Quality Assurance

Although Quality Assurance is an integral part of the localization process, there are different approaches within the industry for best QA practice. At CSOFT, we believe the task driven QA model produces the best result. Contrasting to traditional QA model where a centralized QA department manages the entire QA process, CSOFT's QA teams belong to the various functional groups such as L10N engineering, translation, testing and DTP. Each functional group is responsible for its internal QA to minimize the number of defects that are passed downstream. This distributed QA approach allows our teams to take full responsibility of their work and to discover defects early to reduce waste. For example, if the translation’s poor quality is only detected after final DTP, much work has been wasted in formatting something that has to be thrown away. The same is true that if file prep missed certain strings for translation, post translation compilation and testing will have to be performed over again to include the missed text.

At CSOFT we insist on a strict Quality Assurance procedure to guarantee our clients the highest quality output. CSOFT employs a combination of the LISA Model (Localization Industry Standards Association) and our own QA procedures. This process has been developed through years of experiences in the localization industry. To ensure quality for all components in a localized product including functionality, documentation, engineering, formatting and linguistic issues a strict Quality Assurance model must be followed. Using well defined quality metrics and L10N procedures we are able to consistently provide our clients with a reliable and quality localization. Additionally, we have found through our successes in localization that regularly conducted internal training sessions and seminars allow our staff to share project experience and tips. This constantly improves our processes and helps not only our current clients but all of our future projects.

• Predefined metrics to define PASS/FAIL
• List of tasks that are performed by engineers / translators / publisher / reviewers
• Checklists for localization kit
• Metrics for evaluation of source documents
• Query forms and reports
• DTP checklists
• NCP reports
• Checklists for testing localized user interface (GUI)
• Online help checklists
• Knowledge Center to store and share project tips
• Final delivery checklists
• Postmortem report