ATC speakers give industry standards advice at Dutch translation conference

Isabella told the recent Tolk- en Vertaalcongress at Breda in the Netherlands that irrespective of the size of a language service provider each needs to have a well-designed performance management system to measure performance in all areas of the business.

In her ‘Measuring what Matters’ presentation, she said effective monitoring and measuring of any LSP’s activities could only increase its professionalism, give it more control, transform its business plan and help it fulfil the requirements of Quality Management Standard ISO 9001:2015.

She told the Congress that only analysing an organisation’s financial results often came too late to influence its service offering, as they are a reflection of the outcomes of past actions. “Things can often go wrong well before financial results,” she said. “Using metrics that measure past events are like driving while looking through the rear view window. You can easily miss an opportunity or a threat on the road ahead until you’re upon it.”

Around 750 people attended the Congress, titled “The Language Industry 4.0: Embracing the Future?” and aimed at interpreters, translators and translation agencies, including those in the public sector, from the Netherlands and Belgium on 9th and 10th March.

Raisa McNab, ATC Lead on Standards, spoke earlier on ‘Managing quality through language industry ISO standards’. She told delegates how ISO standards can be used to build a framework to manage a translation company’s quality at the process level, as well as to bring benefits to the industry as a whole.

We have recently launched our own ISO Certification Service, offering the services of qualified auditors who are able to ensure the unique operations of the translation industry are understood and respected.

It provides auditing and certification services to:
Quality management standard ISO 9001:2015
Translation services standard ISO 17100:2015
Machine translation post-editing standard ISO 18587:2017.

Raisa said after the Congress: “This conference was a great opportunity for the ATC as we’re starting to talk further afield about our ISO Certification Service as well as raising awareness of the standards that have been designed to reinforce the professionalism of the language industry.”

To find out more about our ISO Certification Service, go to https://atciso.org.uk/.