Chillistore announces that they have been acquired by Argos Multilingual, but will remain a separate and independent subsidiary. More details here!
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Ardilaun Court, St Stephen’s Green, Dublin 2, Dublin D02 TD28, Ireland
A Fast-reference Guide for Understanding the EU Accessibility Act – And How Chillistore Can Help You Be Prepared
Everyone wants an equal opportunity. And for the nearly 80 million people with disabilities living in the EU, help is coming in the form of comprehensive new legislation. The EU’s recently ratified “Accessibility Act” introduces a continent-wide set of standards for physical accessibility and, most important, for localization, accessibility standards for all aspects of your business.
While we commonly think of topics like wheelchair accessibility when this topic comes up, the far bigger aspect of this legislation hits localization close to home: connections and communications.
Items like deaf/blind access to ticket machines, cash machines, and digital services from online banking to eBooks and software now have defined standards of accessibility to take into account.
And we know what you’re thinking: “Standards,” “Regulation,” and “Government,” all sound intimidating.
While it’s true that this new legislation is exhaustive and a little intimidating, it’s well worth digging in and learning how it can make your business more accessible to those 80 million potential customers across the EU. And being prepared for the 2025 implementation deadline doesn’t have to be a daunting task – because we’re here to help in two key areas of business communication: Desktop Publishing (DTP) and digital channels (your website and multimedia):
In many ways, you can think about this as a localization effort targeted at people with disabilities – you are simply making the changes needed to connect with their unique communications needs.
If you’ve been in Localization for any length of time, you’re already well acquainted with re-designing sales collateral and manuals to suit the language, text length, and cultural nuances of a new market.
Seen through that lens, we can view the Accessibility Act as simply another DTP adjustment. And, while the standard intends to better communicate with people with disabilities, these changes will make your communications with otherwise abled customers much more straightforward and accessible. A few points to highlight:
This isn’t strictly a disabled issue, but it probably goes without saying that writing website content that sounds like a Ph.D. thesis isn’t generally the best way to make a connection with customers – and it represents an extreme challenge for the cognitively impaired. Instead, make your content easy to understand with the following:
It’s no secret the internet has become vital to nearly everyone in the last decade – and COVID only increased that reliance. While many enjoy ready access, disabled people have been left out of many opportunities.
The good news is, with a few considerations, you can make your website accessible to people with disabilities while also meeting the requirements of the Accessibility Act:
As you can see, each of the steps above considers a different type of accessibility. By incorporating all 7 steps, your site can be accessible to the broadest number of customers – and that is precisely what the EU Accessibility Act is aiming for.
Our specialties include translation and adaptation work in the DTP realm and on websites, apps, and other multimedia. And we have over a decade of experience with both. The latest EU plan simply adds another opportunity to connect with another customer base. We view it as an opportunity rather than a negative requirement for checking the boxes.
And we’ve got the tools and experience to get you up to speed with the new standards without the headaches. Drop us a line. We’d be happy to discuss it with you so your brand can be ready for when the June 28 deadline rolls around in 2025.
Improving LQE, Quality Data Collection, Analysis, and Refinement with the Chillistore Language Ownership Program
Just how bad can the results from flawed or partial data analysis be? Let’s start with a history lesson.
The objective data for one of the most infamous business decisions in history was, in fact, conclusive: Back in 1985, Coca-Cola’s recently reformulated recipe was the hands-down winner of nearly 200,000 blind taste tests, beating both Pepsi and the original Coca-Cola formula.
Assured by the analysis of this objectively secured data, Coca-Cola pushed forward with a splashy and ambitious advertising campaign to introduce America to New Coke.
And it flopped.
As the executives at Coca-Cola pondered where they went wrong, they realized something: They had missed a vital piece of data collection – the cultural attachment customers had to the idea of the original Coke flavor. It had been such a part of their memories of good times and experiences that even if the new formula tasted better objectively, the “classic” flavor meant more emotionally.
Had both sets of data been collected, the analysis would have yielded a far different recommendation.
