This presentation sheds light a unique and successful model of crowdsourced and collaborative translation, the charity Translators Without Borders.

1. The Challenge of Quality Control in
Crowdsourced and Collaborative
Translation
The Case of Translators Without Borders
N. KRIMAT
University of Algiers II

2. TRANSLATION AND INTERPRETING INSTITUTE
Outline
Key points
The following key points will be addressed:
I. Crowdsourced and Collaborative translation
- Community Translation
II. The concept of quality in translation
III. The case of Translators Without Borders
IV. The challenge of quality control in TWB
What quality for TWB?
The difference between quality management, quality assurance and quality control
Quality assurance practices within TWB
Quality control practices within TWB
TEP process vs. TWB workflow
Kató TM-related challenges
QC standards on Kató TM

3. I. Crowdsourced and collaborative
Translation:
 Collaborative translation in a simplified meaning refers to the situation
where two or more agents or translators work together to produce a
translation. it is having many translation participants who work
simultaneously in a collaborative workspace with shared resources.
 Crowdsourcing refers to the act of outsourcing or recruiting a group of
people to take on a task that would be done by in-house employees.
 This model of translation has been adopted by commercial and non-profit
organizations to meet the translation demand.
 Since collaborators in a crowdsourced translation are generally non-
professional translators, questions about quality come to surface.
 However, organizations that adopt crowdsourcing often deploy a
strategy or practices for quality control.
(O'Brien, 2011a, pp. 17-18)

4. II. Quality in Translation:
The question of quality in translation is problematic.
The notion of quality is “fuzzy” but quality is always sought in any translation act.
Quality is dynamic and bound to real-world constraints and variables (economic, time,
situational constraints, the purpose of translation, the translation user expectations, etc.).
Dynamicity is a fundamental reality in translation quality.
(Jiménez-Crespo, 2017, pp. 122–126)

5. III. Translators Without Borders:
Translators without Borders (TWB) is a non-profit organization based in the U.S.
that offers language and translation support for humanitarian work on a global
scale.
It aims to break the language barriers that hinder the humanitarian efforts
worldwide.
It maintains a community of professional translators who volunteer their
services to provide aid in humanitarian crisis response.
(THICKE, 2015; Zetzsche, 2017).

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IV. What quality for “Translators Without Borders”?
 The majority of texts translated by TWB are informative, in order to ensure that the relevant information reaches the
communities in need for it.
 The content translated may include, but not limited to, forms, administrative documents, services guides, information
brochures, packs, posters, factsheets, action massages, etc.
 The user of the text is the average person in an emergency that needs information the most.
 Translated materials are intended to break the language barriers that complicate the crisis response efforts.
(“Course: Introduction to Humanitarian Translation for Kató Translators,” n.d.)
 Informative texts will come closer to the general ‘understandable’ version, that is, specialized knowledge is transformed
into non-specialized information
 Informative texts are of a temporary validity.
 Translation focuses more on the information rather than the text (meaning over language)
(Valdeon, 2014)

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Quality Management System within TWB:
Kató Environment:
Kató Environnement is a set on online tools for the organization translators that follows
an online collaborative approach. It consists of:
Kató platform : where translators can review and pick up tasks.
Kató TM (Translation memory): an online computer-assisted translation (CAT) tool
for translating and reviewing tasks.
Kató community: an online forum to discuss projects, connect with other translators,
ask questions and learn more about TWB processes and practices.
(“Course: Introduction to Humanitarian Translation for Kató Translators,” n.d.)

