The Automotive Industry just might have one of the oldest footholds in the localization world. Long before other industries needed it, automobile companies were using localization to successfully drive into new markets across the globe. Today, with emerging markets like China and Eastern Europe, quality localization will be even more important to ensure a product’s successful launch.

Despite the historical development of the automotive localization, recent growth in the L10N industry has been concentrating on the IT sector. Although most localization suppliers are accustomed to localizing software and product documentation, they lack understanding about the unique requirements of effective localization for the automotive industry, resulting in poor quality localized products. Localization defects not only create poor perception of product quality leading to reduced sales, they can also have important implications for product safety.

CSOFT redefines localization for the automotive industry by combining highly accurate translation with measurable quality and best-of-breed technology and processes in China to provide both quality and affordable localization solutions. CSOFT's L10N solutions fundamentally changed the equation of acquiring high quality localization also means scarifying cost and turnaround time. Relying on our professional in-country experts in automotive and engineering research fields, CSOFT provides certified translation for the automotive industry in all European and Asian languages. Combining quality translations with our expert L10N engineering, DTP and project management in China, CSOFT is able to deliver high quality and affordable localization solutions to the automotive industry.

In addition to our existing quality processes, CSOFT also trains our professional translators to fully comply with other industry standards such as SAE Society of Automotive Engineers or SAE J2450 quality metrics for localization. We seamless integrate the SAE J2450 principles with our existing L10N processes to ensure each project is conducted with all quality steps fully implemented to ensure the highest quality for the localized products.

What is SAE J2450?
Like other manufacturing processes within the automotive industry that employ various quality standards to obtain objective measurement of production quality, SAE J2450 consists of 7 metrics to measure localization quality. One of the goals of SAE J2450 is to ensure consistent standard are applied to determine translation objectively. SAE J2450 became a recommended practice in October 2001 for multilingual localization and translation for the automotive industry. Originally conceived in 1997 by General Motors translation managers who were exploring the translation process for GM to establish a Standard Quality Metric designed for the automotive industry, SAE J2450 was quickly recognized as an industry wide quality standard. SAE J2450 lists 7 types of errors which can occur in a translation.

• Wrong Term
• Syntactic Error
• Omission
• Word Structure or Agreement Error
• Misspelling
• Punctuation Error
• Miscellaneous Error

Each category of errors can be classified as either major or minor. A numeric score is assigned to each error type and severity level. The composite score is the weighted sum of the errors normalized by the total number of words in the text. This easy statistical approach greatly simplifies analysis of the translation quality while providing specific information for errors in different categories and particular problem areas. The SAE J2450 Quality Metric is now a standard for linguistic quality measurement of documentation within the automotive industry.

• Nissan
  
• Automotive Parts Manufacturer

For more information about CSOFT's L10N Solutions for the automotive industry, please click here.