Just as the above story illustrates, the best results come from thorough collection and analysis of all the relevant data. This is why Chillistore’s Language Ownership Program puts special emphasis on this process to yield the most insightful LQE results: Collecting and analyzing relevant data from query management systems and outlining it back in the form of actionable reports and dashboards gives you objective building blocks to continuously improve quality.
The key here is working end-to-end with you (the customer), translators, and other stakeholders to help each team see how this collaborative approach optimizes translation workflows and ensures linguistic accuracy and contextual relevance.
Once localization teams see we can quantify the quality of translation efforts they begin to see LQE not as a pass/fail step but as a tool for constant improvement.
Analysis is impossible without first collecting multifaceted data sets that take all the areas of LQE into consideration. This encompasses the source content, translation memory, glossaries, and existing style guides. As the collaboration progresses, accumulated data forms a robust foundation – a well-structured database of quality potential, if you will.
However, the true power of this partnership emerges when the collected data undergoes a battery of data analytics. Leveraging modern analytical tools, we extract relevant insights from the amassed information. In-depth data analytics is used to build dashboards for fast, easy data visualizations. These insights are translated into actionable strategies.
We sit down with stakeholders at each stage of the project to gather the data needed for thorough LQE.
While it might sound complicated or purely technical, the real magic of a Language Ownership Program is human-to-human partnership. This approach captures insights from every perspective to enrich the data analysis process and build constant refinement:
This structured approach to language ownership guarantees feedback is grounded in the very data that drives the translation process.
And we would, of course, love to put Chillistore Language Ownership Program to work for you.
How Our Exclusive Language Ownership Program Streamlines Content Creation While Boosting Quality
It’s an obvious statement, but it bears repeating: No matter what the language, no matter which markets you are operating in, having high-quality, impactful localized content is essential to business success – both from the standpoint of website SEO to gain prospects all the way down to clear instructions and stand-out customer support to keep future business coming.
And, while we all know the above is true, the real challenge is creating the process that ensures all your translated content is of the highest quality possible. As a company that got its start in LQA, we at Chillistore understand the “how” of this process is best done by sharing responsibility between those who know the business, the target markets, and the process best.
We’ve pioneered the application of a highly successful collaboration framework model into localized content creation. Bringing business, market and process expertise together means we have all the stakeholders on board through every step of the content creation journey. Here are the four steps:
At the heart of translation quality is having the best possible source material to build your localization efforts off of. We use the principles pioneered on our Language Ownership Program to ensure the highest quality source materials to begin the translation process. With this content optimized and positively representing your service promise, you have a source of truth for all your localized content. Guaranteeing this means more than a standard LQA firm’s approach. We work side-by-side with the stakeholders in your organization to ensure everyone agrees on the source content’s quality before we go to the next steps. By doing this, we guarantee we have a central point to refer back to whenever there are questions of translation or brand intent.
Ensuring accurately translated localized content from the provided source material is where most LQA providers stop. But it leaves a nagging question for any sharp-minded business professional: How do you know the content will make an impact and deliver all the results it’s capable of?
We can help you answer this question with not one, but two collaborative steps that maximize translation effectiveness and move your LQA from simply asking, “Does it translate?” to “How effectively will it work when translated?”
Content Profiling: By first understanding your business goal we can apply source readiness analysis to map and cluster content based on those goals. This helps you get a better picture of the overall effectiveness of source content, where the opportunity for greater effectiveness lies, and lets us agree on efficient production workflows that prioritize certain content for highly skilled human subject matter experts, others for standard translation, and still others for machine translation with human post-editing based on your business goals, etc. In short: Work smarter, not harder and use your budget in the right place.
Content Suitability: A discriminating eye that catches discrepancies is what LQA is all about. By first understanding your brand and business goals, along with the legal and cultural concerns of your target markets, we can filter out anything that doesn’t fit your brand’s image and messaging or that would otherwise expose you to geopolitical, legal or cultural risks. This helps ensure all your translated content meets government compliances and is locally relevant.
