Lessons · Lesson 8 of 11
- 01 · The unit of account is a task, not a tool
- 02 · What to give it: the facts, the format, the forbidden
- 03 · Checkability, and the four classes of output
- 04 · Reading a long document: ask for pointers, never a summary
- 05 · Drafting a message: the saving is on the blank page
- 06 · Reconciling a list: change the output's shape, change the review
- 07 · Setting up a calculation: the task where the arithmetic says no
- 08 · Translation, checked the way it actually fails
- 09 · The review budget, and the rate at which checking stops working
- 10 · The log, and why the task you use most pays least
- 11 · Six weeks, honestly totalled
Translation, checked the way it actually fails
Find out which ninety seconds of a six-and-a-half-minute check are doing the work, and which class of defect no mechanical check can reach.
Lesson 8 of 11 · 13 min
The task
Marasem writes its floor instructions in Arabic and its buyer correspondence in English, and the traffic runs both ways all day. Work instructions for a new operation. A supplier's reply that the owner wants in English. A revised measurement note for a line that starts on Sunday.
Written by a bilingual supervisor, a work instruction takes 26.0 minutes. Over six weeks the desk logged 22 uses of an assistant for it:
| Term | Minutes |
|---|---|
| Manual time | 26.0 |
| Input time | 2.5 |
| Waiting time | 1.0 |
| Checking time | 6.5 |
| Repair time | 2.0 |
| Net saving a use | 14.0 |
308.0 minutes, 5.13 hours, USD 49.28. A solid, boring, genuinely useful saving. Then one defect took 7.8 times all of it in a single afternoon.
The thing it is best at is the thing you must not check
Fluency is what these systems produce most reliably. So fluency is the last property worth spending review time on. Marasem's desk arrived at that the expensive way.
They logged their check in two separate passes across the 22 uses.
The read for sense. A bilingual supervisor reads the output as a piece of Arabic. It took 5.0 minutes and found 2 defects.
The mechanical pass. It took 1.5 minutes and found 10.
There were 11 defects in total, and the five minutes found nothing the ninety seconds had not. Both of its finds were already on the mechanical list.
| Kind | Number | Found by the mechanical pass | Found by the read |
|---|---|---|---|
| A figure or a code | 4 | 4 | 0 |
| A term the factory owns | 6 | 6 | 2 |
| Register — what the sentence commits you to | 1 | 0 | 0 |
The mechanical pass, in full
First, the figures and the codes, both ways. Pull every number, size code, machine number and style code out of the source. Pull the same out of the translation. Compare the two lists. Anything in one and not the other is a defect. Anything in both but changed is a defect.
It found a seam allowance written as 1.0 cm in the source and 1.5 cm in the translation. A size code carried over from a different style. An operation number with its digits swapped. A needle size dropped entirely. Every one of those goes to a sewing floor and gets built.
Second, the terms, against the factory's own list. Marasem wrote down forty terms it uses: the exact Arabic word this factory uses for each operation, each machine, each defect name. The pass is simple. Every one of those forty terms that appears in the source must appear as its listed partner in the translation.
It found six substitutions. All six were correct Arabic, and none was the word the floor uses. A supervisor reading for sense does not flag a correct synonym. A list does, mechanically, every time.
The one that got through, and what it cost
Nabaa Trims replied in Arabic about a zip delivery. The reply used the verb a supplier uses when it intends to try something and is declining to promise it. The translation turned that into a plain future: we will deliver on the eleventh.
Nothing was mistranslated in a way a dictionary would recognise. But a soft refusal became a commitment, and the merchandiser planned on it.
The zips did not arrive. Three days of the finishing buffer went, and were bought back with a Saturday shift: 46 operators for 8 hours at USD 1.05 an hour, USD 386.40.
Set that beside the whole six-week saving of USD 49.28 on this task. 7.8 times, from one sentence, on a task that is otherwise one of the best on the log.
The rule Marasem wrote is narrow and it holds:
Anything a supplier or a buyer says about what they will DO gets read in the original language by someone who reads that language, or gets asked again in plain terms. Everything else may be translated and checked.
Asking again is cheap. The email that would have prevented USD 386.40 is one line: please confirm the eleventh as a firm date, yes or no.
What to keep from this lesson if you keep one thing
The defects that survive a fluent translation are not grammar. They are numbers, codes, your own vocabulary, and commitment. Three of those four are caught by a list and a comparison, in ninety seconds. The fourth is not caught at all, so it is not handed over.
Check yourselfYour bilingual supervisor reads a translated work instruction and says it is fine. What has been checked?Show the answer
That it reads as good Arabic, which was never the risk. At Marasem that read took 5.0 minutes and found nothing the 1.5-minute mechanical pass had not. Ask instead: were the figures diffed, and were the factory's own terms checked against the list?
Prompt · Diff the figures and the terms, and nothing else
Before a drafted message leaves your outbox, and before a translated work instruction reaches the floor. It is the ninety seconds of the review that catches almost everything a review ever catches.
Act as a proofreader with one narrow job. You are given a SOURCE and an OUTPUT. Do not comment on style, tone, grammar, fluency or completeness. Do the following and nothing else. First, extract from the SOURCE every number, quantity, price, percentage, measurement, date, style code, purchase order number, size code and named commitment about who will do what by when. List them. Second, extract the same from the OUTPUT and list them. Third, produce three lists: items present in both and identical; items present in both but changed, showing each value; and items present in the OUTPUT that are in no part of the SOURCE. Fourth, treat everything in that third list as an invention until proved otherwise, and quote the sentence each one sits in. Fifth, if I have given you a glossary, check each of its terms: where the source term appears, the output must carry its listed partner, and any substitution must be reported even where the substitute is correct in general use. My glossary: [PASTE IT, OR WRITE NONE]. Sixth, report any sentence in the OUTPUT that states or accepts an obligation: a date, a price, a quantity, an agreement. Quote it, whether or not it appears in the source. Do not rewrite anything. SOURCE: [PASTE]. OUTPUT: [PASTE].
AI can make mistakes — check anything you act on.