Total Quality Management Plan in Non-profit Translation Service Providers in the United Arab Emirates: Identifying Critical Success Factors for Improvement

The notion of quality has become an important topic in the translation domain, especially as most translation projects are no longer just the outcome of the work of a single expert translator, but rather a corporate activity, consistent with the norms of the structural environment and bureaucratic workflows of the organisation that is responsible for the work. Managing quality across this value-chain is therefore one of the most challenging areas in 21st century translation. In such a complex process, the notion of Total Quality Management (TQM), originally a quality management tool in mass production, has started to be implemented effectively in many diverse sectors, such as medicine and education (Hansson, 2003); and translation project organisations have themselves become interested in applying TQM in their own quality assurance processes, especially as their activities also include digital translation mechanisms (DGT, 2009; Mitterlehner, 2012; BSI ISO 17100, 2015).
The starting point of this research was to understand the existing quality management mechanisms and processes across English to Arabic translation companies and how they could be improved in a corporate context. Kalima, a translation project organisation, was selected as the leading case study, given its well-established reputation in the United Arab Emirates (UAE), as well as the wider Arab World, as a serious contributor to the body of translated into Arabic. Two other non-profit translation service providers (TSPs) of the sector were also analysed, so as to have a sound overview and to provide a broader insight into managerial practices concerning quality assurance within translation processes, and thus to determine whether TQM in its wider state-of-the-art sense could be relevant for the translation sector in the UAE.
This research has developed a framework for implementing TQM in TSPs based on three main dimensions of critical success factors (CSFs); namely, leadership commitment and strategic direction; managerial and structural reforms; and procedural changes. The proposed framework suggests appointing a portfolio manager as suggested by Giammarresi (2011) in order to regulate the organisational strategy and optimise resources for effective and efficient quality in TSPs performing in a similar context to those particularly studied in this research. The researcher’s critical analysis is the basis for a novel framework that may be of interest for TSPs, and may be used as a benchmark for further research.