Rue de la Loi/Wetstraat 175
1048 Bruxelles/Brussel
BELGIQUE/BELGIË
Tel. +32 22816111
www.european-council.europa.eu
www.consilium.europa.eu
doi:10.2860/70150
Quality Assurance
at the Council's
Translation Department
INFOR M ATION SERIES
GENER AL SECRETARIAT OF THE COUNCIL
QC-31-11-019-EN-C
EN
© EUROPEAN UNION, 2011 – RS 08
FEBRUARY 2011
Notice
General Secretariat of the Council
This brochure is produced by the General Secretariat of the Council
Directorate-General A - Personnel and Administration
Directorate 3 - Translation and Document Production.
Quality Assurance at the Council's Translation Department
This brochure is for information purposes only.
ISBN 978-92-824-2919-8
doi:10.2860/70150
For any information on the European Council and the Council, you can consult the following websites:
www.european-council.europa.eu
www.consilium.europa.eu
or contact the Public Information Department of the General Secretariat of the Council at the following address:
Rue de la Loi/Wetstraat 175
1048 Bruxelles/Brussel
BELGIQUE/BELGIË
Tel: +32 22815650
Fax: +32 22814977
Internet: www.consilium.europa.eu/infopublic
More information on the European Union is available on the Internet (http://europa.eu).
Cataloguing data can be found at the end of this publication.
ISBN 978-92-824-2919-8
doi:10.2860/70150
© European Union, 2011
Reproduction is authorised provided the source is acknowledged.
Printed in Belgium
PRINTED ON ELEMENTAL CHLORINE-FREE BLEACHED PAPER (ECF)
Coverpage:Hanneke Beaumont
Stepping Forward
2011 — 16 p. — 14,8 x 21cm
Quality Assurance
at the Council's
Translation Department
The Lex Building,
where the Council’s
Translation Department is situated
2
Quality Assurance
at the Council’s
Translation Department
Introduction
The 2004 enlargement brought about a number of changes
in the organisation of the General Secretariat of the Council’s Translation Department, which is part of the DGA-3
Directorate (Translation and document production).
The Department underwent
a major restructuring, which
Each language unit has its
resulted in its current shape.
own management team: a Head
It consists of a central maof Unit, a Quality Controller,
nagement and coordination
a Resources Manager, and a
group, and 23 Translation
Head of Local Coordination.
Units, one for each official
EU language. Each language unit has its own management team: a Head of Unit (AD), a Quality Controller (AD), a Resources Manager (AST), and a Head of Local
Coordination (AST).
3
With the number of official languages (and therefore translation units) more than doubling over a few years, harmonising practices and standards across units became crucial for
the smooth functioning
of the Department.
With the number of official languages more than doubling over a
few years, harmonising practices
and standards became crucial for
the smooth functioning of the Department.
In 2006, DGA 3 took
a number of measures intended to provide the instruments
that
are necessary
to ensure high quality of translations
in such an enlarged
multilingual environment. One of them was to create a new post for a Quality Policy Coordinator to assist and advise the heads of the Department on all
quality management issues, and to act as an internal
and interinstitutional contact point for such matters.
He was also assigned the task of coordinating all qualityrelated efforts in accordance with a quality policy note
drawn up that same year, which established guidelines for
the Translation Department for the years to come.
Quality Assurance Principles
Quality Assurance in the Council’s Translation Department rests on three broad areas: staff, methods and procedures, and tools.
4
Staff
•
Recruitment
The selection of staff is in the hands of EPSO, with
which the Council’s Translation Department endeavours to cooperate so as to ensure that the staff
recruited have the level of competence required to
deliver the high quality of documents that the Translation Department’s users are entitled to expect.
•
Developing competences
The Translation Department also seeks to develop
the competences of staff, for instance through language training, discussion sessions and lectures on
key EU policies and topics, attending meetings of
working parties, and workshops on revision practices.
