Errors arising when a term does not conform to normative subject field or organizational terminology standards or when a term in the target content is not the correct, normative equivalent of the corresponding term in the source content.
Use of a term that differs from term usage required by a specified termbase or other resource.
Examples: 1) A termbase specifies that the term 'USB memory stick' should be used, but the text uses 'USB flash drive'. 2) A French text translates English 'e-mail' as 'e-mail' but terminology guidelines mandated that 'courriel' be used. 3) The English musicological term 'dog' is translated (literally) into German as 'Hund' instead of as 'Schnarre', as specified in a terminology database.
Error that violates company/organization-specific terminology guidelines as specified in a terminology resource.
Examples: Company-specific terminology guidelines specify that a product be called the “Acme Turbo2000™”, but the text calls it the “Acme Turbo” or the “Turbo200”.
Error that violates terminology guidelines as specified in a terminology resource from a third-party.
Examples: Specifications for translation of a software application specify that UI terms be translated according to the public glossaries provided by the developers of the platforms upon which it will be deployed, but certain terms are not translated consistently with these specifications.
Use of multiple terms for the same concept in cases where consistency is desirable.
Examples: The text refers to a component as the 'brake release lever', 'brake disengagement lever', 'manual brake release', and 'manual disengagement release'.
Error where the translator fails to spot incorrect term usage in source content.
Examples: A source text inconsistently uses “dog”, “buzzing bridge”, and “buzzer” for a component of a musical instrument. A source text inconsistently uses “hot dog”, “weiner”, and “frank” for a long, thin sausage served in a split roll.
Error where soure content terminology is correct, but target content terms are not used consistently.
Examples: German source content uses one term for a component of a vehicle, but the target content uses “brake release lever”, “brake disengagement lever”, “manual brake release”, and “manual disengagement release” for this term in English.
Abbreviation form inconsistent in text.
Examples: A text uses both “app.” and “approx.” for approximately.
Use of term that it is not the term a domain expert would use or because it gives rise to a conceptual mismatch.
Examples: The word 'river' in an English source text is translated into French as 'rivière'. But the river in question flows into the sea, not into a lake or another river, so the correct French translation should have been 'fleuve'.
Habitual juxtaposition of a particular term with another term or words with a co-occurrence frequency greater than chance.
Examples: submit an application (not give it or do it) commit a crime (not do a crime) sue for damages (not request damages)
Errors occurring when the target content does not accurately correspond to the propositional content of the source text because of distortion, omission, or addition to the message.
Error occuring when the target content that does not accurately represent the source content.
Examples: A source text states that a medicine should not be administered in doses greater than 200 mg, but the translation states that it should be administered in doses greater than 200 mg (i.e., negation has been omitted).
Target content inaccurate with respect to technical knowledge (even if the translation otherwise appears plausible).
Examples: 1) The translation of a physics text describing the interaction of subatomic particles in a medical scanning device seems plausible, but incorrectly conveys the relationship of two particles and is therefore incorrect. 2) A source text describes how a piano action (the mechanism connecting a piano key to the hammer that strikes a string) is translated in a way that incorrectly conveys the relationship between two components.
Target content that introduces an ambiguity that is not present in the source content.
Examples: A text that means that someone is highly recommended is translated as “I cannot recommend him too highly.” (The meaning can be either that the speaker cannot make a good recommendation or that he is highly recommended.)
Ambiguous source content that is rendered in the target content inappropriately with respect to specifications.
Examples: 1) Unintentional ambiguity that poses potential for serious misunderstanding: retention of ambiguity in the target content is an error, but it may be considered a root cause and not the fault of the translator. On the other hand, if the translator is an expert team member trained and instructed to spot source content errors, retention of such errors might be counted as an error. 2) Unintentional ambiguity, but the specifications indicate that the target content shall reflect all aspects of the original (highly source-oriented translation, so-called verbatim translation), in which case disambiguating the ambiguity would be an error. 3) Intentional ambiguity, in which case the specifications should indicate that ambiguities in the source content shall be retained in the target content.
Incorrect use in target content of a word that is superficially similar to a source word.
Examples: 1) The Italian word simpatico has been translated as sympathetic in English. 2) The German word sogenannt is not equivalent to English so-called.
Incorrect conversion of numeric values as needed to adjust for different units (e.g., currencies, metric vs. U.S. measurement systems).
