International standardization for translation

The exchange of technologies, services and goods in the 21st century is becoming more active, the interaction between companies from different countries and continents is increasing, and therefore the need for language technologies that adapt information for different countries is increasing. Despite the fact that translation and the activities associated with it may seem at first glance to be a fairly common action, nevertheless, this is the first stage that affects the correct construction of international cooperation between companies. That is why a number of special international documents are being created to regulate these processes, with the latest of which and the most relevant we will acquaint you today.

Language resource management -- Lexical markup framework (LMF)

ISO 24613-3:2021

The lexical features when translating certain documents, as well as their parts into other languages, can significantly affect the final perception of the translated information. That is why it is necessary to strictly adhere to the recommendations specified in the relevant regulatory documents such as, for example, ISO 24613-3: 2021.

This document describes an extension to ISO 24613-1 and ISO 24613-2 to support the development of detailed descriptions of common etymological phenomena and/or diachronic information with respect to lexical entries in born-digital and/or retro-digitized lexicons. It provides both a meta-model for such an extension as well as the relevant data categories.

Since this document is a certain expanding addition to the previous parts of the same standard, we strongly recommend using them in combination, because each of the individual parameters can be a good addition and create a high-quality complex of services provided.

Language resource management -- Lexical markup framework (LMF)

** ISO 24613-4:2021 **

As in any other document, there are several parts in international standards governing translation into other languages. The next part to the previous document is ISO 24613-4: 2021.

This document describes the serialization of the lexical markup framework (LMF) model defined as an XML model compliant with the Text Encoding Initiative (TEI) Guidelines. This serialization covers the classes of ISO 24613-1 (the LMF core model) as well as classes provided by ISO 24613-2 (the machine readable dictionary, MRD, model) and ISO 24613-3 (the etymological extension).

Each of the parts of the aforementioned standard fall under different subcategories of translation activities. One of the documents can be applied in etymological translation, while the other standard can only regulate machine activity. That is why you should familiarize yourself in more detail with all the characteristics of the standards before purchasing them.

Language resource management -- Controlled human communication (CHC)

** ISO 24620-3:2021 **

Looking at the development of online and digital technologies, live translation into another language during a conversation does not lose its relevance. After all, the most ambitious contracts and agreements are carried out directly in the offline sector. That is why the activities of a translator with live interaction are also regulated by norms and rules, namely by such international standards as ISO 24620-3: 2021.

This document provides basic principles and a methodology for establishing a specification for designing and constructing a formally defined, or controlled, system of oral communication that avoids or filters out phonetic interferences and confusions between words of the same language and between languages. The system is both abstracted from, and contextually situated in, the domains of industry, business or other technologies.

This document deals only with oral communication between native speakers, or non-native speakers, or a native speaker and a non‑native speaker, who can be disturbed due to different phenomena, such as phoneme confusion, phonetic interferences and confusions between words (for example: homophony, quasi-homophony or co-articulation) of the same language and/or different languages and the resulting ambiguities due, for example, to multilingual communication or stressful situations.

This document deals with speakers and listeners without speech or hearing impediments[16], and does not include sign languages which have a phonological system equivalent to the system of sounds in spoken languages[23]. Foreseen applications are essentially in safety critical applications using human oral communication. This document is also applicable to other domains involving, for example, training and evaluation procedures and robots.

This international standard is one of the most extensive in terms of categorizing activities, which is why if you are professionally engaged in translation for large organizations, this international document will be an excellent addition to the existing system and will significantly improve the services you provide.

Language resource management -- Comprehensive Annotation Framework (ComAF)

** ISO 24627-3:2021 **

To create certain documents with the text that has been translated, it is necessary to take into account the peculiarities of the fact that there is a unified system for creating tables and graphs, as well as the corresponding norms for the documents on which the work is being done. To regulate these aspects, standards such as ISO 24627-3: 2021 are being created.

This document specifies how to represent (not visualize) documents (instance data, not data schemas) as graphs. It does not specify how to visualize or operate on document data, but it aims at making documents easier for people to compose and comprehend by allowing for various graph-based flexible user interfaces, possibly incorporating document-visualization practices (see Introduction). In this connection, this document does not specify annotations to existing documents either, but rather it specifies a schema of documents with explicit logical structures.

Following the recommendations in this standard will allow you to carry out translation activities in the most logical way and with obtaining the most productive beneficial results. That is why its presence is so important when carrying out translation activities mainly related to economic terminology and financial indicators.

Language resource management -- Semantic annotation framework (SemAF)

** ISO 24617-2:2020 **

Some of the best quality and complementary international standards are those that combine practical and theoretical methods. Thus, their application allows you to create a single complex that does not require additional documents. One of these standards is ISO 24617-2: 2020.

This document provides a set of empirically and theoretically well-motivated concepts for dialogue annotation, a formal language for expressing dialogue annotations (the Dialogue Act Markup Language, DiAML), and a method for segmenting a dialogue into semantic units. This allows the manual or automatic annotation of dialogue segments with information about the communicative actions which the participants perform by their contributions to the dialogue. The annotation scheme specified in this document supports multidimensional annotation of spoken, written, and multimodal dialogues involving two or more participants.

Dialogue units are viewed as having multiple communicative functions in different dimensions. The markup language DiAML has an XML-based representation format and a formal semantics which makes it possible to perform inferences with DiAML representations. This document also specifies data categories for dimensions of dialogue analysis, for communicative functions, for dialogue act qualifiers, and for relations between dialogue acts.

Additionally, it provides mechanisms for customizing these sets of concepts, extending them with application-specific or domain-specific concepts and descriptions of semantic content, or selecting relevant coherent subsets of them. These mechanisms make the dialogue act concepts specified in this document useful not only for annotation but also for the recognition and generation of dialogue acts in interactive systems.

The use of this document will significantly improve not only the quality of the services provided, but also the reputation in the eyes of corporations and companies that translate with your help. This standard will be one of the best for expanding the interaction market.

Interpreting services -- Healthcare interpreting -- Requirements and recommendations

** ISO 21998:2020 **

Since the professional activity of translation mainly specifies different categories, such as, for example, economics, jurisprudence, technologies, a separate normative legal act is created for each of them, which directly regulates the same activity. For translation in the field of medicine and the regulation of the activities carried out by the translator, such a document was created as ISO 21998: 2020.

This document specifies requirements and recommendations for healthcare interpreting services in spoken and signed communication. It is applicable to all situations requiring healthcare interpreting, where the parties involved need to communicate using spoken or signed language, to treat a health-related issue. It is intended for interpreting service providers and healthcare interpreters.

It should be noted that this international document specializes in recommendations mainly for interpretation, which is why it is necessary to understand that if you carry out writing activities, as well as paperwork, this activity will require the acquisition of separate standards.

Translation standards for different categories

The importance of translation, as well as the international standards created for this activity, cannot be underestimated. After all, it is they that make it possible to minimize possible financial problems that may arise in the event of an incorrect translation, as well as minimize the risks of incorrect implementation of the technological base. If your main activity or partial indirect activity of your organization involves the use of translations into other languages, we strongly recommend that you have at least one of the basic standards governing this activity.