In modern localization world opinions really differ on readability. However for us it became the vital and crucial part of quality evaluation system. It is a catalyst that makes our QE system more objective and closer to the real life. It drives quality improvement and user satisfaction. This is a great error category that is worth to talk about.

1. TAUS ROUNDTABLE 2014
22 May/ Moscow (Russia)

2. THURSDAY, 22 May /11:20 – 11:50
Readability: Cornerstone of Google’s L10N Quality
Evaluation System
Maxim Lobanov, Google
TAUS ROUNDTABLE 2014
22 May/ Moscow (Russia)

3. Maxim Lobanov
Senior Language Specialist at Google
For Czech, Hungarian, Romanian, Russian, Slovak, and Ukrainian languages
mlobanov@google.com
Readability – cornerstone of
Google l10n evaluation system

4. Localization Quality Evaluation (LQE)
What: Measure quality of translations provided by vendors
How: Error-typology-based review of translations
Who: Professional qualified linguists

5. LQE tool
– An internal tool to evaluate translation quality
– Used with Google Translation Toolkit
– All LQE results are accumulated in the LQE server

6. Types of errors
Projects are rated according to 6 categories of linguistic errors:
–Compliance (deviation from style guide or instructions)
–Grammar (violation of language rules)
–Meaning (translation has different meaning than source)
–Punctuation / Spelling (typos, punctuation, etc)
–Terminology (deviation from glossary/term database)
– Readability (poor flow of speech, unnatural wording, etc)
CATEGORIES BUT NOT ERRORS
–Client edits (corrections made not because of translator's fault)
–Kudos (to mark excellent translations)
Each error type has 3 severity levels with different weights

7. Key LQE metrics - LQE score
Errors per 1000 words
–Number of errors normalized to a document with 1000 words
–Pass rate: projects with less than 3 errors per thousand are good enough to be published

8. "LQE score v.s. Real life quality" mystery
Good LQE score ≠ good quality...
– With no regular errors (grammar, punctuation, spelling, terminology, etc.) translation
was still bad

9. Readability!
– Error category to mark unauthentic or awkward translations
– Literal translations
– Poor tone and style
– Poor knowledge of target audience
– Dull wordy texts
– No local flavor
– Lack of efforts to get context and understand products

10. Readability is VIP
– Really adds value to localization quality
– Helps end-users
– Helps Googlers
– Improves the writing skills of translators
– Increases attention to details
– Makes translation job meaningful
– Helps industry

11. And even more!
– This is one of the drivers behind Google's mission:
to organize the world's information and make it universally accessible
and useful.

12. Challenges
– Mentality
– Consistency
– Lack of standards
– Context
– Churn
– Underuse

13. What's next
– Further standardization
– More trainings and analysis
– LQE score reflecting the real life quality
– Readability and LQE applied to MT

14. Questions?