A controversial quality control tool
An article in The Ottawa Citizen about the French translation of a license plate motto illustrates how back translation as a quality control measure can often fall short.
Back translation is the translation of an already translated text back to the original language. Normally this is done by an independent translator who has not seen the source text. The translation client — who cannot read the translation — can then compare the original and the back translation to ensure the message is intact. Back translations are used in various scenarios ranging from medical devices to advertising to market research or any situation where independent quality checks are desired or required.
The original Ontario license plate reads “Yours to Discover”; the French translation: “Tant à Découvrir”; the back translation — disputed in the article — is “So much to discover,” or “So many things to discover,” or “So much to be discovered,” depending on who’s doing the back translation.
Already, with these three little words, translated into three different little words and back again, we can see how doubts might arise about the quality of the translation. Short of a 100% identical back translation — Yours to Discover — a client who doesn’t know French and isn’t aware of the syntactical differences between two languages might be left to wonder where the “yours” went.
Without the “yours” the back translation essentially reveals that 33% of the original message has been altered. Now, we can only hope that along with the back translation, the client is given an explanation including why a literal translation would not work, and why the “yours” should not be put back in.
Scott M. Crystal provides a very pessimistic view of the benefit of back translation in his interview with the Association of Translation Companies. Crystal claims that back translation “is usually just a way to get into an argument about syntax and style choice (and a number of other linguistic factors) based upon varied cultural and educational backgrounds, or one of a million other variables another linguist will have to say about how you can improve a translation via the back translation process.”
Realizing back transation is imperfect, Metagora, a human rights assessment organization gives two possible alternatives to back translation: Multiple-forward translation and Translation review by bilingual judges.
Both back translation and multiple-forward translation would seem to be very costly endeavors, and while providing extra checks and alternate translations, neither may provide the reassurance a client seeks. A review by bilingual judges on the other hand, if they are independent, seems like a good step in any translation process.
What is essential for clients is that somewhere in the whole process, they have someone they can trust. This is why they often rely on a friend or colleague to review a translator’s work. Unfortunately this can lead to even more problems because the well-meaning friend may not have the requisite skills to give a nuanced assessment of the translation.
Back translation is here to stay for a while though, because, with the growth of machine translation, it may be the most measurable quality assurance process available, despite its imperfections.
5 responses so far ↓
1 CNX Translation // Jun 7, 2008 at 8:26 am
Great article! We regularly do back translations and it can really help to make sure the translations are of high quality.
However, as this article points out, it is not a perfect system and in some cases it won’t work. The disputed sentences (and not all text) could be reviewed by a third translator to help clearing the issues.
2 Glenn // Jun 7, 2008 at 9:31 am
CNX,
Thanks for your comment. Back translation can be a very useful tool as you point out. Some assert it’s useless because it adds subjectivity on top of subjectivity and potentially confuses the client who needs reassurance. If done right, meaning a translator and back-translator working completely independently, and then a third independent reviewer, I think it can lead to a much better translation.
In the legal translation market, we do not use this method often. This is because often attorneys are seeking information (rather than publication) from a translation, which they can then act on to conduct their case. This also means budgets allocated to translation are lower in the legal market and often do not allow for back translation.
3 Masked Translator // Jun 9, 2008 at 4:32 pm
This is a really interesting piece.
Back-translations, it seems to me, are extremely useful in certain situations but of no use in others. Back-translating PR material, including license plate slogans, seems a complete misuse of the (expensive) process of back-translation, for instance.
By contrast, in clinical trials for pharmaceuticals or medical procedures, back-translation is truly indispensable.
The reason, it seems to me, is that in clinical trials the language necessarily must limit subjectivity across multiple languages so that data gathered is truly comparable. This language is also not artful; the back-translation is immensely helpful not just to the client but to the other translators (both in country and out of country) in hashing out differences inasmuch as possible.
I can see using back-translations with legal material, as Glenn suggests, but only for bilingual pleadings or filings or for bilingual statutes, etc. He’s right that most lawyers need materials translated for informational purposes mainly.
Great post–I hope you don’t mind if I follow up with some thoughts on back-translation on my own blog.
4 Glenn // Jun 9, 2008 at 5:01 pm
Masked,
I don’t mind at all; I think bloggers bouncing off each other helps develop an issue and look at it from different viewpoints.
Limiting subjectivity across multiple languages is how I’ve seen back translation used most often. I see your point that the back-translation process in this scenario could help shed some of the stylistic or artful elements and pare the translations down to the bare bones to make sure the raw data is the same in each language.
I’ve also seen a lot of PR and advertising material back translated; one of the main reasons is to show the client that the message was not changed, but inevitably the wording does change, and this can risk creating more problems than it solves.
Thanks a lot for adding your insights. I’m not well versed in medical translation but the different approaches to each discipline fascinates me.
Glenn
5 conceição // Jun 12, 2008 at 4:35 am
a very good article.
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