TLC's Language Blog

How do we know the translation is accurate, and how do we prove it? That is exactly the kind of question a compliance-minded organization should be asking.

Regulated organizations are already being held to the defensibility standard. Whether they know it yet often depends on whether something has gone wrong. The question is not whether defensibility will eventually be required. It is whether the system was built to provide it before it is needed.

Clients in regulated industries should ask their Language Services Providers to make the translation process visible. Otherwise, they can assume the worst: that controls, sources, approvals, and decisions behind the words are undocumented or unverifiable. That Google Translate was used, instead of a qualified human translator working in a secure environment.

Without governance, quality alone can’t withstand the demands of growth and constant scrutiny in regulated industries. The biggest change is in how we think about the problem. Stop asking whether your translations are accurate. Start asking whether your multilingual communication is governed.