Translations ISO 9001 Quality Management in Asia

ELITE ASIA IS ISO 9001:2008 CERTIFIED

After more than 6 months of preparations, establishing systems, ensuring compliance for our sales and project processes, Elite Asia is pleased to announce that as of September 2014, we are officially ISO 9001:2008 certified.

Being ISO 9001:2008 certified is a mark of Elite Asia’s continuous dedication towards providing our clients consistently high quality translations services, and that we do so by establishing systems and processes that keeps our translation processes efficient and productive. More than that, these systems and processes established allows us to promptly react to any feedback or complaint made pertaining our service quality, as we will be able to clearly identify upon investigative procedures, exactly at which juncture were there a lapse, and rectify it immediately as a preventive measure for future projects.

ABOUT ISO

ISO, or the International Organization for Standardization, is an independent, non-governmental membership organization and the world’s largest developer of voluntary international standards. (International Organization for Standardization, 2014)

While ISO as an organization does not issue any forms of certification, as contrary to common belief. ISO, however is the authority when it comes to the developing of international standards. As of 2014, ISO has published over a total of 19,500 international standards over a wide range of industries in the world. Some of such industries covered by ISO’s international standards include technology, food safety, agriculture, healthcare and also translations.

MANAGING OUR QUALITY UNDER ISO 9001:2008

Under the ISO 9001:2008, Elite Asia emulates a prescribed process-based quality management system model to ensure continuous improvement to our translation process and quality, as well as to ensure consistent client satisfaction.

Source: (Spring Singapore, 2008)

MANAGEMENT RESPONSIBILITY

Under the prescribed quality management system, Elite Asia’s management team will continue to improve on its currently client-centric approach, where policies, plans and resources are set in place to ensure clients’ requirements are acknowledged and well-met to clients’ satisfaction.

Management reviews on the existing quality management system will also be done on a regular basis, so as to identify areas in which the existing system can change or improve on in order for it to effectively support Elite Asia’s translation services to be continuously relevant to the changes in the service needs and demands from our clients.

RESOURCE MANAGEMENT

Resources, infrastructures and systems such as SDL Trados, the company’s intranet, as well as access to our pool of translators from all over the world has been set in place to ensure that Elite Asia’s sales and project team have easy and ready access to all the resources they need to provide translation services that meets our clients’ needs and requirements.

Other than the setting up of infrastructure and systems, Elite Asia also makes it a point to provide all our sales and project executives with the relevant trainings, as well as post-training reviews to ensure that our team is up-to-speed with the changes in the various systems. Compliance to the changes in the various systems will also help ensure consistency in the quality of the translation work produced and delivered to our clients.

PRODUCT REALIZATION

At Elite Asia, all our translation projects undergo a streamlined Translate, Edit and Proofread (TEP) process before the translated document is given to the client. Four main steps makes up the TEP process in Elite Asia:

• Assessing and understanding client’s specific requirements for the translations, including requirements for delivery and post-delivery activities.

• Based on the document nature and client’s requirements, Elite Asia will then select and match suitable translators to the projects. Translation samples may be provided to client for reference prior to quote confirmation so they can choose the translators for their project based on their preference in the translation samples.

• Upon quote and translator confirmation, our project executive will then send the source document to the selected translator for translation. Client’s requirements will also be clearly made known to the translator via email. Post-translation, the translator will edit the translated document before sending it to our project executive.

• The translated document will then be sent to another senior translator for proofreading and further editing. The proofread document will then be sent back to our project executive, who will then have it sent to the client in the delivery format preferred.

For clients that are translating confidential documents, a non-disclosure agreement can be made available for them as a form of assurance on the confidentiality of the content in their documents.

At Elite Asia, we also assist our clients to build their translation glossary for their industry-specific jargons, using tools such as SDL Trados, so as to ensure greater consistencies in the translation of all their documents.

MEASUREMENT, ANALYSIS AND IMPROVEMENT

At Elite Asia, we proactively seek feedback from our clients about the quality of our translations, as well as their service experience with us. We are certainly pleased when commended by clients, but we are not ones who rest on their laurels. When faced with constructive criticisms, we are ready to go through thorough checks in our processes, and work with our translators to seek resolutions to the problems feedback to us by our clients.

On a regular basis, our sales and project team will also conduct internal audits and checks to ensure our translation processes adheres to the quality management system as well as to the ISO standards set. Through these internal audits we will identify areas and opportunities in which we can correct and continuously improve on, so as to better manage the quality of our translation work and processes.

At the same time, we seek to also identify potential problem areas and thereafter work out a solution to circumvent the problem, or to prevent the problem from occurring in the future.

At Elite Asia we are dedicated to our clients and their translation needs. Being ISO 9001:2008 certified is just one of the ways for us to ensure that we will constantly provide our clients with nothing but the best of us.