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This list of MQM-related terminology comprises an update to previous lists posted on the W3C website. For convenience of users of the ASTM WK46396, the numbering system approximates the system used in that document, although not all terms cited here are included in the draft standard.
Abbreviations: n = noun; adj = adjective; FF = [Term Type = Full Form]; T-Source = Term source, which in many cases is only the first of several or many uses in the WK46936 document.
Definition—integration and coordination of management activities for ensuring that an organization’s deliverables fulfill stakeholder requirements.
Discussion—Quality management encompasses quality planning, quality assurance, quality control, quality evaluation, and quality improvement.
Initialism—QM, Admitted
T-Source ASTM WK46396_Scope
Definition—quality management activities for designing a system of policies, processes, and procedures capable of producing deliverables that will fulfill stakeholder requirements.
T-Source ASTM WK46396_5.8
Definition—quality management activities that have the objective of auditing processes and procedures to provide confidence that stakeholder requirements can be fulfilled.
Discussion—Quality assurance is not equivalent to quality control (3.1.4)
T-Source ASTM WK46396_5.8
Initialism—QA, Admitted
Definition—quality management activities for monitoring and assessing real-time performance in order to verify that stakeholder requirements are being fulfilled within prescribed limits.
T-Source ASTM WK46396_5.8
Initialism—QC, Admitted
Definition—quality management activities focused on preventing variation from stakeholder requirements by adjusting a process—including any changes to measurements, resources, methods, tools, and training—to increase its ability to produce quality deliverables.
T-Source ASTM WK46396_Scope
Definition—quality management activities for determining whether stakeholder requirements have been fulfilled through inspection and measurement of product properties.
Discussion—Quality assessment is not a valid synonym for quality assurance or for quality evaluation with respect to MQM, and the initialism QA refers to quality assurance.
T-Source ASTM WK46396_Scope
Initialism—QE, Admitted
Definition—determination of conformity to specified requirements.
Source—ISO 9000, 3.11.7
Discussion—The result of an inspection can show conformity, nonconformity, or a degree of conformity. Translation quality evaluation can serve as a kind of inspection.
T-Source ASTM WK46396_3.1.7
Definition—inspection of a translation product.
Discussion—The terms translation quality assessment and TQA used in the sense of translation quality evaluation are deprecated in the context of this standard to avoid confusion with translation quality assurance, which is also properly abbreviated as TQA.
T-Source ASTM WK46396_4.1
Initialism—TQE, Admitted
Synonym—evaluation of translation output, Admitted
T-Source ISO 5060_4.1.4
Definition—quality evaluation that identifies and tallies errors from an analytic metric and calculates quality measures and quality ratings using a suitable scoring model.
T-Source ASTM WK46396_4
Synonym—analytic evaluation, Admitted
Synonym—analytic TQE, Admitted
Initialism—MQM-TQE, Admitted
Definition—TQE as defined in ASTMWK46396.
Definition—quality evaluation based on identifying overarching qualities such as readability and accuracy at the macro level.
T-Source ASTM WK46396_4
Short form—holistic translation evaluation, Admitted
Definition—appraisal of a factor, process, or product with the goal of providing feedback for the purpose of improving the process or the product
Discussion 1—Assessment can involve judging quality factors regarding a translation product, but does not provide judgment in the form of any kind of quality score. Assessment can also involve risk assessment, whereby the risk of poor quality is appraised and information is fed back to the system in order to ensure improvement.
Discussion 2—Quality Assessment should not be abbreviated as QA, which is almost universally accepted as the abbreviation for Quality Assurance.
T-Source Webpages
Definition—set of processes to render textual content from one language into an equivalent written or digital form in another language.
Discussion—In general usage, the word translation can refer to the translation process or to a translation product.
T-Source ASTM WK46396_Scope
Initialism—T9n, Admitted
Definition—means by which a translation product is created with respect to human and machine translation processes.
Discussion—At the highest level, translation modalities comprise human translation, unedited machine translation, and post-edited machine translation.
Definition—translated content as formatted and laid out in a document, web page, or application user interface, including text and complementary components, such as graphics, video, hyperlinks, and accessibility content.