The Translation Department seeks to develop
the competences of staff, for instance through language training, discussion sessions and lectures on
key EU policies.
5
•
Improving work satisfaction
The Department aims to be an attractive and motivating place to work, by offering variety and a sense
of responsibility to its staff.
Providing prompt, regular and relevant feedback
should also be seen as contributing to this goal.
Methods and procedures
•
Editing
The quality of translations is heavily dependent
on the quality of the originals, which are often
drafted in English and
French by non-native
speakers. Editing these
The Translation Department has
originals before they
been been offering an editing serare translated makes
vice to drafters to ensure that texts
sense from an effiare of a suitable high quality.
ciency point of view,
since it will speed up
the translation process.
It is also a way of providing DGA-3’s users with
added value.
For a number of years now, the Translation Department has been offering such an editing service to
drafters who wish to ensure that their texts are of a
suitably high quality.
6
•
Translation, revision and formatting
The Department has carried out a project to identify and document recommended best practices for
t ra nslators,
revisers and
assista nts,
Recommended best practices
covering the
for translators, revisers and assisentire docutants specify a number of procedures
ment producas regards quality and project mation chain. It
nagement.
addresses not
only the core
t r a n s l at ion
process as such, but also other aspects related to
the provision of a translation service, and specifies
a number of procedures for the language units as
regards quality and project management.
•
Coordination
Local coordination in the language units plays a key
part in matching translation work to the best combination of translator, reviser and assistant available
to do the job.
Linguistic coordination is involved in preparing
work at a central level (Trados/EURAMIS preprocessing cell, checking that all the background
material is available) and ensuring that the formatting of the document complies with the standards
in place.
7
Tools
Terminology and documentary databases as well as Computer-Assisted Translation (CAT) tools such as Trados/
EURAMIS play a key role in Quality Assurance as well as
being useful for enhancing productivity. They are a means
of ensuring terminological and phraseological consistency, inCAT tools are a means of ensuside a document as
ring technological and phraseolowell as across families
gical consistency, inside a docuof related documents,
ment as well as across families of
all of which contribute
to translation quality.
related documents, all of which
contribute to translation quality.
ELISE deserves special
mention as a means of
communicating information and consulting participants from the various institutions involved in multilingual lawmaking under the ordinary legislative procedure (formerly known as co-decision).
These tools deliver their best potential if they are used systematically throughout the institutions, which is why the
Department makes every effort to promote their use.
The role of the Quality
Controllers in language units
The main task of the Quality Controller is to assist the Head
of Unit in all aspects related to the linguistic or technical
8
quality of the documents produced in the unit. They are required to monitor the quality of the work of linguists and
assistants and to promote best practices throughout the unit.
They also act as the main contact point for terminology
and documentation (T&D), guide the unit’s T&D work in
close cooperation with the central T&D team, and can be
called upon to participate in horizontal quality management
projects on an ad-hoc basis. Finally, they act as interinstitutional contact point for members of their language community on quality-related matters.
Some specific projects / actions
A number of specific actions, or projects, have already been
started to address the quality-related issues identified in the
quality policy note mentioned earlier ”(p. 4)”.
This is done mostly through the network of quality controllers (one per language
unit) working closely
with the Translation DeQuality-related issues are adpartment’s Quality Policy
dressed by a network of quality
Coordinator. A number
controllers (one par language
of initiatives have been
unit) working closely with the
launched in order, on the
one hand, to ensure the
Translation Department’s Quaappropriate quality of the
lity Policy Coordinator.
Department’s output and,
on the other hand, to develop and promote best
practices. Some of the projects under way concern:
9
•
Best practices
A list of core tasks required from translators, revisers
and assistants has been compiled. This is very much
an on-going project, and work continues on specific
issues — for instance, guidelines have been issued
on the best ways of handling corrigenda (“COR”)
and revised versions (“REV”) of documents.
