In my work as a Translation Strategist, I help train translators and I help nonprofits set up translation teams. Often I have to evaluate translations to see if they are ready to use. I have three simple criteria for this:
- Does the translation say the same thing as the original document? I call this “Fidelity”, or faithfulness. You can get a general idea by reading the translation to see if it makes sense, but the only way to know for sure if it matches the original document is to have a bilingual person do a comparison. When I do a thorough comparison (bilingual revision), I check the translation sentence by sentence to make sure nothing in the original document was misunderstood, changed, added or deleted.
- Does the translation flow nicely in that language; is it pleasant to read? I call this “Readability”. If I have to read a sentence twice in the translation, it usually means that there is a problem with Readability. Sometimes it’s because expressions have been translated literally and are therefore not idiomatic. Other reasons could be that the terminology is not exact, or prepositions have been used incorrectly. The worst case scenario is when it sounds robotic because a machine did the translation rather than a human.
- Does the translation use proper spelling, grammar and punctuation? I call this “Conformity” because documents need to conform to standard writing practices. Many people will stop reading something if they notice too many language errors, so in order for translations to be useful, they need to be accurate.
Whether you are a translator or a nonprofit working with translators, these 3 criteria are very helpful to ensure quality translations. I developed them during my doctoral research with my nonprofit translation team, but I also use them in teaching translation students at Concordia University and Université de Montréal. They work in any translation setting: Fidelity… Readability.. and Conformity.
Have a great day!
Liane 🙂
www.LearnTranslation.com
www.NonprofitTranslation.org
