Scorecard (ing) English to Indonesian translation [Time Spent]

LISA LQA Standard

This is another post on scorecarding. As we mentioned earlier, this is a kind of assessing a translation for various purposes, especially the quality of the translation before proceeding with next steps.

Recently, we got many requests on scorecarding English to Indonesian with different levels of difficulty and topics and we always set our own standards on this to our service user. We have to set that we cannot do the scorecarding at the same day. The scorecarding should be delivered in the next day. This is our standard. If you ever wonder why we do this, the reason is one. Scorecarding looks simple and takes little time, but please see what really happens in scorecarding the translation.

Initial checking
An email is coming in. The translation service user is asking for quote. It says that he needs a scorecarding service and asks to assess 1,000 words out of 5,000 words or more. As a translation service provider, you may not simply say OK without quickly checking the quality of the translation, and you do not have to thoroughly check the translation from the beginning to the last part of the document. Remember, you just need to be time-wise. Just do a quick check and decide whether you accept the job or not, without telling anything related to the translation quality to your potential client. Just tell them whether or not you can do. This is specially important as your role is as a checker or assessor with relevant requirements.

Scorecarding
This is the process. The time allocated for 1,000 - 2,000 word English-to-Indonesian-translation scorecarding is 1 hour from client. This is the normal practice, but in case you need more time when scorecarding, you may tell the real time spent for one scorecarding to your client. Your client may approve or reject it based on their own discretion. We suggest you tell the real time spent and accept whatever decision is made by your client.

Please see also our post on basics of scorecarding here.

What's inside scorecarding
The task looks simple at the beginning, but please note that this is not as simple as we imagine in the beginning. In the end, you will need to:

• make thorough research before you decide the translation has error
• make valid argument with valid reference; you can just this is literal translation, this is not Indonesian standard, this is missing conjunction, and so on. You need to explain what you have considered as mistake. You can just make any change to the existing translation with no valid reason. All you do must be reference based instead of judgment based.
• make valid report
• make a conclusion on the overall translation and inform the client if the translation is good to go
• confront with translator if objection and rejection from the translator arise; the story will go on.

Time spent for one scorecarding

We received this kind of request quite often and normally, only one hour is allocated for one scorecarding. Practically, the scorecarding is simple and takes less time. You just need to skip here and there, read here and there and so on, but trust us. Although, the allocated time is one hour only and this means that we just need one hour a day to complete this task, please consider the above things (what's inside scorecarding). What you do will not only relate to your own job, but also the translator's job. If you make a mistake in your scorecarding and thus it causes trouble to the translator, then you have killed his/her livelihood. Based on this humane consideration and empirical matters we encounter so far, we have set our standard not to provide at-the-same-day scorecarding service for any pairs. It means that we can provide the result the other day. If client sends the translation for scorecarding on April 1, 2017, client will receive the file back on April 2, 2017. This is to ensure that the scorecarding is valid from any perspective.

We are open for any discussion and even free training or consultation on the relevant topic. Just email us or visit our office in Malang, East Java, Indonesia.