Repeatable, consistent messaging is at the heart of translation quality. And the most efficient way to create this consistency is with a properly designed and implemented term base. Here the collaboration framework pairs SMEs and the translation team to identify and codify specific terminology that is unique to your industry and brand. Whether the system is as simple as a spreadsheet for a small implementation or requires a full industry-available or customized terminology management system, by bringing together the teams to collaborate on the solution and record those results early in the process, you get a high-quality start that saves translation resources later.
Content creation is rarely if ever a single-use project. We work with your team to capture the most commonly used phrases and strings in what we call “Translation Memeory” so that they can be reused. By keeping these common strings consistent it helps to ensure your brand voice stays consistent. These Translation Memories can get poluted over time though so we always suggest good maintentece. Our proprietary AI-enabled TM clean-up tool is good place to start with little investment but high value. All this guarantees your content doesn’t just read and sound great the first time, but continues sounding great for seasons to come with minimal “tone drift”.
Helping businesses expand and grow from market to market in the most efficient and consistent way possible is our passion, at Chillistore. We’d love to help your team grow your localized content while maintaining consistency in every language and culture you interact with. Drop us a line and let’s start creating together!
Connecting Teams and Creating End-to-end Quality With The Chillistore Language Ownership Program
Quick Survey: Which do you take better care of, the rental car you got at the airport on your last trip, or the car you own at home?
Whatever your personal answer, a quick conversation with a rental agent or fleet maintenance manager of any rental company will yield a host of stories of the kind of abuse a poor rental car can experience.
This little example shows one of those simple truisms: when people take ownership, they take greater care and responsibility for what they have entrusted them with. And it’s this truism that has guided the development of our Language Ownership Program.
With language ownership, we work with localization service buyers, LQA service providers, and translation service providers to create a smart ecosystem that improves quality while also streamlining the content creation process. And by taking a stake in the outcome of your project and working side-by-side with your team we can build the concept of quality ownership into every step of the process. As extended members of your team our reviewers take ownership from start to finish, making sure that the right people are involved on your side for accountability and streamlined decision-making.
Because our reviewers work directly with each team in the process to add our expertise in language and quality of translation, we can bridge gaps between project managers and linguistics experts to reduce pain points and make the entire process more fluid. Put simply, at Chillistore we never see quality as a simple pass/fail checklist, but as an end-to-end process of continuous improvement.
A strategic level view of your business is essential. But so too is getting into the hearts and minds of your customers at the local level. And while that sounds like a worthy goal, the reality is, no one person can be an expert in every market. That’s where we come in.
We first put in the work to really understand your business goals, brand positioning, and linguistic needs. Then we bring in our in-country experts who become an extension of your own team and add the local-level perspective and expertise that ensure success.
Our reviewers are linguists familiar with the language and culture of local markets and also experts in your industry. That dual expertise facilitates information and knowledge sharing, bridges the gap with your translators and allows knowledge sharing on a continuous basis that progressivly improves quality.
To put it more simply, it’s like having a local “fixer”, guiding your team through the intricacies of the culture towards a true quality outcome.
It’s a given that each culture has its own sensitivities, customs and nuances – and that it’s best to not run afoul of them.
Having so many different cultural experts on the Chillistore team means we can spot the cultural cautions others miss – and we can consult multiple experts to foster collaboration on even the most contentious issues from gender neutral language to fully representing all the communities you are trying to reach in a given culture.
Diversity and inclusivity are essential for reaching a wider audience. By tapping our team of cross-cultural pros, and reviewing your content with a critical eye we can make sure your translated message isn’t just heard, but really resonates with your target audience.
Understanding your business goals and the cultural nuances gives us the start of a quality cycle. But being able to quantify the quality of translation efforts is what makes the Language Ownership Program so powerful. Collecting and analyzing relevant data from query management systems and reporting it back in the form of actionable reports and dashboards gives you objective building blocks to improve quality over time.