Discussion—ISO 5060, 3.1.9, specifies translation output, the result of translation, as the primary term for a closely related concept, but without including some of the elements covered in the definition for translation product.
T-Source ASTM WK46396_Scope
Synonym—translation output
Definition—result of translation.
Source—ISO 20539:2019, 3.3.3
T-Source ISO 5060, 3.1.9
Definition—need or expectation that is stated, generally implied, or obligatory.
Discussion—Typical translation requirements can include using a specific termbase or style guide or targeting a specific audience.
T-Source ASTM WK46396_4
Definition—document that sets out detailed requirements to be satisfied by a translation product and the procedures for checking conformity to these requirements.
Source—Based on: ISO 6707-2:2017, 3.2.22
T-Source ASTM WK46396_Scope
Definition—specifications designed to ensure consistency and correctness of writing products or translation products
Discussion—Style guides provide general linguistic, stylistic, and formatting guidelines for writing, translating, and editing text, as well as prescriptive usage glossaries.
T-Source Used in definitions
Definition—of or pertaining to the language or culture in which content to be translated was created.
Discussion—When used as a noun, source is synonymous with source content or source text.
Definition—of or pertaining to the language or culture into which translated content will be consumed.
Discussion—When used as a noun, target is synonymous with target content or target text.
Definition—set of characteristics, information or conventions specific to the linguistic, cultural, technical and geographical conventions of a target audience.
Source—ISO 18587:2017, 3.2.10
Discussion—Locale references should comply with W3C BCP 47 language tags.
https://www.rfc-editor.org/rfc/rfc4646.txt
T-Source ASTM WK46396_4.2
Definition—one of a set of key factors, activities, elements and attributes of a given project used for creating project specifications.
Source—ISO/TS 11669:2012, 2.2.3.2
T-Source ASTM WK46396_7.3.3.1
Definition—text string resulting from the splitting of text according to predefined rules.
Discussion—Text segments are often sentences, but they can be other text elements, such as titles, captions, headers, or even paragraphs. Computer aids to translation (CAT tools) and machine translation programs typically segment source text content as the first step in the translation process.
T-Source ASTM WK46396_6.6
Definition—unit of segmented, previously translated text, matched with its corresponding source content.
Discussion—Translation segment pairs (called translation units in the TMX and XLIFF standards) are presented as either horizontal or vertical paired text chunks in CAT-tool interfaces and are retained as reusable knowledge units in translation memory serializations such as XLIFF or TMX.
T-Source ASTM WK46396_1.6
Synonym 1—translation unit, Admitted
Discussion—Translation unit in this context should not be confused with discussions of segmentation carried down to the lexical or terminological unit level, where the so-called translation unit represents a single sub-sentence level concept. Nor should translation unit be confused with the use of the term in the context of the programming environments C++ or SQL.
Initialism—TU, Admitted
Synonym 2—bitext segment pair
ˆ ISO 5060, used in definitions
Definition—database of source-language segments aligned with previously translated target-language segments created in a computer-assisted translation tool or by an automatic segment alignment tool.
T-Source ASTM WK46396_8.1.1.3
English content, n
T-Source ASTM WK46396_ 5.1.2
Definition—text plus, optionally, text, video, audio, photos, or other media.
English text, n
Definition—content in written form.
Definition—database comprising a terminological data collection.
Source—ISO 30042:2019, 3.28
Discussion 1—Termbases consist of concept-oriented terminological entries and related information, usually in multilingual format.
Discussion 2—Termbases comprise a critical resource in ensuring translation quality.
T-Source Appears in definitions
Definition—possible error identified manually or using a tool, whereby once resolved, it is either annotated as an error or considered a false positive.
T-Source ASTM WK46396_5.6
Definition—violation of a rule of good writing or good translation based on specifications.
T-Source ASTM WK46396_Scope
Definition—class of errors identified by error type IDs, error type names, definitions, and positions in a semantic hierarchy.
Discussion—The term error category is not used in MQM documents.
T-Source ASTM WK46396_Scope
Definition—taxonomy of error types that can be assigned to errors in quality evaluations in order to characterize the nature of problems encountered.
