Overview
Task Force Established In an effort to establish a translation metric that could be used by automotive companies to compare quality of translation deliverables, a task force initially made up of General Motors, Ford, and Chrysler representatives, together with representatives from translation suppliers, was convened in the fall of 1997. Under the auspices of the SAE E/E Diagnostic Systems Committee, Kurt Godden, then Manager of Translation Process Development at GM's Service Technology Group initiated this task force activity and identified an initial core group of representatives who, at an initial meeting, set the scope and objectives of this task force. SAE officially designated the task force as the J2450 Task Force on a Quality Metric for Language Translation of Service Information. --Scope and Objective The scope of this task force's activity is: --To develop an industry-wide metric for the evaluation of translation quality. To document the process of developing this metric and getting approval for it. --To communicate the metric to translation suppliers. The objective of the metric is to establish a consistent standard against which the translation quality of automotive service information can be objectively measured regardless of the source language, regardless of the target language, and regardless of how the translation is performed--i.e., human translation or machine translation. Current Status In October of 2001, J2450 passed a committee level vote and is now an SAE Recommended Practice. The metric document can be purchased on the Internet through the SAE. Please click on the following link for ordering information: http://www.sae.org/servlets/productDetail?PROD_TYP=STD&PROD_CD=J2450_200112 In conjunction with the 2001 TOPTEC, a European task force was formed and currently meets monthly at different locations throughout Europe. Future --For 2003, both the U.S. and European task forces are testing the metric further in preparation for balloting as an SAE Standard. Automotive companies, automotive component suppliers and their translation vendors are welcome to participate.
