Setting Up LQA

Linguistic Quality Assurance is the process of objectively evaluating translations based on a schema of error types.

This article will help you in:

• Getting Started with LQA
• Accessing the LQA Schemas
• Adding LQA to the Workflow
• Evaluating Translations with LQA Reporting Analysis
• Understand some Important Considerations

Getting Started with LQA

To start using LQA, you need to:

1. Create an LQA Schema
   • Including the categories and error types and their descriptions with default severity of each error
2. Assign LQA to a workflow and workflow step
   • You could create a workflow specially for LQA, or add an LQA step on to existing workflow(s), or simply enable LQA on any existing step on a workflow (including the Published step)

Once a schema is created and published, editing is limited. You can add new categories and errors, edit them or disable any of them. Disabling them will prevent new errors from being recorded, but does not remove errors that have been recorded using them.

Accessing the LQA Schemas

1. Click Account Settings (under your name)
2. Choose Linguistic Quality Assurance
   • Here you will see a list of all LQA schemas on your account
   • When you create a schema, it will be in draft until you publish it. It will then be accessible on your workflow steps
   • You can have multiple schemas on any workflow, but only one schema per workflow step
   • Click the ellipses to Edit the schema name, disable, or delete the draft schema entirely
     • Note, you must disable a published schema before you can delete it.
       
3. To enter and edit any schema, click the schema name.
4. From here, you can view the list of errors in the schema, edit or remove the errors, create a new category, and create a new error.

Setting Up LQA

STEP ONE: Create an LQA Schema

1. Click Account Settings (under your name)
2. Choose Linguistic Quality Assurance
3. Click Create Schema
4. Choose to create the schema via the dialog or, alternatively, use the Standard Smartling LQA Schema template
5. If you choose to create the schema via the dialog:
   1. Enter a schema name
   2. Choose error severity format
      • Numeric and enter the severity levels from lowest to highest
      • Alternatively, enter a custom severity format and custom severity levels
   3. Click Confirm
   4. Enter the newly created schema by clicking the name
      • Now it's time to create categories and errors
   5. Click + Create Category
   6. Enter a category name and description
   7. Click save
   8. Continue to create as many categories as your schema requires
   9. When you're ready to create errors for each category, click + Create Error
   10. Choose which category the error is to be applied to (required)
   11. Enter the error name (required)
   12. Enter a description (optional)
   13. Choose a default severity level for the error (optional)
   14. Decide if reviewers should be able to amend the default severity level for the error by selecting the checkbox
   15. Continue until all schema categories have errors
   16. By default, the schema will be in draft and unavailable to add to a workflow until the at least one category and error has been created
   17. When the schema is ready, click Publish to make it available to add to a workflow.

To unpublish a schema, disable it from use from the ellipsis menu.

STEP TWO: Add LQA to the Workflow

LQA will only be available on post-translation steps. There are a number of ways you can add LQA to a workflow:

1. Create a dedicated LQA workflow
2. Create a dedicated LQA workflow step
3. Enable LQA on any post-translation step

Create a dedicated LQA workflow

Follow the steps to creating a workflow and decide if this workflow should have a dedicated LQA workflow step or integrate it with any post-translation step.

Create a dedicated LQA workflow step

• On the workflow you want LQA to be performed on, add a review step type
• It is recommended that “Automatically submit edits by users” is “off”, and LQA is not set up on a step that can be “skipped” in a dynamic workflow
• Next, follow steps to enable LQA on any post-translation step

Enable LQA on any post-translation step

Under Quality Assurance, select Use this step for Linguistic Quality Assurance, and select which published schema should be used from the dropdown.

This setting is available on the Published step, so you can perform LQA on completed translations.

Next Steps

For information on how translations are evaluated with LQA, read our documentation on Evaluating Translations with LQA.

To learn on how to use the LQA Report, read our documentation on LQA Reporting Analysis. 

For more information on translation errors and the process of arbitration, read our documentation on LQA Errors & Arbitration.