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Quality Assurance (QA) and Quality Control (QC)
Quality assurance Quality control
Proactive Reactive
Process-oriented Product-oriented
Focused on managing, planning
and agreeing on the steps and
practices to ensuring quality
Aims at identifying issues and
fixing them to ensure, at the end
of the process, that the
translation meets the
requirements
Both constitute integrant parts of quality management
QA encompasses QC
(Czopik, 2014, pp. 80-81)
Quality
Management
Quality
Assurance
Quality
Control

9. TRANSLATION AND INTERPRETING INSTITUTE
Quality Assurance Practices within TWB:
Kató community and platform:
The following key points will be addressed:
Terms and conditions to join TWB
Motivation
Training and guidelines
Project management

10. TRANSLATION AND INTERPRETING INSTITUTE
Joining TWB:
Only professional translators can join the TWB community of translators since the organization
adopts the “closed” community approach.
(Flanagan, 2016, p. 151)
To join the TWB, the applicant must :
Have four years of professional translation, or two years of experience and a relevant university
degree
Pass a screening test.
(THICKE, 2015)

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Community motivation:
TWB provides its community with several incentives that motivate them to give the best of their skills
and expertise; therefore, high quality output is assured through devotion and dedication.
Community motivation
Altruism: to translate out of philanthropic motivations and the fact being emotionally invested in
the content they translate.
Utilitarianism: to gain work experience and recognition and to boost a career.
TWB incentives
TWB gives professional translators the opportunity to translate for humanity and a breathing-
ground to help people in crisis (altruism).
It provides newly qualified translators with a set of utilitarian incentives (work experience
internationally recognized – credit for contribution on Kató community and Proz.com – certificates
provided by partner organizations, etc.)
(Désilets, 2011, p. 33; Flanagan, 2016, p. 156).

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Training & guidelines:
Training:
The organization provides its translators with a training that prepares them for the role they will play.
(“Course: Introduction to Humanitarian Translation for Kató Translators,” n.d.)
Guidelines:
In addition to training, the organization provides several guidelines that cover issues such as ethics,
professionalism and quality. Indeed, the Code of Conduct for Translators defines, inter alia, some good
practices of quality assurance: accuracy, competence and reliability.
Competence: translators should be familiar with the subject of the task they pick up and its terminology.
Accuracy: translators shall render the source language message, omitting or adding nothing.
Reliability: it is the commitment to submit the task by the indicated deadline.
(Translators without Borders Code of Conduct for Translators, n.d.)

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Project management:
Kató platform
A TWB project manager is responsible for managing project timelines, handling translators queries and
serves as the focal point for project commissioner.
The project manager plays a vital role in TWB since most of projects are collaborative; materials to be
translated are split into part or “chunks” as much as needed. Generally, one translator is requested to
translate from one to ten pages.
The project manager uses Kató platform to foster communication between translators and revisers
involved in the same task. This prevents mistakes and problems during the process of translation; helps
achieve coherence and consistency in terminology; and contributes to the overall quality since any issue
that arises during the process of translation will be solved in real-time by consensus between the
community involved in the project.
(THICKE, 2015)

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Quality Control Practices:
Kató TM:
QC is done on the Kató TM in parallel with the translation task:
Kató TM is a free online computer-assisted tool (CAT) tool for translating and
reviewing tasks
It provides access to the translation memory and online glossaries improving the
efficiency of the translation process.
It allows translators to pre-translate the text using machine translation and then
review and edit the machine translation output (nevertheless, translators can
adopt a human translation approach and translate manually on Kató TM).
It allows several volunteers to work on a single task as well as reviewers to revise
translation entries in real time which is different from the traditional TEP
(Translate-edit-publish) process where revision cannot begin until translation is
complete.
(“Course: Introduction to Humanitarian Translation for Kató Translators,” n.d.)

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TEP Process vs. TWB Workflow
While quality is controlled from the top in the TEP model, it is decentralized but parallel in the
TWB model.
Criterion TEP model TWB model
Translation process Sequential Parallel (translation-edition-
proofreading)
Decision-making Individual Community consensus
QC focus Error detection Error prevention
(Kelly et al., 2011))