Examples: A source text specifies that an item is 25 centimeters (~10 inches) long, but the source states that it is 25 inches (63.5 cm) long.
Numbers inconsistent between source and target content.
Examples: The source text specifies that a part is 124 mm long but the target text specifies that it is 135 mm long.
Inconsistent match in dates or times between source and target content.
Examples: 1) German source content provides the date 09.02.09 (=February 9, 2009) but the English target renders it as September 2, 2009. 2) English source content specifies a time of “4:40 PM” but this is rendered as 04:40 (=4:40 AM) in the German target content.
Error where a name, place, or other named entity does not match the proper target language form.
Examples: The source content refers to Dublin, Ohio, but the target content incorrectly refers to Dublin, Ireland.
Word-for-word equivalent in target content instead of idiomatic translation.
Examples: A Hungarian text contains the phrase Tele van a hocipőd?, which has been translated as “Are your snow boots full?” rather than with the idiomatic meaning of “Feeling overwhelmed?”
Machine translation that is completely decoupled from the sense of the input sentence.
Examples: Example: <pr> Ides viajar num cacilheiro eléctrico? <MT-en> Would you travel in an electric locksmith? <HT-en> Would you cross the river on an electric ferry? Input perturbation: unknown local usage in place of the word "ferry"– cacilheiro is a local ferry that crosses the Tagos river to a town on the other side that is in the state of Cacilhas
Error occuring in the target content that is inappropriately more specific than the source content.
Examples: The source text refers to a boy, but is translated with a word that applies only to young boys rather than the more general term.
Error occuring in the target content that is inappropriately less specific than the source content.
Examples: The source content uses words that refer to a specific type of military officer, but the target content refers to military officers in general.
Error occuring in the target content that includes content not present in the source.
Examples: A translation includes portions of another translation that were inadvertently pasted into the document.
Error where content present in the source is missing in the target.
Examples: A paragraph present in the source is missing in the translation.
Variable placeholder omitted from a translated text.
Examples: A translated text should read “Number of lives remaining: $lifeNumber” but is rendered as “Number of lives remaining:”, with the variable $lifeNumber omitted.
Target content that is potentially offensive in some way in the source language, but that has been inappropriately "watered down" in the translation.
Examples: 1) Unplanned rapid disassembly, describing the explosion of a space rocket 2) A racial slur in a legal transcript submitted as evidence is watered down.
Error occuring when a text segment marked "Do not transalate!" is translated in the target text.
Examples: Meaningful brand names, which are intended to remain in the SL form. A marketing slogan for worldwide use is intended to remain in English. * A product name should not be translated because it is supposed to remain in English. A Japanese translation refers to “Apple Computers” as アップルコンピュータ when the English expression should have been left untranslated.
Error occuring when a text segment that was intended for translation is omitted in the target content.
Examples: A sentence in a Japanese document translated into English is left in Japanese.
Text in a graphic left untranslated.
Examples: Part labels in a graphic were left untranslated even though running text was translated.
Untrue statement or an incorrect data value present in the source content and retained in the target content.
Examples: 1) Instead of prescribing 2.5 cc of a particular drug under specified circumstances, dosing instructions indicate that 25 cc should be administered, which is a potentially life-threatening overdose. 2) A marketing brochure states that a particular feature of a software application was first supported in Release 4.0, when in fact it was introduced with Release 4.1. Clients who want to use this feature but are still running on Release 4.0 will incorrectly believe that they do not have to upgrade to a later version of the software.
Source text incomplete, resulting in instanceswhere needed content is missing in the source language.
Examples: A process description leaves out key steps needed to complete the process, resulting in an incomplete description of the process.
Source [or target?] List missing necessary items.
Examples: A list of items included in a retail package omits a crucial component in the target text.
Procedure missing necessary steps.
Examples: A document describing a procedure to restart a diesel generator omits a crucial step that must be completed prior to performing additional steps.
Errors related to the linguistic well-formedness of the text, including problems with grammaticality, idiomaticity, and mechanical correctness.
Error that occurs when a text string (sentence, phrase, other) in the translation violates the grammatical rules of the target language.
Examples: An English text reads “The man was seeing the his wife.
Error in selecting the appropriate morphological variant of a word.
