Perform quality assurance

Smartcat provides automated quality assurance for your convenience. The system checks various errors, including spelling, punctuation, terminology, formatting, and consistency with the translation memory while translators are working in the Editor. If an error gets detected, the system displays a warning with the error description. Project managers can view or download a QA report, which we will cover later.

You can set up quality assurance when creating a project, or later on.

At the second step of the project creation process (Settings), after you have uploaded files for translation and setup project parameters like languages and deadlines, you can tune quality assurance settings on the Quality Assurance tab in the Advanced Settings.

There are 3 levels of error criticality. They are:

1. Ignore errors

2. Notify me about errors

3. Require error correction

The default option (Notify me about errors) displays a warning (yellow triangle) in the Editor when the system detects an error in the translation.

If certain kinds of error warnings distract you or do not apply to your project, you can disable them by selecting the Ignore errors option.

And if you want to specify that a certain kind of error is critical, opt for Require error correction. When the kind of error specified is detected in the translation, the system will display the critical error symbol (red triangle) and will not allow the segment to be confirmed until the error is corrected.

If the project has already been created, click on the line containing the project name and press the Settings icon in the Projects tab. You can also get access to the settings options on that project page.

Select Set Up Quality Assurance in the General Information tab.

In the new window, change the QA settings by marking or unmarking checkboxes next to the error type that you want to attune. You can mark errors as critical by marking the checkbox on the far right. To perform a QA check based on the new options, use the switch "Check all project documents for errors after the new settings are applied" at the bottom. Click Apply.

The error "Target exceeds the character length limit" and all errors related to tags are critical by default and cannot be disabled.

If a non-critical error is detected in a segment, a yellow icon appears in the status column (on the right) for that segment. To see what errors were found in the current segment, hover the cursor over the yellow icon or click on it to open the QA Check tab under the editing space.

The checks run automatically, so some errors may turn out to be false positives. In such cases, you can check the Ignore box next to the error description in the QA Check tab to hide the yellow warning icon, or simply pay no attention to the warning icon.

Note: The option to ignore a QA error is only available to the project participants who have been assigned a translation task. Project managers cannot select that option.

Tip: It is good practice to ask the translators to clear all the warnings in a file by either correcting the errors or ignoring false positives before they mark the task as done. Very often, the project manager doesn't speak the target language and isn't able to determine whether warnings relate to real errors.

If a spelling error is detected in the translation, it will be immediately underlined. Right-click the misspelled word to select a replacement, or add an exception to the spellcheck dictionary.

You can add, edit, and remove exceptions using the button in the toolbar displayed with an “A” and a tick.

The system also checks terms using the associated terminology database but takes morphology into account. This means that terms translated correctly but using a word form other than in the glossary (for example, a different tense or number) will not be regarded as errors, and you will not be distracted by false positives.

To run a QA check or create a QA report for a project, go to the project page by selecting the Go to project button. It will appear next to the project name in the Projects tab when you hover with the cursor over the project name:

On the project page, select the QA Check button located right under the project name in the Files tab.

In the next window, you will see the list of all errors detected in the project. If you wish to check only some specific documents, check the boxes next to their names.

The errors are grouped by type, so you can drill down each error type to display sub-types and the segments where these errors occur. To correct an error, follow the Go to segment link to open the file in the editor and place the cursor in the segment to be corrected or find the segment by the number specified in the report to the right of the error.

To rerun the check, press the Run a check button.

If you need to save a copy of the error report to your computer, select Download. Smartcat will generate an Excel spreadsheet with information about the errors found in the file and a link to open the editor from within Excel to speed up corrections.