Towards a Formal Accreditation of Translation Quality Assurors

As awareness of the importance of quality assurance in translation increases within the translation industry and in society at large, a formalized approach to quality assurance and to quality assurors becomes the next logical step in the translator accreditation and professionalization process. So far, the focus of accreditation bodies, such as the National Accreditation Authority for Translators and Interpreters (NAATI) in Australia, has been on the individual translator/interpreter, with little attention to other actors in the translation process, such as translation editors and translation quality checkers, and to the translation industry as a whole. The accreditation system in Australia has been in operation for more than twenty years. It has established a set of standards and expectations, however controversial, for the translator/interpreter, the translation service provider, and the translation consumer. However, this accreditation system remains lopsided, heavily focused on the principal actor to the neglect of other essential requirements for translation quality assurance.

This article sheds the light on some problematic issues arising from the current system of accreditation and the modus operandi adopted by translation agencies and translation service providers across the country, and calls for the introduction of a new accreditation category by NAATI and other accreditation bodies elsewhere for translation quality assurors and checkers.