Examples: Had became for had become, sheeps for sheep.
Incorrect part of speech reflective of target language norms.
Examples: A text reads “Read these instructions careful” instead of “Read these instructions carefully.”
Error where a verb form displays the wrong tense, mood, or aspect.
Examples: An English text reads “After the button is pushing” (present progressive) instead of “After the button has been pushed” (past passive).
Error where two or more words do not agree with respect to case, number, person, or other grammatical features.
Examples: A text reads “They was expecting a report.”
Word order non-compliant with target language norms.
Examples: A German text reads “Er hat gesehen den Mann” instead of “Er hat den Mann gesehen.”
Error in a word that serves to connect important information and is critical for understanding because it defines the relationships between other content words such as nouns, verbs, and the like.
Examples: 1) A text reads “Check the part number as given in the screen” instead of “on the screen”. 2) A text reads “The graphic is then copied into an internal memory” instead of “The graphic is copied to internal memory.”
Error in usage that violates well-established co-occurence of a particular word with another word or words.
Examples: 1) He threw a petition at the court, as opposed to he submitted a petition to the court. 2) Butter and bread, as opposed to bread and butter.
Punctuation incorrect according to target language conventions.
Examples: 1) An English text uses a semicolon where a comma should be used. 2) A two-digit year reference begins with an open single quote instead of a close single quote (apostrophe). 3) A Greek text uses a question mark instead of the anticipated semicolon to express a question. 4) German quotation marks are carried over into English or French target content.
Missing mark from a set of paired punctuation marks, such as a missing parenthesis or quote mark.
Examples: A text reads “King Ludwig of Bavaria (1845–1896 was deposed on account of his supposed madness,” omitting the closing parenthesis around the dates.
Error in the production of whitespace (spacebar marks instead of tabs) or incorrect spacing after full stop, etc.
Examples: 1) A document uses a string of space characters instead of tabs. 2) Extra spaces are added at the start of a string. 3) The space before question marks or colons in French is carried over into German or English target content.
Error occurring when a word is misspelled.
Examples: The German word Zustellung is spelled Zustetlugn.
Errors related to the misuse of diacritical marks added to base fonts, such as accents, umlauts, and the like.
Examples: The Hungarian word bőven (using o with a double acute (˝)) is spelled as bõven, using a tilde (˜), which is not found in Hungarian.
Strings transliterated into the script of the target language using the wrong transliteration system or using the preferred transliteration system but applying it incorrectly.
Examples: 1) The capital of China is translated as Peking, following the now-dated Wade-Giles romanization system, rather than Beijing, following the ISO and PRC standard pinyin. 2) The name of the final president of the Soviet Union, Михаи́л Горбачёв, is transliterated into English as Mikhail Gorbachev. It is transliterated into Spanish as Mijaíl Gorbachov. Though English and Spanish are both written in the Latin script, using Mijaíl in English transliterations or Mikhail in Spanish transliterations is an error. Note: In such cases, parties can agree upon appropriate conventions. In some cases, names may be translated (such as the names of cities) or living individuals may have their own preferences and desire uniform usage across languages. 3) In many cases and locales, the presentation or use of names and their forms in other languags is subject to strict legal restrictions.
Eror where one or more letters in a word are written with nonstandard upper- and lowercase letter forms, considering the textual setting and applicable locale conventions.
Examples: 1)The name of the Canadian comedian Norm Macdonald is written incorrectly as Norm MacDonald. 2) The company name eBay is incorrectly styled as EBay at the beginning of a sentence, rather than the preferred form eBay, shown correctly in this sentence: “eBay Inc. is a successful e-commerce company based in San Jose, California.” 3) The extinct whale Leviathan melvillei, named for Moby Dick author Herman Melville, was styled as Leviathan Melvillei, contrary to the capitalization conventions for genus and species names.
Error where compounding conventions are not observed.
Examples: For instance, in English, make-work project appears incorrectly as makework project.
Error involving incorrect adherence to specified title style.
Examples: 1) Violation of an ISO rule, which specifies lowercase for all but the first word in a title, as opposed to common US English style. 2) A title is enclosed in quotes when it should be in italics with no quotes.
Content fails to conform to a reference corpus.