T-Source ASTM WK46396_4.2
Definition—analytic writing and translation error typology underlying the MQM quality evaluation model, organized under seven top-level error type dimensions.
T-Source ASTM WK46396_8
Definition—subset of the MQM error typology developed by the Translation Automation User Society (TAUS) to support software localization as the quality metric component of its Dynamic Quality Framework (DQF).
T-Source ASTM WK46396_Scope
Definition—top-level error type in the MQM error typology.
T-Source ASTM WK46396_4.2
Synonym—dimension, Admitted
Definition—one or more child error types associated with a given top-level error type dimension.
Synonym—subtype, Admitted
Definition—subset of MQM error types recommended for general usage, consisting of seven top-level dimensions and their most common second-level subtypes.
Discussion—The complete MQM-Core Error Typology is available in a collapsible tree structure at https://themqm.info/typology/.
T-Source ASTM WK46396_4.2
Definition—complete set of MQM error types including two additional subtypes listed at two additional hierarchical levels arranged subordinate to MQM-Core subtypes.
Discussion—The complete MQM-Full Error Typology will be available at https://themqm.org/error-types-2/mqmfull/.
T-Source ASTM WK46396_9.2.1.4
Definition—defining component of an error assigned in error annotation and referenced in error compilation and quality analysis.
Discussion—In MQM, the error attributes are the three defining characteristics of an error—error type, error severity level, and error root cause.
Definition—subset of the MQM error typology, optionally extended with valid user-defined error types.
T-Source ASTM WK46396_Scope
Synonym—compliant error typology, SF, Admitted
Definition—one of two or more errors that share the same error string and the same error type, for an error type that supports recurring error conflation.
T-Source ASTM WK46396_6.5
Synonym—recurring error, Deprecated
Definition—processing option in error compilation, for certain error types, that allows multiple instances of those error types in the error list that share the same error string to be assigned a reduced error count in the error summary.
Synonym—recurring error conflation, Deprecated
Definition—proximate cause at the end of a causal chain that leads to and is responsible for an error in the evaluation text.
Discussion—The proximate cause is the immediate most obvious cause for an error.
T-Source ASTM WK46396_4.1
Definition—catalog of error root causes that can be assigned to errors in quality evaluations to specify the objects or actions that are the proximate sources of the errors.
Discussion—A root cause taxonomy is structured as a hierarchy of error root causes, and root causes are identified with root cause IDs, root cause names, definitions, and example root causes.
T-Source ASTM WK46396_4.2, 6.4
Definition—root cause taxonomy underlying the MQM quality evaluation model.
Definition—association in error annotation of errors with their root causes, taken from a standard root cause taxonomy, and use of these root causes in error compilation and quality analysis to generate targeted root cause–based quality measures.
Discussion—The quality measures produced in quality analysis are generated using partial quality analysis to target specific high-level root causes of interest.
T-Source ASTM WK46396_6.4
Definition—standard of measurement that defines the conditions and the rules for performing a measurement and for understanding the results of a measurement.
Source—ISO/IEC 19086-2:2018, Cloud computing — Service level agreement (SLA) framework — Part 2: Metric model, 3.6
T-Source ASTM WK46396_Scope
Definition—translation quality metric based on an MQM-compliant error typology and an MQM-compliant scoring model.
T-Source ASTM WK46396_5.2.3
Synonym—compliant metric, SF, Admitted
T-Source ASTM WK46396_Scope
Definition—description of the data points, scoring parameters, and formulas used to calculate quality measures and quality ratings in a quality evaluation metric.
T-Source ASTM WK46396_8
Definition—tabular representation of a given translation evaluation metric that is used during error annotation to record errors and to assign severity levels.
Discussion 1—Scorecards can be configured as simple tables or spreadsheets, as stand-alone programmed tools, or as widgets or other built-in features associated with computer aids for translators.
Discussion 2—The scorecard examples used in this discussion can be used for either evaluation or assessment.
Synonym—scorecard, Admitted
Synonym—error evaluation scorecard, Admitted
T-Source ASTM WK46396_4.1
Synonym—translation evaluation scorecard
Synonym—translation evaluation scoresheet
Source—ISO 5060, 3.3.4
Definition—row number that appears in the first column of the scorecard associated with an error type.
