We are committed to quality

KERN Group ensures high-quality translation services throughout the entire translation process by adhering to clearly defined processes. The quality management requirements are defined in ISO 17100 and DIN EN ISO 9001. KERN Group is certified in accordance with these international standards and meets the individual requirements for all individual translation processes. 

  • Quality and project management
  • Contractual framework conditions
  • Human and technical resources
  • Working processes
  • Additional services

Quality and project management

An active and intensive exchange of information takes place between KERN and its customers. This exchange begins before the translation itself:

  • What type of text is it?
  • What is the purpose of the translation?
  • How urgently is the translation required?
  • Are terminology lists or glossaries available?
  • Is the use of a workflow tool such as portal4client suitable for the translation project?

Quality assurance

KERN adheres to a dual control quality assurance process, meaning that a native speaker translator renders your text in the target language and a second native speaker performs a final check of the text.

In addition, KERN evaluates every translation project together with its customers. At this stage, feedback by the ordering party is particularly important and helpful. This is the only way we can continue to improve our processes.

Proofreading

Upon request, further native speaker translators can proofread the translated text in terms of its content, grammar and orthography.

Formal checks

Upon request, we also check the files in both languages for potential formal mistakes and correct them where necessary with the help of specific quality assurance tools. KERN's tools comprise, for example, a tag verifier, spell checker, terminology verifier and a check for missing text. Similarly, date, time and number formats can be checked.

Other quality assurance tools

Other quality assurance tools that KERN uses (e.g. ErrorSpy) further enable terminology and consistency checks. This ensures that KERN’s translators render the previously specified, corporate terms in the terminology database correctly and also translate identical segments consistently. Using self-defined criteria, the translation is evaluated and a list of potential mistakes drawn up. We then send this list to the translators for review and correction.

Memberships

KERN's high quality standards are expressed through its memberships in the following industry associations:

  • The Association for Technical Communication – tekom e.V.
  • The American Translators Association – ATA
  • The German Terminology Association (Deutscher Terminologie-Tag e.V. – DTT)

IT security

The employees and project managers of KERN Global Language Services are regularly trained with regards to topics relating IT security, e.g. on the security-compliant handling of customer-specific order data and documents. The processing of customer orders is always carried out in compliance with data protection laws and under consideration of applicable IT standards.

SCHEMA ST4-certified

  • Many years of experience in processing data from SCHEMA (pre- and post-processing of files for translation)
  • Insight into SCHEMA-internal editorial mechanisms
  • Knowledge about the various export options for translations
  • Provision of terminology to support authors working in SCHEMA
  • Support and consulting regarding the integration of COTI I and COTI II with our portal4client