Examples: A project uses a corpus of plain-language text against which a text is compared. When checked against the corpus, it is flagged as non-conforming because sentences are too long and complex, even though it is otherwise grammatical
Error where text contains a pattern (e.g., text that matches a regular expression) that is not allowed.
Examples: The regular expression ["'”’][,\.;] (i.e., a quote mark followed by a comma, full stop, or semicolon) is defined as not allowed for a project, but a text contains the string ”, (closing quote followed by a comma).
Content (e.g., a word or longer portion of text) repeated unintentionally.
Examples: 1) “The man the man whom she saw…” 2) A paragraph appears verbatim twice in a row. 3) Changes in sentence structure and the like when rendering the target language can result in inappropriate tagging in the target content.
Inappropriately collated sequence.
Examples: 1) A listing of definitions in a translation of a legal document should be in alphabetical order in Spanish but appears in the order of the source English document. 2) A Japanese listing of names uses Kanji sorting rather than telephone book sorting.
Relative pronouns or other referential mechanisms unclear in their reference.
Examples: A text reads “After completing this, move to the next step,” but there are a number of possible referents for "this" in the text.
Text garbled or incomprehensible.
Examples: 1) The following text appears in an English translation of a German automotive manual: “The brake from whe this કુતારો િસ S149235 part numbr,,.” 2) A UTF8 text is processed by a tool that expects ISO Latin-1 encoding and produces unreadable output.
Error occuring when characters garbled due to incorrect application of an encoding.
Examples: A text document in UTF-8 encoding is opened as ISO Latin-1, resulting in all “upper ASCII” characters being garbled.
Error where text include colons or forward- or back-slashes, which might cause confusion with path names on some computer systems.
Examples: Example: This term is standardized/harmonized. If a text is being written for translation, it is wise to write: This term is standardized or harmonized.
Error that occurs when a text string (word, phrase, sentence, phrase, other) violates the text-building (discourse)norms of the target language.
Examples: Differences between languages that affect the sequencing of information in sentences or even in the overall structure of documents can result in violations of textual conventions, even though grammatical and core stylistic rules are not necessarily violated.
Index/TOC items structured incorrectly or missing.
Examples: A Table of Contents lacks needed headers at some levels.
Index/TOC items incorrect or missing.
Examples: A chapter heading is not listed in a Table of Contents.
Index/TOC refers to incorrect page numbers.
Examples: A table of contents refers to page numbers from the source document that do not apply to the translated text.
Index/TOC formatted incorrectly.
Examples: Specifications indicate that a table of contents should be formatted with variable (hierarchical) indenting and tab leader characters, but is instead displayed as a “run-in” list.
Phrasing/wording inconsistent between text shown in images and running text.
Examples: A screen shot shows a button with the text “Open other…” but the text referring to the screen shot tells the user to click on the “Open alternative…” button.
Portions of the text needed to connect it into an understandable whole (e.g., reference, substitution, ellipsis, conjunction, and lexical cohesion) missing or incorrect.
Examples: The contact tracing tool the external team the health department hired developed has caused a privacy breach.
Text lacking a clear semantic relationship between its parts, i.e., the different parts don't hang together, don't follow the discourse conventions of the target language, or don't “make sense.”
Errors occurring in a text that are grammatically acceptable but are inappropriate because they deviate from organizational style guides or exhibit inappropriate language style.
Errors occuring where text violates third-party style guidelines.
Examples: Company style states that passive sentences may not be used, but the text uses passive sentences.
Errors occuring where text violates third-party style guidelines.
Examples: Specifications stated that English text was to be formatted according to the Chicago Manual of Style, but the text delivered followed the American Psychological Association style guide.
Errors occuring when text fails to conform wth a declared external style reference.
Examples: 1) Translation specifications state that quotes in a text must match the 1957 edition of a book, but the translator used the 1943 edition, which was substantially different. 2) Original English: Pursuant to Article 5(1) of Decision (CFSP) 2021/1143, the Council authorised the Political and Security Committee (PSC) to take decisions… Official German: Gemäß Artikel 5 Absatz 1 des Beschlusses (GASP) 2021/1143 hat der Rat das Politische und Sicherheitspolitische Komitee (PSK) ermächtigt… Back translation: According to Article 5, Paragraph 1 of the Decision (GASP) 2021/1143, the Council has empowered the Political and Security Committee (PSK), to make decisions… 3) Example of translating a hidden quote instead of using the original: Ist dies schon Tollheit, hat es doch Methode. If this is already insanity, it nevertheless has method. If this is actually hysterics, it still has method. Shakespeare original: Though this be madness, yet there is method in ‘t.
