Feedback plays a crucial role in the translation industry for several reasons. When translators offer feedback in a respectful and constructive manner, they demonstrate a commitment to quality and a willingness to help others improve. This fosters trust and builds stronger working relationships, which can lead to increased collaboration and teamwork.
Additionally, feedback serves as a quality assurance mechanism ensuring the final product meets the highest standards of accuracy and consistency.
Furthermore, feedback provides valuable opportunities for professional development. By offering and receiving feedback, translators can learn from each other, improve their skills, and stay up-to-date with industry best practices. This is particularly important for mentoring and training less experienced translators.
Translation reviews are a great way to ensure quality for any translation team (whether an LSP or a dedicated department of a company). If you are working with Language Service Providers (LSPs) the quality is going to play an important role. Also if you are working on a localization project with brands or companies, translation quality would be a vital determinator. In projects like these, be open to collaborate with other linguists. You may need to provide feedback to other translators, and vice versa.
If you are a professional translator you’re likely to work either with your direct clients or with translation agencies. Whether you work in-house or freelance, it is likely that you will work on a translation alone all the time. Often you will have some sort of collaboration with other translators. Feedback is a great collaboration tool that you need to master to be a professional translator.
It’s normal to be wary of giving or receiving feedback, especially with negative ones. But if done with authenticity, respect and professionalism it can build trust between translators and result in a great collaboration project. Second, you can learn a lot from constructive feedback both receiving and giving them. This gives such a lovely opportunity to critically engage with the text. When you find an issue, you find it based on some quality standard or the subtle norms of the language. This gives me a chance to receive free training on principles, and guidelines that we ought to follow.
What Do You Assess in a Translation Review?
- Assess Translation Accuracy: Accuracy is the foremost quality of a translation, without accuracy with the source all other qualities fail. Here you check the translation against the source text. Make sure the source text is understood and interpreted correctly. Be aware that any miscomprehension can lead to mistranslation, or inaccurate translation.
- Bring Natural flow of language: Does the translation flow naturally? One of the key criteria of a good translation is that it reads naturally in the target language.
- Ensure Consistency: Another key aspect is to make sure terminologies and style is consistent throughout the document. For readers, inconsistency leads to confusion making it difficult to understand.
- Ensure Cultural Appropriateness: This is a subtle and often overlooked aspect but highly important. The translation should not just be accurate in terms of linguistic accuracy, it should maintain cultural accuracy as well. Failure in this aspect leads to a text that might be unfamiliar to or even offensive for the target audience.
Accuracy is ensured by reviewing the translation against the source text. On the other hand, natural flow of language, consistent use of language as well as cultural appropriateness are ensured by reviewing the translation as a separate text. These are the four universal quality criteria that every translator needs to aim at. However, if you have specific translation guidelines, add them with these.
How to Deliver Effective Feedback to Other Translators
Giving constructive feedback to another translator can help them improve their skills and become more effective in their work. Here are some tips on how to provide feedback that is helpful, respectful, and productive:
- Remember your goal: Do not forget your goal. You want to help the other translator improve. You are to clarify what is not working well. And with your feedback they are going to feel empowered to improve the quality of the translation. It is important you point out issues or areas of improvement but it is also important to appreciate the great work.
- Don’t hesitate to offer positive feedback: Feedback isn’t meant to be necessarily negative. Acknowledge the translator’s strengths and accomplishments. Highlight any positive aspects of the translation and appreciate good practices.
- Don’t Be Overly Critical: Focus on constructive feedback rather than pointing out every single mistake. Focus on the most important issues only. Limit your comments on the most important issues.
- Offer actionable feedback: Your feedback should be actionable. Don’t just point out issues. Offer or suggest solutions for improvement. Suggest alternative ways to translate certain phrases or sentences.
- Remain objective and professional: Your feedback needs to be objective and professional. As a translator many of the choices we make are preferential. Be aware of your personal preferences, and keep them aside. Look at the text objectively, and if anything you want to comment on, do it in a professional manner. Make sure your feedback is based on facts, the actual translations, not assumptions. Is your feedback self-centered or preferential? Skip them from pushing as a feedback.
- Give Examples: Be specific pinpointing an issue and give examples. You want to draw the translator’s attention, and want them to consider fixing it. Try to provide a few examples of the errors you spot for specific categories not a list of errors. Instead of generically suggesting a rework specify on which parts you suggest reworking:
“The translation is accurate and flows well but a revision would be appreciated to fix types like[this], [this], and [this]; also keeping the terminology consistent [example 1], [example 2] would remove readers’ confusion.” - Use the sandwich technique for negative feedback: It’s always tricky to be critical and provide negative feedback. The sandwich method of feedback may help. Deliver your negative or constructive feedback between two slices of positive feedback. Remember authenticity can take your feedback a long way. Really appreciate the positive side of the translation before using the sandwich technique. This works especially because it helps translators understand what is their strength and in which areas they need to work on.
- Be Respectful: Use a polite and professional tone in your language. Avoid making assumptions or judgments. Keep your language neutral, professional and friendly. Also, be aware of using uppercases and exclamation marks. As a reviewer, you are not a superior translator who points out problems and dictates a translator. You are a peer helping your colleague with a second pair of eyes. Be respectful and appreciate the strengths and achievements of the translator. Always be mindful about your language, you are suggesting improvement to another colleague. Be open to understand or listen to the translators’ angle and make it a professional and productive collaboration. It is important at all times you provide feedback in a constructive and respectful way that appreciates and respects their work. Before departing for feedback, put yourself in their feet and imagine how you would feel if you received the same feedback. Raise your concern, but be welcoming to have the original translator say the last word on the translation.
Dos and Don’ts of Providing Feedback
Here are some examples of constructive feedback, as well as phrasing you should avoid when giving feedback to other translators.
Examples of Positive Feedback:
- “I appreciate your consistency with the terminology throughout the document.”
- “You did a great job matching the style of the original text. Wonderful.”
Examples of Suggesting Improvement:
- “I think probably the phrasing here can be improved by making it more natural or colloquial.”
- “I noticed a few inconsistencies with the terminology in the document. It might be helpful to review the style guide to ensure consistency.”
Examples of Phrases to Avoid:
| Avoid | Use |
|---|---|
| wrong | inaccurate |
| You made a mistake in the sentence. | I noticed an error in this sentence. |
| Your translation is terrible. | I found some areas where the translation could be improved. |
| The translation is not good. | The translation could be improved in terms of accuracy and clarity. |
| bad, terrible, weird | inaccurate, incorrect |
| doesn’t have enough knowledge of the source/target language | mistranslation |
| Looks like machine translation. | The text is not natural, and doesn’t follow the practice of the target language. |
| Sloppy and careless translation. | It needs a second reading. |
Remember, the goal of providing feedback is to help the translator improve their work, not to criticize them personally. Also, be prepared to receive feedback on your own work as well. Use feedback as an opportunity to learn and improve.
