Comments on: Back Translation: Out of Date in the Advanced Localization Community?

By: Radek Pletka

Radek Pletka — Thu, 06 Aug 2009 16:22:43 +0000

Back translation is usually needed only because the customer didn’t spend enough money to get it translated right at the first place. Buying translation is like a buying a car – you usually get what you paid for. When you pay for for beaten up Ford Escort and expect to have a ride like in a new Mercedes, you usually have a problem. And paying for another crappy Ford Escort to take you back will not fix it (smile).
I love cheap translators. Those guys are working hard every day to educate customers that you get what you pay for.
And I need educated customers, who learned the hard way that if you need quality, you HAVE TO PAY FOR IT.
If you need good translation, you need to find good translators, pay them well and than you can be assured you get a good product. It is not so difficult to find good translators, those are the ones, who are not cheap and who are also always busy (smile).
Offer them a little bit more and I am sure they will be able to squeeze you in (at least this is the way how I do it)

Sincerely

Radek Pletka

By: Tom Roland

Tom Roland — Wed, 05 Aug 2009 18:58:18 +0000

Thanks for this post. Very interesting. But I don’t think you fully answered your question, “Is there a more efficient way of managing these risks than have back translation performed?” Yes, the approach you recommend is a good one and will go a long way toward achieving better translation quality. But if the consequences of one incorrect translation are high enough (as is sometimes the case with pharmaceuticals, to cite your example), then the stakes may be high enough to warrant back translation of at least some materials, as a component of the “full localization strategy.”

PS: As a translator and therefore nit-picker of words, I must point out that you meant to write “there” instead of “their” in your second heading.
Cheers,
Tom

By: Lost in Translation

Lost in Translation — Thu, 30 Jul 2009 09:39:43 +0000

Back translation is a ******** (editor deleted expletive) money-making racket by vendors (usually in the medical space). Why not just export the source and target segments and send it to the reviewer to QA?

Don’t forget the (French) Toyota MR2 story….:)

By: JLibbey

JLibbey — Wed, 29 Jul 2009 20:31:38 +0000

The anecdote about the Chevy Nova is incorrect. Unfortunately, people keep spreading it around.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chevrolet_Nova#Urban_legend
http://answers.yahoo.com/question/index?qid=1006033030982

By: Kirti Vashee

Kirti Vashee — Wed, 29 Jul 2009 19:49:48 +0000

I think it would be much more useful to do multiple translations of the same source doc as this would reveal issues that exist in the source language that could contribute to worse translations.

This practice is particularly useless and pointless in evaluating MT since you are guaranteed to get source that deteriorates every time it is passed through the engine. It would provide no real idea or insight on the actual quality of the MT engine.

With MT this is almost an equivalent of making fun of a handicapped person