Characteristic of text that uses a level of formality higher or lower than required by the specifications or general language conventions.
Examples: A formal letter uses contractions, colloquialisms, and expressions characteristic of spoken rather than written language, and those elements come across as less serious than intended.
Incorrct grammatical register, such as using informal pronouns or verb forms when their formal counterparts are required.
Examples: A text used for a highly formal announcement uses the German du form instead of the expected Sie.
Highly informal, often conversational, words used in text that should be more formal.
Examples: In a formal legal document: The dude representing the complainant stated his case.
Style involving excessive wordiness or overly embedded clauses, often due to inappropriate retention of source text style in the target text.
Examples: A text is written with many embedded clauses and an excessively wordy style. While the intended meaning can be understood, and the text is grammatically correct, the text is very awkward and difficult to follow. “However, a personal language variety (in such approaches called “idiolect”) usually is internally heterogeneous (it varies in particular according to different situations and/or media) and therefore not suitable to serve as the smallest unit of linguistic variation, whereby in contrast, idiolects according to the framework developed in this document, are homogeneous by definition, whereas personal varieties are sets of idiolects.”
Style that is grammatical, but unnatural.
Examples: The following text appears in an English translation of a German letter: “We thanked him with heart” where “with heart” is an understandable, but non-idiomatic rendering, better stated as “heartily”.
Style that varies inconsistently throught the text.
Examples: 1) One part of a text is written in a clear, “terse” style, while other sections are written in a more wordy style. 2) The same text recurs at several points in a large document that has been divided up and submitted to multiple translators, with the result that that text is translated in three different ways, which can involve different style as well as terminology or register differences.
Errors occurring when the translation product violates locale-specific content or formatting requirements for data elements.
inappropriate number format for its locale.
Examples: A German text states “123,456” instead of the locale-appropriate “123.456”.
Incorrect currency format for its locale.
Examples: A text dealing with business transactions from English into Hindi assumes that all currencies will be expressed in simple units, while the convention in India is to give such prices in lakh rupees (100,000 rupees).
Inappropriate measurement format for its locale.
Examples: A text created for use in France uses feet and inches and Fahrenheit temperatures.
Error involving incorrrect time format for its locale.
Examples: Unless specified as using a 24 hour clock, US time formats report time after noon using 12-hour notation (for instance, '7:54:12 pm' instead of '19:54:12' used in many other countries.
Error involving inappropriate date format for its locale.
Examples: A German text has '06/07/2012' for '7 June 2012' instead of '07.06.2012'.
Wrong type of calendar used for its locale, such as Islamic vs. Gregorian.
Examples: A tourism text translated from Arabic English gives a year as 1435, but it should have been converted from the Islamic calendar to the Gregorian calendar year 2014.
Name format used in text or a data field inappropriate for its locale, such as switching the order of last and first names inappropriately.
Examples: 1) A text translated from Hungarian to English presents names with the family name first when the name order should be instead inverted to have family name last. 2) A web form translated for Indonesia requires users to provide a “last name” even though many Indonesians have only a single name. 3) A translated text refers to “Pedro Diego Estavez” as “Mr. Estavez” rather than “Mr. Diego”.
Error involving inappropriate address format for locale.
Examples: An online form translated from English to Hindi requires a house number even though many addresses in India do not include a house number, or the postal code is in the wrong position for a given locale.
Wrong form used for postal codes for target locale.
Examples: A translated online form validates all postal codes as consisting of exactly five numbers, but the target locale uses a combination of six letters and numbers.
Error involving inappropriate telephone number form for locale.
Examples: A German text presents a telephone number in the format (xxx) xxx - xxxx instead of the expected 0xx followed by a group of digits separated into groups by spaces.
Punctuation mark usage systematically inappropriate for the specified locale.
Examples: Initial Spanish upside-down question and exclamation marks are carried over into an English or French text: ¿Como te llamas? -- What is your name? (¿What is your name? would contain a punctuation error.)
Quote marks inappropriate for locale.
Examples: A French text should use guillemets («») but instead systematically uses German-style quotes („”).