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Kató TM-related challenges:
From text to sentence level (the segment):
The most used translation tool in the new digital work environment is the translation memory due to the
savings in time and effort.
Kató TM, like any other TM, divides the source text into segments (range from a word to a sentence).
The unit of translation is no longer the text but the sentence or less (segment or chunk).
The translation task becomes post-editing the TM output and the translator becomes a post-editor.
What level of quality for post-editing TWB documents?
The Translation Automation Society (TAUS) distinguishes in its guidelines for post-editing
between two levels of quality:
Good enough: accurate and renders the meaning.
Publishable quality: similar to “high-quality human translation and revision”.
(Aranberri & Drescher, 2016, pp. 17–18)

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QC standards on Kató TM:
On the Kató TM, revisers review translations entries following four major standards:
Meaning and accuracy
Grammar and sentence structure
Spelling and punctuation
Readability and style
(“Course: Introduction to Humanitarian Translation for Kató Translators,” n.d.).
Indeed, a TWB reviser revises translations by comparing the meaning of the TT with ST.
He checks also grammar, spelling and readability.
The TWB revision is done in parallel to translation/post-editing and, therefore, the
communicative functionalities on the platform will allow the community to
counterbalance the segmentation drawbacks by re-creating the context of the text
through their collaboration and consensus when any issue arises.
Considering the Translation Automation Society (TAUS) guidelines, these standards
aim at achieving a “human translation quality” and not just a “good enough”
quality.

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Epilogue:
1) On quality assurance TWB practices.
2) On quality control TWB practices.
3) On the TWB process in relation to the TEP process
4) On the quality of the content translated by TWB
 Collaborative translation is constantly evolving and we cannot be fully informed of all the
dimensions of the phenomenon and the infinite multiplicity of variables involved in such a
phenomenon.

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References:
Aranberri, N., & Drescher, K. (2016). MT POST-EDITING GUIDELINES.
Babych, B., Hartley, A., Kageura, K., Thomas, M., & Utiyama, M. (2012). MNH-TT : a
collaborative platform for translator training, (November), 1–18.
Course: Introduction to Humanitarian Translation for Kató Translators. (n.d.). Retrieved March
19, 2019, from http://elearn.translatorswb.org/course/view.php?id=5#section-0
Czopik, J. (2014). Quality Assurance process in translation. Quality Assurance Process in
Translation, 77–85. Retrieved from http://www.mt-archive.info/10/Asling-2014-
Czopik.pdf
Désilets, A. (2011). “Co-Creating a Repository of Best-Practices for Collaborative Translation.”
Linguistica Antverpiensia 10: 11–27
Flanagan, M. (2016). Cause for concern? Attitudes towards translation crowdsourcing in
professional translators’ blogs, (25), 149–173.
Jiménez-crespo, M. A. (2017). Crowdsourcing and Online Collaborative Translations, 131.
Kelly, N., Ray, R., & Depalma, D. A. (2011). From crawling to sprinting: Community translation
goes mainstream. Retrieved from http://www.l2f.inesc-
id.pt/~fmmb/wiki/uploads/Work/dict.ref11.pdf

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O’Brien, Sharon. 2011a. “Collaborative Translation.” In Routledge Handbook of Translation
Studies, Vol 2. Carmen Millán Verela and Francesca Bartrina (eds.), 17–20. London:
Routledge. doi: 10.1075/hts.2.col1
Olohan, M. (2014). Why Do You Translate ? Motivation to Volunteer and TED Translation.
Published in Translation Studies, 7(1), 1–23.
The Kató translation workspace | Translators without Borders. (n.d.). Retrieved March 14, 2019,
from https://translatorswithoutborders.org/our-work/kato-translation-platform/
THICKE, L. (2015). Translators without Borders: A Community Translating to Save Lives. ATA
Chronicle, XLIV(9).
Translators without Borders Code of Conduct for Translators. (n.d.). Retrieved from
http://www2.ohchr.org/english/law/crc.htm.
Valdeon, R. A. (2014). Perspectives : Studies in Translatology Translating informative and
persuasive texts, (October). https://doi.org/10.1080/09076760903122611
Zetzsche, J. (2017). Translators without Borders and Technology. ATA Chronicle, (July/August
2017), 27–28.