To generate these reports, we analyze scorecards, check error types, measure results against your KPIs, and check details for each task (whether linked to product, language or service provider).
The data collected and analyzed is the base for truly objective quality recommendations that can be implemented into smart workflows.
Armed with the analytics above, the entire translation process can be optimized for constant improvement. By leveraging our community management and collaboration skills we help create a culture of ongoing improvement and innovation, where every localization stakeholder is committed to achieving the defined quality goals.
Or, to put it more simply: A process where everyone feels ownership.
In our 10 years in the LQA industry we have seen first hand the value bridging gaps between translators, reviewers, and stakeholders can bring.
We’d love to help you build quality throughout the full lifecycle of your content for better customer experience and growth in your target markets.
Call it the global imperative conundrum: Your brand stands for something in your home market, and whether it was by hiring an agency or doing the work in-house, you’ve allocated mountains of resources to keep your communications with customers, prospects, and staff all in a consistent voice to guarantee growth and efficiency. And now? You need to do the same thing across multiple markets – without running afoul of local cultural sensitivities. In short, you must adapt to Rome without giving up the identity you worked so hard to create. And that’s where a content review of your brand’s source material is invaluable.
Consider an illustration we’ve referenced before: As an individual traveling to a different culture, your personality remains the same at home and in the host country. How you display that personality changes – it adapts to suit the local custom.
If you’re a warm, outgoing person in the U.S., it’s displayed by a quick smile and being fast to extend a handshake, making eye contact, and using your first name.
Are these the correct customs to reflect your personality in Italy? What about Japan? It takes a little research to know for sure.
As an individual, you’ll probably do some internet searches, maybe call a friend who’s traveled there before to understand the local customs. The goal isn’t to change who you are but to meet the locals in the way they expect.
Just like researching local customs before you arrive, a content review looks at all your material to keep multi-market messaging aligned and, most importantly, optimized for the local culture. The goal is to flag areas of concern, offense, brand misalignment, and cultural insensitivity while working with your team to make sure your brand looks and sounds as appealing in its new market as it is in your home market. Because when you nail market suitability, you reap larger user engagement and higher customer retention.
As they say, it’s best to stop problems before they start. A source content review looks over your starting materials to spot challenges that will have to be addressed for the new market.
Doing this now can mitigate several pain points in the localization cycle by facilitating early-term harvesting or query resolution, helping with descriptions of tags or idiomatic expressions, and flagging content that might be deemed difficult or insensitive in other cultures.
A careful reading of source content with an eye toward the new target market will anticipate issues for translation, such as complex language, topics or examples that don’t make sense in the cultural context, and concepts that would be considered offensive to the target market.
A classic example of the latter is the “Got Milk?” campaign, which was understood to be humorous in the English-speaking American market but had to be adapted for the Spanish-speaking Latin American market due to the cultural understanding that the woman of the house handled grocery needs – and being caught in a situation without an item would imply the woman was lacking in her duties.
Surveying the source material lets you spot the key terms for your specific industry and brand voice that will need to be translated consistently, taking target market suitability into account. Content complexity comes into play here as the list of terms grows, the technical skill required in the industry increases, and the domain expertise of the brand grows.
With more consumers viewing videos and animations, paying attention to your multimedia and flagging areas of concern for cultural appropriateness is essential. For instance, in some markets, a man and a woman conducting business alone in an office would be considered offensive. The scene may need to be edited to avoid offense.
Once you’ve assessed the materials and understand the desired outcome, you’ll be able to create 3 essential tools to accomplish the goal of maintaining your brand voice while adapting to the culture and staying consistent in future communications:
Reviewing your content early in the process ensures your brand’s core message is well captured, understood, and represented. And when the core message is honed and well understood, the translation output is more accurate and relatable to the target audience.
But don’t think you have to pull this daunting task off all by yourself. We’ve over a decade of experience in the localization quality world, helping brands leap into new markets without losing their voice. And we’d love to help you too!