Target text in violation of national language standards.
Examples: A French advertising text uses anglicisms that are forbidden for print texts by the Academie française specifications.
Shortcuts in translated software product non-compliant with locale expectations or meaningless for locale.
Examples: A software product uses CTRL-S to save a file in Hungarian, rather than the appropriate CTRL-M (for mentenni).
Errors arising from the use of target content that is invalid or inappropriate for the target locale or target audience.
Error where content Inappropriately uses a culture-specific reference that will not be understandable to the intended audience.
Examples: 1) An English text refers to touchdown, end run or even the term football itself. These prove difficult to translate and confuse the target audience in Germany, for whom Fußball is a different game. 2) A marketing text in Greek includes reference to popular Greek music. When translated into English these references are not understandable to the target audience.
Content unsuitable for use by the end user, excluding problems related to suitability for the target locale [or specified target audience].
Examples: Repair manual content was originally written for experts and assumes a certain level of experience and knowledge, but marketing strategies have changed and end users need more detailed instructions.
Content specific to the source locale inappropriate for intended target locale, audience, or purpose.
Examples: 1) An advertising text translated for Sweden refers to special offers available only in Germany and is therefore misleading. 2) A manual for a printer sold in Spain describes features that apply only to versions of the printer sold in Japan and thus will confuse purchasers.
Content language- or locale-dependent logical assumptions impossible to appropriately localize.
Examples: 1) A technical text uses a ‘deductive’ reasoning style that cannot be easily adapted to areas expecting an ‘inductive’ reasoning style. The text needs to be localized to address the conflict in cultural logic.
Text non-compliant with legal requirements as set forth in the specifications.
Examples: Specifications stated that US FCC regulatory notices be replaced by European CE notices rather than translated, but they were translated instead, rendering the text legally problematic for use in Europe.
Content that breaches commonly accepted standards of decent and proper speech, and is hence likely to offend the intended audience or other likely readers.
Examples: A source text refers to bacon as an example of a tasty food, but the reference is offensive when translated into Arabic.
Content that is likely to be considered offensive or disgusting by accepted standards of morality and decency as perceived by the intended audience.
Examples: Obscene expressions often involve the use of sexual vulgarities.
Content or expressions likely to be offensive or blasphemous on religious grounds as perceived by the intended audience.
Examples: Profane expressions invoke the names of the deity or saints. Many profane expressions possess commonly used euphemisms, such as the use of darn instead of damn, or interjections, such as Judas Priest!
Content that does not meet legal, organization, or audience requirements for diversity, equity, or inclusion (DEI).
Examples: 1) Offensive expressions associated with non-inclusivity often include unacceptable use of derogatory terms reflecting differences in gender, ethnic or national identity. 2 Non-inclusivity can also manifest itself in the use of gender-based pronouns or terms, such as masculine pronouns or terms, where non-gendered terms would be the inclusive choice.
Content that reflects set, possibly prejudiced, ideas about what someone or something is like, especially an idea that is wrong.
Examples: 1) A text that uses the derogatory term “frog” to refer to a French person could lead to a confusion in target content, where the reader assumes the text is actually about frogs. 2) Original content can in some cases be totally inappropriate in translation or even in other locales. For instance, a Mexican episode of the Great British Bake Off TV series invoked “cringe-worthy” wordplay and stereotypical costumes, along with totally inappropriate cooking techniques, which offended North Americans in general, not just Mexicans.
Examples: Insults often draw on other offensive expressions to address them directly at another person.
Errors related to the physical design or presentation of a translation product, including character, paragraph, and UI element formatting and markup, integration of text with graphical elements, and overall page or window layout.
Inappropriate application of any glyph variation that is applied to a character or string of characters, such as font, font style, font color, or font size.
Examples: 1) An industry style guide specifies that ordinal numbers written with figures should use superscript ordinal indicators (1st, 2nd), but adscript (lining) ordinal indicators (1st, 2nd) were used instead. 2) A corporate style guide specifies that body text in technical publications should be set in a serif font, but body text in advertising and public reports should be set in a sans serif font. 3) The body text for an annual report was incorrectly set using the serif font specified for technical publications.