Discussion—Error type numbers are specific to each individual scorecard design, have no other mnemonic reference, and vary from scorecard to scorecard depending on the scoring model.
T-Source 4
Initialism—ET No, Admitted
Definition—actual number of words in a translation source text or translation target text product, usually counted by a CAT-tool.
Discussion—The choice of source or target text word count reflects stakeholder needs and preferences.
Initialism—EWC, Admitted
T-Source ASTM WK46396_8.1.1.5
Definition—arbitrary number of words in a hypothetical reference evaluation text.
Discussion—The RWC is typically 1000, which together with a maximum score value of 100 produces overall quality scores that resemble percentages.
T-Source ASTM WK46396_8.3.3
Initialism—RWC, Admitted
Definition—one of a small set of error severity designations, reflecting the effect of the error on the usability of the text.
Discussion—In the example shown in the ASTM standard, error severity levels range from neutral to critical.
T-Source ASTM WK46396_6.3
Definition—negative value levied against an error instance during translation quality evaluation.
Discussion—Depending on the error severity level associated with an error, a given number of penalty points is selected to function as a severity penalty multiplier in a scorecard.
T-Source ASTM WK46396_6.3.4
Definition—severity level of an error that differs from a quality evaluator’s preferential translation or that is flagged for the translator’s attention but is an acceptable translation.
T-Source ASTM WK46396_6.3.1
Definition—severity level of an error that does not seriously impede the usability, understandability, or reliability of the content for its intended purpose, but has a limited impact on, for example, accuracy, stylistic quality, consistency, fluency, clarity, or general appeal of the content.
T-Source ASTM WK46396_6.3.2
Definition—severity level of an error that seriously affects the understandability, reliability, or usability of the content for its intended purpose or hinders the proper use of the product or service due to a significant loss or change in meaning or because the error appears in a highly visible or important part of the content.
T-Source ASTM WK46396_6.3.3
Definition—severity level of an error that renders the entire content unfit for purpose or poses the risk for serious physical, financial, or reputational harm.
T-Source ASTM WK46396_6.3.4
Definition—error penalty point value assigned to an error severity level in an error evaluation scorecard.
Discussion—When an error instance is assigned to an error type and severity level, the severity penalty multiplier for that column is automatically multiplied times the error count (number of error instances) recorded in that cell.
T-Source ASTM WK46396_6.4.5
Definition—real number value used as a multiplier to differentiate between overall normed penalty total values for different text types or projects with significantly different specifications.
Discussion—Examples used in the standard and most of the web pages use a scaling parameter value of 1.
T-Source ASTM WK46396_8.3.3
Initialism—SP, n, Admitted
Synonym—penalty scaler, Deprecated
Initialism—PS, n, Deprecated
Definition—total number of instances of an individual error type or subtype assigned to a given error severity level for a given translation evaluation.
T-Source ASTM WK46396_8.3.1
Initialism—EC, Admitted
Definition—value whose function is to weight individual error types more or less severely, depending on project specifications.
Initialism 1—ETW, Admitted
T-Source ASTM WK46396_8.3.1
Definition—sum of the products of individual error counts associated with a given error type multiplied by their respective severity penalty multipliers.
T-Source ASTM WK46396_8.3.1
Initialism—ETPT, Admitted
Definition—sum of all error type penalty totals for a given translation evaluation project.
T-Source ASTM WK46396_8.3.2
Initialism—APT, Admitted
Synonym—evaluation penalty point total, Admitted
Definition—sum of error type penalty point totals of an evaluation of translation output.
T-Source ISO 5060, 3.5.4
Definition—quotient of the absolute penalty total divided by the evaluation word count.
T-Source ASTM WK46396_8.3.3.1
Initialism—PWPT, Admitted
Synonym—error score
Definition—quotient of the evaluation penalty point total divided by the number of characters, number of words, or number of lines evaluated in the translation output
Source—ISO DIS 5060, 3.3.9
Discussion 1—It should be noted that ISO 5060 works with the number of words, characters, or lines in the translation output (the target text), not the number of words in the source text.