Redefining (And even Renaming Quality Assurance) With the Analytical LQE Model
“LQA.” It’s one of those ubiquitous terms in the localization world: Used by everyone, tossed around in nearly every meeting, heads nod with each mention. But often times, the definition is hard to pin down – and, of course, varies from each person using the term.
Which can leave your business open for inconsistent translation and missed opportunity.
What’s even worse, LQA is sometimes confused with QA check, a set of automated checks that produce a report listing potential errors in translation. However, it’s important to note that automated QA checks are not the only step in ensuring quality translations. To achieve better results, LQA should be performed both by a linguist and by automated quality assurance checks.
So instead of “LQA” and its nebulous definition, we prefer the term LQE. And to make sure we’re all on the same page, we want to define it so you can understand exactly what you need to be getting when it comes to ensuring consistent translation quality no matter what vendors you are using.
LQE provides an analytical method for measuring the quality of a translation by first letting you set an objective measuring system and then breaking translation text into smaller segments to track errors in specific words and phrases so that an absolute and objective quality score can be assigned.
Our industry has made progress, and we’re moving faster than ever. With the advent of technology, global sourcing, and distribution, plus the emergence of markets spanning the globe, the entire localization industry is growing at an incredible pace.
Companies are anxious to expand markets and find opportunities – which means they’re increasing the translation rate. And, with increased work comes an even more pressing need to evaluate the quality of all these translations and create objective measures that will improve translation efforts over time – because, as we all know, a poor translation can have an all-too-sinking effect on sales, customer satisfaction and even lead to lawsuits.
In short, we need a new Language Quality process that is faster to apply, more objective in its grading, and has adaptable standards to suit the different types of translation work performed in each market, especially translations containing risk-prone content referring to legal, geopolitical, and/or data protection items.
This is where Language Quality Evaluation (LQE) takes over from LQA (Language Quality Assurance): Expanding the definition of quality from mere pass/fail to a complete system of checks and balances that improve what really matters: your customer’s experience with your brand.
LQE framework allows you to select and adjust evaluation criteria for specific content type and specific needs but, whatever you chose, and however you tailor it, the results are still comparable (if you have different LQE models for different content types, they still fit together, giving you a detailed view of localization quality throughout different departments)
To think of it another way, TQE is applying the same statistics-based quality control system that revolutionized the manufacturing world to translation.
While it might sound intimidating, building an effective LQE model for any project can be broken down into a fairly simple process roadmap that first identifies the quality level to achieve for each content type and the criteria that will be used to determine if that quality level was met.
Once the level and criteria are set, the project can be scored, and follow-ups can be delivered. Let’s take a look at the basic steps:
Within the preliminary stage, you will also set the thresholds for 3 key measurements that make LQE an objective measuring tool:
After your thresholds are identified, the text is broken up into Translation Units (TUs) or phrases that can be checked for errors between the source document and the translation.
https://themqm.org/introduction-to-tqe/concrete-example-with-formulas/
The OQS can be compared to the starting Threshold Value to determine if the project is objectively a pass or a fail, but that’s only the beginning of TQE’s follow-up utility.
Because the OQS is an objective measure, your team can compare quality results between different projects to determine the success rate of translation providers across multiple projects and languages, note trends over time or find areas for targeted improvement.
Defined goals create defined processes with measurable metrics to judge quality from. With a true LQE philosophy guiding your process, subjective definitions of quality are replaced with objective data, so all team members can see the same end goal – and have the proper tools to measure their results. And by digging into the stats, each team member can see what steps they can take to improve their performance and deliver greater value.
https://www.istockphoto.com/vector/3d-isometric-flat-vector-conceptual-illustration-of-evaluation-gm1418874295-465421627?phrase=performance%20evaluation
With over a decade of experience in the localization quality world, we’ve become, if you’ll pardon the bragging, masters of implementing quality evaluation and control processes that break down the walls between translators and other stakeholders and get the results that today’s fast-moving business space demands. We’d love to explain more about how adopting an LQE philosophy can help – and we can guide you through every step along the way.
Accessibility Tools
