A Day in the Life of a Quality Control Specialist

This post continues our “A Day in the Life” series, where we spend a day with some of Argos Multilingual’s most prominent personalities. Our first visit of 2021 is with quality control specialist Noriko Nakazawa.

Please tell us a little about your background and how you found your way to Argos.

Noriko Nakazawa: I joined the translation industry as a Japanese translator, and then worked as a project manager at a translation agency. One day, a recruiter contacted me and said that Argos was looking for a Japanese QA specialist. I wanted to have more hands-on experience with translation tools and catch up with the latest technology in the industry, so I joined Argos mainly for that reason.

What does your role usually involve?

NN: My job is to manage final verification tasks. If there are QA issues, I send a query report to the translation teams. Once the team fixes the issues, I double-check to see if they implemented the changes properly, and then I deliver the final files to project managers.

What does a normal day’s schedule look like?

NN: In the morning, I check emails and the TMS to see if I have any new or outstanding projects. Then I work on projects for QA and final verification. Sometimes, I have meetings for Japanese projects with the clients.

What’s a common question you get from clients/end users, and how do you typically answer it?

NN: “Why does a Japanese project take longer?”, “Why do Japanese clients want to change our translation a lot? Is it wrong?” These questions come from the complexity of the Japanese language itself, cultural differences, and perfectionism in the Japanese market and society. The best solution is to discuss details and analyze issues with Japanese clients, so that we can see where we need to fix things (translation process, communication style, etc.) and then compromise to find a solution that both sides agree on.

What equipment/tools/software do you use on the job?

NN: I rely mainly on Xbench and TMSQA for FV tasks, Trados, and MT – but we are always trying new things.

When and how do your team members give feedback to one another?

NN: We give feedback when we think someone might have an issue that they’re not aware of, and we typically do it via email or chatting on MS Teams.

What’s the most interesting thing you’re working on at the moment?

NN: I’m doing a translation and testing project involving natural language understanding (NLU) for chatbots – it’s really interesting and a sign of things to come.

What’s on your work-related “wish list” for the next 12 months?

NN: I want to learn Korean as a QA specialist. I understand Chinese a bit since Japanese and Chinese share the same characters, but Korean uses Hangul characters, so it’s harder for me to guess at meanings. I am also inspired by the Korean band, BTS (防弾少年団) – another good motivation to learn Korean!