As a quality language service provider, it’s critical to have people for whom it’s second nature to dot the i’s and cross the t’s. At Yamagata Europe, our commitment to quality is not just a company policy but a personal and individual challenge. Each and every team member is a professional who displays accountability and responsibility towards every task undertaken. On top of that, we have a dedicated Quality team in charge of continuous improvement and monitoring whether our deliverables meet the highest quality standards.
Quality policy
At the head of our Quality team is our Quality Manager, Leslie Heyrman. Leslie is responsible for the quality policy at Yamagata Europe. This means that she follows up on the implementation of ISO 9001, ISO 17100 and ISO 18587 on a daily basis. She is also in charge of the registration, analysis and follow-up of internally and externally detected non-conformities.
Leslie is backed up by a team of nearly 15 QA Coordinators and QA Specialists. Before sending a deliverable to the customer, our Quality team performs a final series of thorough quality assurance checks. Since translation can also impact the layout, we not only perform dedicated checks on translation but also on layout quality.
Flexibility
Julie Lenoir is QA Coordinator. Together with her QA Coordinator colleagues and the team of QA Specialists, she is responsible for the translation quality assurance tasks at Yamagata Europe. The team always makes sure priorities and deadlines are checked with the project managers. As priorities can change regularly, our QA specialists need to be flexible in handling project requests. A typical QA Coordinator’s day consists of monitoring capacity, updating workflows for customers, assisting the QA Specialists and documenting QA procedures.
What our Quality team says:
As a QA coordinator I’m working in close contact with all other departments at Yamagata Europe. My tasks and the tools that I use are diverse, so the job never gets boring. Also, the satisfaction of improving processes for our customers is high.
Julie Lenoir
Working in the Quality team is never boring. As a QA Coordinator I get to be involved in the QA process as well as in the communication with our project managers and external professionals.
Ivana Eliasova
Eye for detail
The ideal QA specialist combines knowledge of foreign languages with a great eye for detail and advanced technical skills.
Our Translation QA Specialists are trained linguists who double-check all translated content before final delivery to our customers. To support them, they use our very own QA Distiller software to detect formal content mistakes such as omissions, inconsistencies, formatting, terminology, custom patterns, etc. Each QA project is finalized with a spellcheck, a visual check and any additionally required customer specific check. Detected mistakes or inconsistencies are discussed and rectified with the translators.
Translation can sometimes cause text reduction or expansion, which is why a layout QA check is also performed for certain file formats. Our Layout QA Specialists double-check whether the layout flows naturally for each target deliverable and whether the necessary content or image adaptations have been made for the corresponding target market. They rectify layout mistakes and discuss any remaining linguistic queries with the translators.
What our Quality team says:
I like the complexity and the diversity of my job. You need some technical knowledge of all tools you use daily, but you also need people skills and the ability to clearly communicate. This combination provides a very healthy work balance.
Dasa Klementova
It’s an everyday adventure for me. There is always something to solve, to question, to consult and to learn – not only from a linguistic point of view, but also from the technical side of the translation process.
Katarina Zupkova
Kaizen
QA results are systematically shared with all involved team members and stored in our Quality Management System (QMS). Our quality team not only strives for quality translations, but also for a qualitative workflow by constantly questioning our systems and workflows. This principle lies at the heart of the company’s Kaizen continuous improvement philosophy.
Are you looking for this level of quality care for your projects?