Moreover, the working group in charge has developed an extensive taxonomy of Council documents
— from Council conclusions to legislative documents at various stages to simple meeting notices —
and formulated its recommendations as to the best
practices for handling each type of document.
These include the recommended and the minimal
levels of revision, and particular difficulties that can
arise.
•
Final document monitoring
Every week, a number of samples (totalling 20 pages) of translations finalised the previous week is
drawn at random for evaluation. They are then distributed
to the quality controllers who
Every week, translations
are required to assess whether
are randomly sampled for
the pages checked comply with
evaluation.
the required quality standards.
In doing so, they take into
10
account the type and purpose of the document – in
other words, they verify whether the translation is
fit for purpose.
Quality controllers then
This type of monitoring has
meet to discuss,
turned out to be a very useful diagon a weekly banostic tool, enabling participants
sis, any probto identify problem areas and poslems they have
sible corrective measures.
found in the
samples (particularly borderline cases, or problems which require a coordinated approach).
Apart from producing statistical indicators, this
exercise allows the quality controllers to identify
and address issues and to exchange views regularly.
This type of monitoring has turned out to be a very
useful diagnostic tool, enabling participants to identify problem areas and possible corrective measures.
•
Process monitoring
This procedure, which is about to be introduced,
will concentrate on the evaluation of the work of
the various participants (translator, reviser, assistant) who contributed to the translation – rather
than the assessment of the translated text itself.
11
The quality controller’s remit will be to find out
whether the tasks of the translator, reviser or assistant have been carried out conscientiously and in
accordance with the established best practices.
Equally important, this will be an opportunity to
provide guidance to individual linguists or assistants to help them cope with problems and enhance
their skills. It will also be used by the Head of Unit
as an element to be taken into account during regular appraisal of staff.
•
Horizontal contacts
The production of documents is a complex process
involving many actors and institutions. The importance of good communication and coordination cannot
be overestimated, and links
Keeping in touch with
between translation units and
same-language translators
other departments should be
from other institutions helps
fostered.
to resolve terminological
problems.
Outside the GSC, they often
keep in touch with same-language translators from other
institutions — for instance, to resolve terminological problems.
Within the GSC, contacts with other structures
and units are also on the increase.
12
Many language units collaborate closely with the
lawyer-linguist sections of their respective languages.
“Functional associations” — informal inter-language groupings of translators focusing on specific
subject areas — have invited colleagues from other
DGs to give presentations for the Language Service
on subjects of topical interest.
Such initiatives have been very well-received by
translators.
•
Editing / Linguistic
and technical quality of originals
The difficulties caused by technical or linguistic errors or infelicities
in a document are
multiplied out duThe difficulties caused by
ring translation.
technical or linguistic errors
or infelicities in a document
It therefore makes
are multiplied out during
sense to address
translation.
these problems as
near as possible to
the source, before
the document is distributed to translation units.
An editing service has been put in place for English and French (the main drafting languages at the
13
Council), and the Translation Department makes
every effort to raise awareness of it amongst drafters and to encourage its use.
A technical quality cell has also been put in place
at Central Coordination level to monitor in-coming
documents for compliance
with formatting rules (so as
A technical quality cell has
to prevent problems downbeen put in place at Central
stream, during the translation
phase) and advise on how to
Coordination level to moniapply them.
tor in-coming documents for
compliance with formatting
rules and give advice on how
to apply them.
These
actions
therefore
serve a dual purpose: they
speed up the translation
process
(upstream
Quality Assurance), and they provide final users with added value: all documents
that come out of the GSC (originals and translations
alike) must be of an equally high quality.
Further Reading
The Quality Assurance Policy of the Council’s Translation Department, as described and elaborated in this
brochure, is based on the “Framework Note on Quality
Policy” of 16 October 2006.
If you would like to receive a copy of that note, please
contact the Quality Policy Coordinator, John Beaven
([email protected]) or one of the
Quality Controllers listed on p. 16.