Discussion 2—ISO 5060 uses the error score itself to determine the final quality rating.
Definition—arbitrary score value designed to manipulate the overall quality score to shift its value into a range which is easier for most people to comprehend.
T-Source ASTM WK46396_8.3.3
Initialism—MSV, Admitted
Definition—quality measure of a writing product or translation product that represents the per-word error penalty total relative to the reference word count.
T-Source ASTM WK46396_8.3.3.2
Synonym—normed penalty total, n Term Type SF Term Status Admitted
Initialism—ONPT, Admitted
Definition—quality measure of a writing product or translation product, a multiple, usually 100, of the difference between 1 and a fraction of the normed penalty total.
T-Source ASTM WK46396_8.3.3
Synonym—quality score, Admitted
Initialism—OQS, Admitted
Definition—factor used in calculating other scores, which is determined by dividing the absolute penalty score by the evaluation word count.
Initialism—OQF, Admitted
Definition—separate stage in the sequence of processes included in an analytic quality evaluation.
Discussion—Quality evaluation proceeds through three stages, (preliminary planning, error annotation, and automatic value and rating calculations).
T-Source AM_8
Definition—organization-wide policy implemented on the basis of the specific purpose for the evaluation of a translation product.
Discussion—The purpose for the evaluation of translation output can vary from project to project. Therefore, it might be necessary to apply various translation evaluation strategies.
T-Source AM_5.2, ISO 3.3.3
T-Source AM_8.1.1.1
Definition—sampling strategy in which certain subsets of text are statistically overrepresented in the evaluation word count to enhance the statistical weight of critical portions of the evaluation text.
Discussion—Oversampled segments might focus on new segments, on sections that include detailed specifications, or on conclusions.
T-Source AM_8.1.13
Definition—classification based on the required characteristics of a translation product needed to fulfill a purpose, based on a shared sets of requirements reflecting the required fluency of the target text and the needed correspondence between source and target content.
Discussion—A sample chunk can make up a complete sample or represent a portion of a sample consisting of multiple text chunks.
T-Source AM_8.1.1.5
Definition—classification based on the required characteristics of a product needed to fulfil a purposed purpose.
Discussion—Grades are intended as a starting point for a pre-production discussion of requirements in developing specifications and are not used for evaluating translations after production
T-Source ISO 11669, 5.2
Synonym–translation product grade
T-Source AM_8.1.2.1
Definition—quality evaluation stage, consisting of inspection by a human evaluator to identify and flag errors in a writing product or translation product.
T-Source AM_Scope
Definition—standard mode of an error annotation tool in which human evaluators find and flag errors in the evaluation text
Synonym—human error annotation, Admitted
T-Source ASTM
Definition—mode of an error annotation tool in which a system process automatically finds and flags issues corresponding to active annotation error types.
T-Source NIT
Definition—initial fully automatic quality evaluation stage whereby the error counts and the error type penalty totals are calculated, then summed to determine the absolute penalty total.
T-Source AM_8.3.1
T-Source AM_
Definition—quality evaluation project based on the error counts of the full set of active annotation error types or the full set of active root causes.
Discussion—Normed penalty totals and quality scores based on a full quality analysis are the default, unmarked case. They are only specified as FQA-based to contrast them to PQA-based quality measures.
T-Source AM_
Synonym—FQA, Initalism, Admitted
Discussion 2—ISO 5060, Annex F3 uses the term reduced scorecard to discuss a metric designed for purposes of partial quality analysis.
T-Source AM_ Synonym—PQA, Initialism, Admitted
Definition—quantitative measure of a writing product or translation product produced by a quality evaluation process, identified by best score and score directionality.
Discussion—In MQM, the two quality measures are the Normed Penalty Total and the Overall quality score.
T-Source AM_4.1
Definition—indication of whether a higher or lower score is better.
Discussion 1—Directionality reflects the relationship that exists between the overall normed penalty total (ONPT) and the overall quality score (OQS): the higher the ONPT, the lower the OQS and vice versa.
Discussion 2—In contrast, the scoring model used as an example in ISO 5060 uses a so-called “error count,” which is essentially equivalent to the per-word penalty total, whereby the final quality rating aims for the lowest possible error score, as opposed the ASTM standard, which prioritizes a higher overall quality score.
