How are localized versions of telecom documentation validated and quality-assured in DITA?

November 10, 2023
|By Bryan Tipper

Ensuring the quality and accuracy of localized versions of telecom documentation in DITA involves a systematic validation and quality assurance process. Here, we’ll explore how telecom companies validate and assure the quality of localized content while leveraging DITA’s capabilities.

Translation and Review

Localization typically begins with the translation of the source content into the target language. Telecom companies work with professional translators who are well-versed in technical and telecom-specific terminology. Once the translation is complete, a thorough review is conducted to ensure linguistic accuracy, terminology consistency, and adherence to style guides. This review may involve subject matter experts who validate the technical accuracy of the localized content.

Quality Assurance Checks

DITA enables telecom companies to implement automated quality assurance checks to maintain consistency and accuracy. These checks can include verifying the correctness of conditional text usage, validating links, ensuring proper formatting, and confirming that metadata is correctly applied. Automated scripts and tools can be used to run these checks systematically across all localized documents, identifying and flagging any issues for further review.

Example:

Here’s an example of how DITA supports quality assurance checks for localized content:


<topic id="localized_product_description">
  <title>Localized Product Description</title>
  <body>
    <p>This is the localized product description.

    <conditional-text audience="fr-FR">
      <p>Ceci est une description localisée du produit.

    </conditional-text>
  </body>
  <alerts>
    <check type="terminology" expected="product name"/>
    <check type="links"/>
    <check type="formatting"/>
  </alerts>

In this example, a DITA topic includes localized content with alerts for quality assurance checks related to terminology, links, and formatting. Automated checks ensure that the localized content meets predefined quality criteria.