For many people, the term quality standards is often associated with ISO, the International Organization for Standardization. ISO is a non-governmental organization that links national standards bodies with representatives in each country.

The ISO definition (ISO 8402: 1986, 3.1) of "quality" is "The totality of features and characteristics of a product or service that bear on its ability to satisfy stated or implied needs.”

The ISO definition (ISO 8402: 1986, 3.6) of "quality assurance" is "All those planned and systematic actions necessary to provide adequate confidence that a product or service will satisfy given requirements for quality."

The ISO definition (ISO 8402: 1986, 3.7) of "quality control" is "The operational techniques and activities that are used to fulfill requirements for quality."

The main goals of quality assurance and quality control standards are to produce a better quality product, save time and money, increase client satisfaction, and hence provide a competitive edge. In localization projects, project managers are responsible for ensuring that both quality assurance and quality control are well-managed. During the planning phase, quality assurance steps should be integrated into the schedule, and during the project, checks should be in place to ensure that quality control steps are

actually carried out.

Assessing the quality of localized deliverables can be a complicated task and much has been discussed and written on this topic. Everybody agrees that a quality translation has to be accurate and consistent as far as terminology, writing style and format is

concerned. However, not many standard metrics for assessing translation quality have been developed and applied as a standard world-wide.

Because existing standards were too complicated, expensive or not applicable to translation or localization, several initiatives have been undertaken by industry sectors, local translation organizations, and universities. A good example is the Translation Quality Metric Task Force by the Society of Automotive Engineers. 

A national standard under development in the U.S. is the ASTM Standard for Language Translation, a standard developed by the National Foreign Language Center (NFLC) and the American Translators Association (ATA), under the auspices of the American Society for Testing and Materials (ASTM).