What is linguistic quality assurance (LQA)?
Linguistic Quality Assurance (LQA) is a structured evaluation process that measures translation quality against defined criteria, providing quantifiable data on accuracy, fluency, terminology, and adherence to style guidelines. It includes error checking, terminology verification and cultural appropriateness review.
Detailed description
Linguistic Quality Assurance (LQA) is a structured evaluation process that measures translation quality against defined criteria, providing quantifiable data on accuracy, fluency, terminology, and adherence to style guidelines. LQA goes beyond subjective quality judgments to provide systematic, measurable quality assessment that can be tracked over time.
A typical LQA process involves reviewing a representative sample of translated content against a predefined quality framework. Errors are categorised by type (accuracy, language, terminology, style, formatting) and severity (critical, major, minor). The results produce a quality score that can be compared against established benchmarks, tracked across projects, and used to identify areas for improvement.
Common LQA frameworks include the Multidimensional Quality Metrics (MQM) framework and the LISA QA model, both of which provide standardised error categorisation and scoring methodologies. These frameworks enable objective quality comparison across translators, language pairs, and projects.
LQA serves multiple purposes: it provides objective evidence of translation quality for clients, identifies patterns in translation errors that can be addressed through training or process improvements, supports translator performance evaluation and development, and provides data for continuous improvement of translation processes.
LEXIGO's quality assurance process incorporates LQA alongside our 130+ automated quality checks, providing comprehensive quality measurement that combines human expert evaluation with technology-driven consistency verification. This dual approach ensures both the objective accuracy and the subjective quality of every translation we deliver.
Why it matters
Without structured LQA, translation quality is assessed subjectively and inconsistently, making it difficult to identify trends, measure improvement, or hold providers accountable to defined standards. LQA provides the data needed to manage translation quality proactively rather than reactively.
For organisations managing large translation programmes, LQA data is essential for vendor management, quality benchmarking, and demonstrating compliance with quality standards. It transforms quality from an opinion into a measurable metric.
Related questions about linguistic quality assurance
What is the meaning of LQA?
In translation, LQA stands for linguistic quality assurance: a structured review that checks translated content for accuracy, terminology, grammar, style and cultural fit, and often scores errors by type and severity. LQA also has unrelated meanings in hotels and finance.
How is LQA different from proofreading?
Proofreading checks the final text for surface errors such as spelling, punctuation and formatting. LQA compares the translation against the source and measures quality against agreed criteria, often producing a score and feedback.
How is LQA different from ISO 17100 revision?
ISO 17100 revision is a required step where a second linguist checks every translation against the source before delivery. LQA is usually an additional assessment, often on a sample, used to measure and report quality over time.
What does an LQA check look for?
Typical categories are accuracy (mistranslations and omissions), terminology, language (grammar and spelling), style, locale conventions such as dates and numbers, and formatting. Each error is usually rated minor, major or critical.
What comes first, QA or QC?
Quality assurance comes first: it is the process designed to prevent errors. Quality control checks the finished output against requirements. In translation, revision and LQA are quality control steps within a quality assurance process.