc.) is in my opinion a better approach to ensure translation quality.
Metrics are ok in an industrial environment, and measuring the quality of your work is ok too. But if I need LISA to find the weak spot, there is a good chance that my whole translation process st...ks. And translators failing in LISA should not have been part of this process anyway.
By the way, I did not find any request in DIN EN 15380 that a proofreader should mark and justify his/her editing for the translator. On the contrary, DIN EN 15380 puts an emphasis on the in-house production and quality assurance and even limits the translator's responsiblity for the final result, therefore LISA QA is also not corresponding to the new DIN EN 15380.
Don't try to play the EN 15380 card (specially if you mean EN 15038):
a) EN 15380 is the standard for Railway applications - Classification system for rail vehicles - Part 5: Systems; System groups - System requirements - it has nothing to do with translations
b) EN 15038 which you might refer to, might have prohibited that the LSP even gave you the job.
EN 15038 states:
Quote EN 15038
The above competences should be acquired through one or more of the following:
— formal higher education in translation (recognised degree);
— equivalent qualification in any other subject plus a minimum of two years of documented experience in translating;
— at least five years of documented professional experience in translating.
This applies to translators and revisers/editors. It also states very clearly that the reviser should be able to justify his/her editing.
Quote EN 15038
3.2.2 Professional competences of translators
a) Translating competence: Translating competence comprises the ability to translate texts to the required level, i.e. in accordance with 5.4. It includes the ability to assess the problems of text comprehension and text production as well as the ability to render the target text in accordance with the client-TSP agreement (see 4.4) and to justify the results.
3.2.3 Professional competences of revisers
Revisers shall have the competences as defined in 3.2.2, and should have translating experience in the domain under consideration.
If you keep reading the standard, you will come to point 3.4.
Quality management system
b) Process for monitoring the quality of delivered translation services and where necessary providing after delivery correction and taking corrective action.
This means that the LSP is absolutely entitled to use a system such as LISA, in fact they have to use a system to monitor/measure quality.
I stick with my previous statement - concentrate on the errors they found and try to identify what you can do to produce better results in the future. There are many things you can do and some are dead easy:
a) follow the instructions
b) use a spellchecker
c) use the automated checks in your TM tool
d) check your document again before you send it to the customer
etc......
| | | | english-germ (X)
Local time: 01:51
English to German
+ ...
| LISA QA is not a tool to improve quality | Aug 7, 2012 |
Okay, in fact I meant DIN EN 15038, but you are not really telling me anything new.
As confirmed by your quotes from DIN EN 15038, it requires proofreading and editing but it does not require to mark and rate the translation for mistakes as in an exam as pass/fail.
Still LISA QA is not a tool to improve quality as it only generates a list of marked and edited mistakes.
What it does not do:
1) LISA cannot distinguish between wrongfully marked transl... See more Okay, in fact I meant DIN EN 15038, but you are not really telling me anything new.
As confirmed by your quotes from DIN EN 15038, it requires proofreading and editing but it does not require to mark and rate the translation for mistakes as in an exam as pass/fail.
Still LISA QA is not a tool to improve quality as it only generates a list of marked and edited mistakes.
What it does not do:
1) LISA cannot distinguish between wrongfully marked translations, repeatedly marked mistakes (in properly marked academic test, mistakes would only be marked once and not repeatedly).
2) LISA can unfortunately also not compensate a proofreader's lack of competence in accurate marking and editing a proofread translation.
There is also no remedy against clients who abuse such LISA ratings in order to receive translations for free and only pay the proofreader a small rate. This is not a required measure but simply daylight robbery, and the latter is not breaking news in the translation industry any longer but has become a bad habit. ▲ Collapse
| | | | | LISA's error categories | Aug 7, 2012 |
The LISA I used back in 2009 used the following categories:
The errors will be rated as follows:
Critical – Zero critical errors acceptable, in a sample of 1,000 words.
Major – 1 Major error will not result in a fail in a sample of 1,000 words.
Minor – 5 Minor errors will not result in a fail in a sample of 1,000 words
Note: Any combination of the results above will be added together and may result in a fail score
Definition of Error... See more The LISA I used back in 2009 used the following categories:
The errors will be rated as follows:
Critical – Zero critical errors acceptable, in a sample of 1,000 words.
Major – 1 Major error will not result in a fail in a sample of 1,000 words.
Minor – 5 Minor errors will not result in a fail in a sample of 1,000 words
Note: Any combination of the results above will be added together and may result in a fail score
Definition of Error Categories:
Critical Errors:
- impacts downstream costs (e.g. print rerun required, legal case)
- Gross Mistranslation
- Dangerous Mistranslation e.g. Medical
- Misleads end user
- Highly visible mistranslation
- Major error repeated in several locations
Major Errors:
- Impacts understanding and/or usability
- Previous QA Feedback not applied
- Several minor errors repeated
- Non adherence to Glossary
- Client instructions not followed (e.g. trademarks translated/non-translated, DO NOT Translate terms translated, etc.)
Minor Errors:
- Spelling, Grammar errors
- Any error of lesser severity than a major
> 5 spelling/grammar errors per 1000 words are too much - in my opinion
> 1 major error per 1000 words are too much - in my opinion
> 0 critical errors per 1000 words are also too much - in my opinion
If your translation was above this "error range", you should concentrate on improving your translation quality. As an LSP I can't care less which metric/tool is used to identify an error that might either impact downstream costs (e.g. print rerun required, legal case) or qualifies as a dangerous mistranslation e.g. in a medical document.
If the translator would start arguing my method on how we identified such error he/she would never ever get a job from us again.
I actually don't see why such an error should be a reason to pay the translator less or not at all, it is the LSPs task/responsibility to identify these problems, correct them and to deliver a perfect translation to the client.
