Proofreading involves reviewing the translated text by comparing it with the original, focusing on linguistic or professional aspects. Our company offers linguistic and professional proofreading services for translations done by our contracted translators, for an additional fee.
Linguistic proofreading is typically carried out by native translators or linguists who are fluent in both the source and target languages. This ensures that the linguistic expression is as close as possible to what a native speaker of the target language would expect.
Professional proofreading has a crucial relevance when the translated text must be not only understandable but also flawless for professionals working in a specific field. This is particularly important for legal, banking, technical, or scientific texts..
Editing or Target Language Checking
There are several types of editing processes. The most basic form involves having another translator, proofreader, or linguist read through the translated text without comparing it to the original. The focus here is on ensuring that the translation is linguistically flawless, easily understandable, and flows smoothly. In such cases, the reviewer also ensures that the terminology used is consistent. Our company applies this four-eyes principle to all our translations. This service is provided free of charge.
Today, it’s increasingly common to use software or artificial intelligence instead of human resources for translation. However, we are all familiar with those user manuals or product descriptions that are incomprehensible due to poor language usage, making them at least unappealing to the reader. Texts produced by professional software can be excellent depending on the field and the chosen language, but they still require editing work to ensure that minor mistakes or stylistic errors don’t confuse native readers. This is still a form of target language review, but it comes at a fee. While the cost of the target language review is temptingly low compared to the cost of human translation, it’s essential to consider how precisely the text needs to be formulated, especially respecting technical terms, and whether it’s just an informative draft or a final text.
If you opt for machine translation and review—or in other terms, post-editing—we recommend that you don’t use easily accessible free software but request a quote from us for machine translation. That is important because if the material generated by the software is of poor quality, it’s impossible to create a good, accurate, and understandable text from it afterwards.
.