Quantifying quality costs and the cost of poor quality in translation : Quality efforts and the consequences of poor quality in the European Commission's Directorate-General for Translation

The present study makes the case that quality efforts in translation are indispensable and worth paying for, as these costs actually save money in the long run. It aims to provide a methodology for calculating: 1. The quality-related costs, i.e. quality investment, which in addition to quality control measures in the translation activity includes recruitment, training, IT and translation tools, terminology, etc. 2. The costs of poor quality, i.e. the costs of corrigenda, poorly written originals, IT problems, poor quality of external translations, as well as the costs, financial or otherwise, for the Commission, the EU and society in general. The first part will put the concepts of "quality", “quality costs” and the "cost of poor quality" in a theoretical framework. After that, the study will provide an overview of DGT's activities that have an impact on the quality of its translations, and indicate how the costs and benefits of DGT’s quality efforts and the costs of poor quality for DGT can be quantified (chapter 4). Chapter 5 will look into the consequences of poor quality outside DGT, i.e. for the Commission and EU companies and citizens, followed by the conclusions in chapter 6