Do You Review Your Own Text?
Posted in July 28th, 2008 by Miguel LopesIt may sound a bit obvious that a translator, having completed the translating process, carefully reviews the text he or she has just produced, right? Wrong.
From what I have seen in my work as a translator/reviewer, a considerable amount of translators doesn’t even bother to read attentively the final text, so as to, at the very least, detect typos and common mistakes resulting from a simple lack of attention.
The ideal scenario is when the translator first re-reads the final, translated text and compares it to the source. The aim here is to see whether there is a part that remained untranslated (unintentionally overlooked) or whether something was misinterpreted, resulting in mistranslations. In Portuguese, we call this “cotejar”, which roughly means to compare.
Next, the translator should do what we would call a final review: read once again the whole translation, setting the original aside for a while, so as to catch grammar mistakes, confusing structures, tone, word repetition, and so on. This ensures quality in the final text; it is quite similar to what we call Quality Assurance (QA) in localization.
Last, but not least, it is crucial that the translator places him or herself in the position of the reader, and decides whether the text “sounds like English”; in other words, whether it can be read as if it were produced by a native speaker, with adequate elements to that particular language. I believe that is precisely what makes the translation process a hard nut to crack. However, it is an essential aspect if we are to obtain a text with high quality – it determines whether the translation will be a fluid, easy-to-understand text, with structure and vocabulary choices compatible with the target language.
Sure, after lots and lots of research and “brain knots,” necessary to translate a more complex text, one can’t help but feel a bit lazy and decide not to read the whole thing and review it in every detail. In fact, when I was in college, my translation professor had to call my attention time and time again for having made silly mistakes, due to – yeah, you’ve guessed – lack of a good review. I was lazy myself when it came to reviewing my own translation. However, with the encouragement I was given to improve my text and my willing to produce perfect translations, I started to get used to reading what I wrote and became surprised with the amount of mistakes one can find with some good old review.
The result is that, today, besides using the MS Word spellchecker – a useful resource, often overlooked by translation students and even some experienced translators! – I have developed the habit of re-reading my text, at least once. And I must say that I always – I mean “always” and cannot emphasize that enough – find something that can be improved, changed or fixed.
This is my encouragement, then. Want to improve the quality of your translation and add value to yourself as a translator? Then, by all means, review your text!
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