Translation Link Checks

Survey translations are a standard service translation companies offer their Market Research clients. However, translating surveys is not a simple task. It requires not only linguistic accuracy but also cultural sensitivity and technical proficiency. After the translation, the survey must be checked in all the target languages to ensure it works properly and meets the client’s expectations. This can be tedious and time-consuming, but SurveyTester can help linguists speed it up and make it more efficient.

In this blog post, we will discuss five challenges translation companies face when they work on survey translation projects and how SurveyTester can help them overcome them.

The traditional way

When linguists find an error in the translation, they need to identify the survey question, make a screenshot marking the error, and send a description with the details to the internal project manager. This process costs time.
The translation company project manager must collect each linguist’s information, sort it, and send it to their market research client. This part of the process also takes some time.
Linguists need to know the details of the survey and the correct answers to walk through the survey and check every available question in the survey. Most surveys are complex; therefore, it is a problem to determine if every question was checked. Documenting the checked question takes time.
Some translations need more clarification, and the end client is usually a good source for checking details. This happens if the end client’s business uses specific phrases or synonyms in other languages. Checking these details costs time for all parties.
The documentation process is a manual process as well. When things go wrong, having a well-defined documentation process is an essential piece of information.

Easy Project Setup with SurveyTester

SurveyTester supports these five challenges with a high level of automation. It integrates into most survey systems and collects much information in the background, saving time for linguists and project managers. Let’s see how link checking can be done using SurveyTester:

A project manager creates a new project in SurveyTester with only a few steps. The relevant needed information for a new project are:

The survey link for one language or multiple links for multiple languages
Which Survey System is used for the survey link
The list of relevant languages for that project

Once the project is created, the project manager can create a checklist and assign linguists or other relevant team members to the project. Once a user is invited to a project, they typically get an email notification with the project link.

Good to know: You can add as many users as needed to your SurveyTester Account without additional cost.

Link Checking with SurveyTester

When users receive their invitations, their work will benefit in the following ways:

Linguists would see an overlay on top of the survey that offers them additional functions. They can see errors that were already reported and their status. They can also easily report new errors using a popup window to describe and classify them. They can even mark parts of the screen with colored frames so it is crystal clear where the error appears. Once they click “Create Issue,” SurveyTester creates a screenshot and sends all information to the SurveyTester server.
The project manager does not need to organize any emails or documents. They can check the error list and the checklist’s progress without investing additional work. They also can see the progress of each language check.
Project Managers and Linguists have an overview of the already-checked questions. SurveyTester collects information in the background and can display each question’s status. So it is easy to find out if a question has already been checked.
Other team members or market research clients can use comments and notifications for any reported issue. So, it is possible to communicate within the team without showing translators’ email addresses to others.
During the complete process, SurveyTester documents all relevant information. This includes Screenshots of all tested survey screens, creation or changes of issues, and much more.

While SurveyTester offers many more functions, we created examples for typical role permissions like Project managers or Linguists. Every user gets precisely the menus and items they need on the screen. We strongly believe that a System like Surveytester should be as simple as possible and as complex as necessary.

Check out the following screenshot to understand how to use SurveyTester for Market Research Link Checking.