Here is a flowchart representing a typical work flow for a Japanese-to-English translation (in addition, at least half our work is in the opposite direction, English-to-Japanese). Note that from the time an order comes in to the time it is delivered, there are typically eight processes, and several full-time staff, involved. We believe that we are the only company worldwide to deploy such a resource-intensive, detailed system for linguistic quality assurance.

We have dedicated staff for most of the processes above. For example, linguistic quality assurance specialists may be former translators, but currently work exclusively on proofreading or linguistic check duties. Pre/post processing, involving providing the translator with relevant reference material, including related patents and/or their translations/glossaries, as well as translating fixed elements such as patent headings, etc., is undertaken by a dedicated team, whose members are not drawn from the translator team. The pre-processing team is also responsible for notifying the translator about any special standards or requirements expected by the specific client who ordered the translation (we keep records of the preferences of our regular customers).

As you can see, we take linguistic quality seriously at Kakkazan Innovations Inc. It costs us more than most translation companies to maintain full-time staff for the system described above, but we believe that this yields a translation that is superior to what an individual freelance translator or a typical translation agency (who depend almost entirely on individual freelance translators) can provide.