14
Quality network
The Council’s Translation Department quality network
consists of the 23 Quality Controllers and a Quality
Coordinator.
The full list of the Quality Controllers of the language units
is to be found on p. 16.
Quality Monitoring samples are brought to
weekly meetings. In order to ensure fruitful discussions, there are two such sittings every week,
with Quality Controllers being free to choose
which one they attend.
15
COUNCIL’S TRANSLATION
DEPARTMENT QUALITY NETWORK
Language
Quality Controller
Telephone
BG
Albena IOVTCHEVA
+32-2-2814421 [email protected]
CS
Jiri PLACEK
+32-2-2819774 [email protected]
DA
Uffe BROENS
+32-2-2817908 [email protected]
DE
Dieter KEILER
+32-2-2816761 [email protected]
EL
Alexandra NESTORIDI
EN
Fiona COLLIER
+32-2-2817342 [email protected]
ES
José CUENDA
+32-2-2817003 [email protected]
ET
Liis JAANSALU
+32-2-2813871
[email protected]
FI
Hellevi MALM
+32-2-2818644
[email protected]
FR
Jean-Paul ROOS
+32-2-2817127
[email protected]
GA
Tadhg HARRINGTON
+32-2-2817150 [email protected]
HU
Zsuzsanna KOVÁCS
+32-2-2812814 [email protected]
IT
Francesca PIOMBO
+32-2-2816296
[email protected]
LT
Milda KISIELIENE
+32-2-2813757
[email protected]
+32-2-2817313
LV
16
Email
[email protected]
[email protected]
MT
Joseph CHIRCOP
+32-2-2813623 [email protected]
NL
Patrick WEYMEIS
+32-2-2817448
[email protected]
PL
Krzysztof KWASNIEWICZ
+32-2-2813850
[email protected]
PT
Ana Luisa FARIA
+32-2-2819411
[email protected]
RO
Geanina CERNAT
+32-2-2812809 [email protected]
SK
Branislav VARSIK
+32-2-2815975 [email protected]
SL
Aleksandra KRANER
SV
Mette LEMBRING
+32-2-2813001
[email protected]
+32-2-2818641 [email protected]
Notice
General Secretariat of the Council
This brochure is produced by the General Secretariat of the Council
Directorate-General A - Personnel and Administration
Directorate 3 - Translation and Document Production.
Quality Assurance at the Council's Translation Department
This brochure is for information purposes only.
ISBN 978-92-824-2919-8
doi:10.2860/70150
For any information on the European Council and the Council, you can consult the following websites:
www.european-council.europa.eu
www.consilium.europa.eu
or contact the Public Information Department of the General Secretariat of the Council at the following address:
Rue de la Loi/Wetstraat 175
1048 Bruxelles/Brussel
BELGIQUE/BELGIË
Tel: +32 22815650
Fax: +32 22814977
Internet: www.consilium.europa.eu/infopublic
More information on the European Union is available on the Internet (http://europa.eu).
Cataloguing data can be found at the end of this publication.
ISBN 978-92-824-2919-8
doi:10.2860/70150
© European Union, 2011
Reproduction is authorised provided the source is acknowledged.
Printed in Belgium
PRINTED ON ELEMENTAL CHLORINE-FREE BLEACHED PAPER (ECF)
Coverpage:Hanneke Beaumont
Stepping Forward
2011 — 16 p. — 14,8 x 21cm
Rue de la Loi/Wetstraat 175
1048 Bruxelles/Brussel
BELGIQUE/BELGIË
Tel. +32 22816111
www.european-council.europa.eu
www.consilium.europa.eu
doi:10.2860/70150
Quality Assurance
at the Council's
Translation Department
INFOR M ATION SERIES
GENER AL SECRETARIAT OF THE COUNCIL
QC-31-11-019-EN-C
EN
© EUROPEAN UNION, 2011 – RS 08
FEBRUARY 2011