T-Source AM_7.4
Synonym—directionality, Admitted
Definition—quality descriptor based on the degree to which a writing product or translation product meets requirements for a particular application.
Discussion 1—A typical quality rating might be is either “pass” or “fail”, or it might reflect a range, such as “excellent” to “unacceptable”.
Discussion 2—quality rating based on the critical error count and the threshold value, in that a CEC >0 or an Overall Quality Score < the TV will result in a Fail Rating for an evaluated translation product.
T-Source AM_
Synonym—pass/faril rating, Admitted
Definition—value of the overall quality score below which the translation output is not fit for purpose.
Synonym—TV, Initialism, Admitted
Synonym—quality score threshold value, FF, Admitted
Synonym—QST, Initialism, Admitted
T-Source AM_8.3.3.6
Definition—the number of critical errors tallied during the annotation phase, whereby any value of one or more automatically triggers a Fail Rating, regardless of other score values.
T-Source AM_
Synonym—CEC, Initialism, Admitted
Definition—process of demonstrating that a metric measures what it is intended to measure and that the results correspond to the level to which the evaluated product complies with the specifications.
Discussion—A metric can be validated by reviewing critical values, such as error types and weightings, first against specifications, and ultimately against identified requirements.
T-Source AM_Scope
Definition—confirmation that project specifications have been fulfilled in a work project.
Discussion—Verification of a translation product based on a valid metric is intended to ensure customer satisfaction. © The MQM 2022
T-Source AM_4.4
Definition—characteristic of a quality evaluation system that produces stable, reproducible, and consistent results using the same specifications and instructions in repeat evaluations of the same or similar evaluation texts.
T-Source AM_9.4
Definition—measure of consistency used to determine the extent to which different evaluators agree in their evaluation decisions.
T-Source NIT
Synonym—IRR, Initalism, Admitted
T-Source NIT
Definition—measure of consistency used to determine the extent to which the same evaluator reaches the same evaluation decisions during multiple evaluations.
T-Source NIT
Definition—range of values that is likely to include a population value with a certain degree of confidence.
T-Source AM_8.1.1.4
Source—https://www.simplypsychology.org/confidence-interval.html
Definition—person who performs the translation of the source material into a target text written in another language, according to the agreed-on specifications and generally accepted standards of professional practice.
Discussion—In some cases, translation will be performed by a machine translation (MT) system rather than a human translator.
T-Source AM_F2575
Definition—person who examines the target language content against the source language content to ensure linguistic accuracy and faithfulness to the source language content. (Based on ISO 20539, 3.3.9)
T-Source AM_3.6.1
Synonym—editor [included in W3C]
Synonym—reviser, Admitted
Definition—person who examines a translation product in order to ensure its linguistic and domain accuracy. (Based on ISO 20539, 3.3.8)
Discussion—Regardless of whether the editor is monolingual or bilingual, the examination in the monolingual editing stage is monolingual with respect to the target language and the domain.
T-Source AM_9.3.4
Synonym—monolingual editor, Admitted
T-Source NIT
Definition—person who conducts a quality evaluation of a translation product produced by another person or by a machine translation program.
T-Source AM_Scope
Synonym—translation evaluator, Admitted
Definition—person or organization that can affect, be affected by, or perceive itself to be affected by, a translation or localization activity
Discussion—Typical stakeholders include management, requesters, service providers, end users, interested third parties, etc.
T-Source AM_Scope
Definition—group of people to whom a text is directed within a language, region, and culture, with additional specifiers to identify the particular group
T-Source AM_4.1
Definition—organization or individual that provides professional translation services.
Synonym—TSP, Initialism
Definition—person or entity placing the order for translation services.
Discussion—The requester who functions in the sense of ASTM F 2575 and other standards is the final requester who negotiates with the TSP to determine the specifications for a specific translation project. In a corporate environment, this person may be a final requester in a string of individuals.
T-Source F2575, 3.18
Definition—person or entity perceived to have a need or desire for the completed translation.
T-Source F2575, 3.9a
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