It all started with my modest desire to purchase a backup power adapter for my notebook to avoid carrying it between work and home. Reasoning that notebooks come and go, and their tips are notoriously incompatible, I decided to get myself a universal one with multiple tips and searched through amazon.com. Imagine my amazement at seeing prices for these small, mundane, almost indistinguishable electronic devices ranging between a very affordable $7 and an impressive $50, let alone brand adapters that could easily top $100! What was even more intriguing was that user ratings were varied wildly for most items that anyone cared to leave feedback for, and there was hardly any correlation between price and user rating (i.e. perceived quality).
In the translation industry we also see significant price variations (though, luckily, on a smaller scale) and even more serious variations in review ratings. You have to wonder: Is there a real, pressing need to measure language quality and if so, is there an objective and viable method of measuring it?
The “lemon market” trap
To better understand the QA issue within the translation industry, my colleague and Logrus co-founder Serge Gladkoff has drawn a parallel to a different market:
The term "lemon" is strongly associated with the US car market, where at a certain time the quality of cars was bad enough to call for a special legislation protecting consumers. The term "lemon market" was coined by the economist George Akerlof and depicts the so-called information asymmetry, which occurs when the seller knows more about a product than the buyer.
The concept in brief: As far as the ...
Read more after login
tekom members can log in directly with their "My tekom" access data.
You are not yet a tekom member, but would like to read one or more articles in full? Then you have the opportunity to register on the internet portal of the technical journal 'tcworld' without obligation. Once you have registered, you can select any three specialist articles and view them in full for a period of two months. The selection will then be deleted and you can select three new articles for the next two months.
As a tekom member you benefit from the following advantages::
- Online access to all articles of the trade magazine 'tcworld magazine'
- Exclusive specialist articles from all areas of technical communication
- Regular new articles from over 300 authors
- The technical journal 'tcworld magazine' as a printed edition
- Reduced admission prices to tekom conferences
- Membership fees for tekom publications
- Access to 'my tekom', the web forum with job offers / job requests, appointments, expert advice, service provider file and much more
Login
Registration
Promised: The trade magazine 'tcworld magazine' is the best we have. And we don't make the choice easy for ourselves. Every month, the editorial staff of the technical journal 'tcworld magazine' publishes the latest articles by renowned authors. This demanding selection is available exclusively to members of tekom (as usual, including the printed edition).
The trade magazine 'tcworld magazine' stands for intelligently prepared specialist articles, texts written to the point, informative content, surprising insights, international perspectives and communicates technical communication in an understandable, fast, clear and uncomplicated way - exclusively for you.