Errors related to local font usage (i.e., font choices that impact a span of content rather than the global choice of the document)
Examples: 1) Warning texts are set in sans serif, but one of them appears in a serif font. 2) A portion of Japanese text is set with an oblique face (corresponding to italics in the source text) when dot accents should have been used with a non-oblique face.
Incorrect font point size
Examples: A legal notice should be set in a 9 pt size, but was instead set in 7 pt.
Incorrect use of bold or italic font style
Examples: A book title should have been italicized, but the italics were omitted.
Single-width characters used when double-width are intended, or vice versa. (CJK only)
Examples: A Japanese text includes カタカナ (full-width kana) when specifications required ｶﾀｶﾅ (half-width kana) instead, due to a limited display size.
incorrect kerning (inter-character spacing)
Examples: The letters T and A in the word TAMPA are spaced too close together and collide.
Inappropriate presentation format of paragraphs, headings, graphical elements, and user interface elements and their arrangement on a form, page, website, or application screen.
Examples: 1) A fully justified paragraph was copied from one document and pasted into another where surrounding paragraphs were flush left, ragged right, creating a visual mismatch. 2) By design, text was intended to wrap around images, but an image was created as an inline image rather than a floating image, so it was repositioned below the paragraph as more text was added.
Incorrect or inappropriate overall font choice.
Examples: An English source text uses a normal-weight serif font for body text but the Japanese translation uses a heavy-weight 'gothic' (roughly, sans serif) font appropriate for headlines only.
Incorrect colors or colors that are inappropriate for the intended audience.
Examples: Headings should be blue but are green instead.
Incorrect text margins
Examples: Specifications called for 4 cm inside margins, but 2.5 cm margins were used instead.
Page breaks in inappropriate locations
Examples: There is a page break between a figure and its caption.
Footnotes or endnotes placed inappropriately or use incorrect in-text symbols.
Examples: Specifications state that endnotes should be used with roman numerals but footnotes were used with in-text symbols (*, †, ‡, etc.).
Headers or footers formatted incorrectly.
Examples: Headers should appear on every page but have been omitted on odd-numbered pages.
Errors related to the formatting of graphics and tables.
Examples: A graphic is garbled, or the wrong version is shown.
Graphic or table missing
Examples: An HTML file is missing an <img> tag, so no graphic is shown.
Graphic or table positioned incorrectly
Examples: A text refers to Figure 1, but Figure 1 appears six pages after the point where it was referenced.
Call-out errors; incorrect or misplaced captions
Examples: During localization the location of numbers used for call-outs has been shifted and the call-outs are no longer usable.
Incorrect markup tag or tag component.
Examples: 1) The specifications for an HTML document translation project require full tag closure, but the translator has deleted closing </p> tags. Formatting will not be affected in browsers, but it fails the target content markup requirement. 2) Typically, microdata in tag elements should not be translated, but a translator has "translated" <span itemprop="operatingSystem"> ANDROID</span> to <span itemprop="ऑपरेटिंगसिस्टम"> ANDROID</span>.
Markup present, but malformed or inappropriate for context
Examples: A text has opening tags but no closing tags for formatting.
Markup in source content missing in target content
Examples: A source segment has a set of italic tags, but the target segment does not have any tags.
Target content markup with no corresponding source content markup
Examples: A source segment has no formatting tags, but the target segment has a set of italic tags.
Markup present but misplaced
Examples: A target segment has three sets of paired formatting tags at the end, after the final full stop (.).
Markup elements inconsistent between source content and target content
Examples: A target segment has a set of tags for bold face in the same location where the source segment has tags for italics.
Target content that is longer or shorter than allowed or where there is a significant and inappropriate discrepancy between the source and the target content lengths.
Examples: A German translation is 403 characters long and no longer fits in a space intended for a text 250 characters long.
Existing text missing in the final laid-out version
Examples: A translation is complete, but during DTP a text box was inadvertently moved off the page and so the translated text does not appear in a rendered PDF version.
Incorrect or invalid (no longer active) link or URI.
Examples: An HTML document has an href that points to a file that does not exist.
Link or cross reference to an incorrect or nonexistent location within the same document within which it occurs
Examples: An internal link refers to the location “#section5” but there is no anchor “section5” in the document.
Link or cross reference to an incorrect or nonexistent location outside of the same document within which it occurs
Examples: A link in an HTML document points to a U.S. government URL that has moved and no longer exists.
Any other issue