But the translator as part of the team should at least check the editors/reviewers comments, give his opinion on each of the points and try to explain what caused the problem with his/her translation and what could be done or what he/she will do to prevent this type of errors in the future.
I agree with you that LISA should not be a method to punish translators; this is completely against my philosophy of "translating is teamwork". In fact, I would consider this as abusing LISA.
LISA is one method to measure translation quality.
Criticizing LISA won't improve your translation quality ▲ Collapse
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english-germ (X)
Local time: 01:51
English to German
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| Proper use of LISA QA vs. abuse | Aug 8, 2012 |
Siegfried Armbruster wrote:
If the translator would start arguing my method on how we identified such error he/she would never ever get a job from us again.
It is not wrong to identify a real error, still it would be wrong to mark identified errors several times, as well as marking alternative translations and synonyms as errors in order to increase the total amount of errors in an artificial way.
Example: If a translator would translate "Kraftfahrzeug" (DE) into "car" (EN) but the proofreader would update the translation it into "automobile" (EN-US), then the proofreader could "score" a failed translation if there were enough repetitions of this update. This would be a gross abuse of the LISA QA. But this happens. People do it.
I actually don't see why such an error should be a reason to pay the translator less or not at all, it is the LSPs task/responsibility to identify these problems, correct them and to deliver a perfect translation to the client.
But the translator as part of the team should at least check the editors/reviewers comments, give his opinion on each of the points and try to explain what caused the problem with his/her translation and what could be done or what he/she will do to prevent this type of errors in the future.
I agree with you that LISA should not be a method to punish translators; this is completely against my philosophy of "translating is teamwork". In fact, I would consider this as abusing LISA.
So you have a benevolent team. That's fine.
LISA is one method to measure translation quality.
Criticizing LISA won't improve your translation quality
My intention was not to criticize LISA QA or the organisation LISA in the first place (although I have), but finally the abuse of LISA QA sheets by malevolent agencies.
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Could you give us some examples on what the "bad" proofreader/editor critizised?
This might help us to better understand your anger/frustration. In my opinion there is no such thing as a perfect translation, each text can be improved. It is frustrating if you have the feeling that the editor/proofreader/agency are working against you. But on the other side in my opinion translating is not a piece of art and many translators just lack basic craftmanship and don't follow instructions ... See more Could you give us some examples on what the "bad" proofreader/editor critizised?
This might help us to better understand your anger/frustration. In my opinion there is no such thing as a perfect translation, each text can be improved. It is frustrating if you have the feeling that the editor/proofreader/agency are working against you. But on the other side in my opinion translating is not a piece of art and many translators just lack basic craftmanship and don't follow instructions and it is frustrating for a LSP to work with certain types of artists if all they want/need is a specialised translator/craftsman. ▲ Collapse
| | | | english-germ (X)
Local time: 01:51
English to German
+ ...
Siegfried Armbruster wrote:
Could you give us some examples on what the "bad" proofreader/editor critizised?
This might help us to better understand your anger/frustration. In my opinion there is no such thing as a perfect translation, each text can be improved. It is frustrating if you have the feeling that the editor/proofreader/agency are working against you. But on the other side in my opinion translating is not a piece of art and many translators just lack basic craftmanship and don't follow instructions and it is frustrating for a LSP to work with certain types of artists if all they want/need is a specialised translator/craftsman.
"The art of translation" is just a slogang. This does not mean that I would be a con artist or something. I have been translating full-time since years and I am sure that returning clients from global top 10 agencies knew why they returned.
It is even the other way round concerning artists. The self-appointed "managers" of the agency in question are in fact real-life artists and liberal arts graduates who apparently jumped into the translation industry in order to make some extra cash for living. This is only what I assume from their linkedin cvs, of course, and I don't mean by this that I would have anything against artists...
However, what concerns the names and text examples, I cannot disclose anything as the first thing that they asked me to do before embarking our "work" was to sign a NDA. Now I know why this was so important for them.
An example that I could give without risking to say any identifiable inside-information is that it was basically a lease agreement to be translated from Dutch into German.
It was a rush job with over 4K in 24h and files had to be delivered file by file asap when completed on a rolling basis.
Example: The proofreader listed in the LISA QA sheet that they changed my translation "Mietvereinbarung" for "lease agreement" into "Mietvertrag".
You can imagine that in a "lease agreement", the expression "lease agreement" is mentioned several times. So this update created over 10 "mistakes" enetered into LISA as "major mistranslations" (I do not quote the Dutch original expression here in order to avoid identifiable information - the agency is already working against me and so they could also attempt to pull the NDA in this bad game).
Of course you can translate "Mietvertrag", although the direct translation for "Vertrag" would be "contract" and not "agreement", still they are synonyms and therefore it is not a mistake.
There was no glossary with preferred terms.
Do you know any preference for "Mietvereinbarung" or "Mietvertrag"?
I do not see any mendatory preference. For example, on Google "Mietvereinbarung" and "Mietvertrag" both receive around 4M results.
As there were several such issues with synonyms and optional updates marked as mistakes, I became aware that they were apparently trying to fool me and I just silently waited for their discount request... After 14 days they really came back to me and said that they wanted to have over 80% off and pay me less for the translation than their (low) proofreading rate.
They claimed I had to pay for the proofreader, the production of the LISA QA sheet (which had not even been announced that this would be produced) and since I objected several of the updates in LISA, I also would have had to pay for editing my translation by a third person. This would be deducted from my invoice. They updated the PO immediately online without waiting for my response. They have even not provided a proof that the cost really occured and that there was additional proofreading and editing by a third person.
I have not received the final version as well.
I do not think any longer that they would be a good agency to work for.
[Bearbeitet am 2012-08-08 12:53 GMT]
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