How do quality standards influence the work of a translation agency? Is it unnecessary red tape or can quality standards actually help to manage and control company activities? What are the benefits for the company after being granted a quality standard certificate?
Such questions are frequently asked during seminars organised for translation companies and agencies.
In his article, Andrzej Nedoma, a Lido-Lang Technical Translations Business Development Manager with extensive professional experience in the translation business, provides his personal advice and guidance regarding quality standards.


In recent years ISO 9001, (a quality standard for management systems), and EN15038, (a quality standard for translation services), have become highly popular discussion topics in translation industry meetings. Having gained lots of experience in implementing the above standards, I am always happy to discuss and offer my help in this respect.

When I ask translation company managers what they think about ISO 9001 and EN 15038, they often comment that it's all about additional bureaucracy, more paperwork, more reports, more rules and the collection and storing of unnecessary documents, records and statements. The prize for all these efforts is the ISO 9001 or EN 15038 symbol, which we can use in our marketing materials.

Bearing in mind all the effort put into obtaining and maintaining the certifications, it sometimes seems that using ISO and EN solely as a marketing tool is simply not beneficial enough to make it worthwhile for translation companies. I must agree – marketing impact alone is not sufficient gratification for the huge amount of work a company and its employees undertake in order to be ISO or EN certified. But we need to remember – marketing is NOT the only reason organisations choose to implement the quality standards.

Nearly all companies have some kind of management system, which enables effective controls and monitoring of company activities and development. That is the main aim of ISO 9001. It uses the process approach, which means identifying and managing the processes that make up the company. Now, what is the point of describing the company in process terms? Well, it is all about a more precise and detailed analysis of the company and its varied activities. As a result, every single action within the company can become more efficient, consequently the whole company works more efficiently. The standards should be seen as a tool assisting the controls and management of the company, which always has a huge effect on the efficacy and effectiveness of the services provided. Furthermore, quality standards support a company's continuous development.

According to the standards, management of a business is a cyclical process including:

1. Defining and planning of the processes.
2. Implementation and realisation of the processes.
3. Checking and analysis of the effectiveness of the processes.
4. Reviewing and improving of the processes.

This approach ensures continuous improvement of the company activities and actions, which leads to increased efficiency as well as smooth adaptation to the changing trends of the translation trade. What is more, precise definition and analysis of the processes provides the board with specific information about the company, its activity, efficiency as well as any weak links. It also enables an effective implementation of the development strategy.

Applying the process approach must always start with the identification of the processes. In the case of translation agencies, they include:


1. Finding Suppliers
2. Winning Clients
3. Project Preparation
4. Project Management
5. Invoicing Clients
6. Paying Suppliers
7. Quality Management
8. Financial Planning
9. General Management

The next step is to assign roles to people who will be responsible for particular processes, defining the efficiency measures as well as ways of assessment and interpretation. This will create the base for the process assessment. ISO 9001 and EN 15038 standards suggest that measures are analysed every six months. However, in order to make the most of ISO 9001 as a company management tool, it is worth considering much more frequent, even weekly, analyses of measures.
In order to avoid spending too much time on this, there are a number of very useful systems and IT tools that can be used to automate the actions. The right system can also prepare and maintain records of particular actions taken within the company. Such a tool can assist with the management of customer complaints and any correction and prevention measures that need to be taken. In fact, it does almost everything required for the standards, thereby significantly reducing human factor. An effective IT solution enables the records to be kept on the system, which means no more tedious paper work. As a result, the company is not only granted a quality certificate, but it also has an efficient system supporting the management and development of the company. I implemented ISO and EN standards with a translation agency that worked with the XTRF™ system which assisted our work and did the majority of tedious, repetitive tasks for us.

If you decide to apply for the quality certification, I would recommend liaising with one of the consulting companies before you do so. Also, it is always advisable to get to know the expectations and the very process of ISO and EN certification. Finally, an IT company management system, which will automate your work, will also turn out invaluable. Have a look at the links provided below.

Andrzej Nedoma
Business Development Manager
Lido-Lang Technical Translations