A back-translation allows you to compare translations with

the original content for accuracy and quality.

When referring to back-translation within translation, a back-translation allows you to compare

translations with the original content for accuracy and quality: it helps to evaluate equivalence
of meaning between your source and target texts.

How Is Back-Translation Achieved?

A back-translation is achieved by taking the translated version of a file or document and

having an independent translator, with no prior knowledge of the original content, translate it
back into the original language.

Because of the nature of language, you won’t be able to achieve a 100% result; meaning the
back-translation won’t ever be exactly the same as the original text, but it will help to identify
any errors, ambiguities or confusion that may arise from the nuances of language. Generally,
back-translations are performed as literally as possible, ensuring an accurate depiction of the
real meaning of the translation in the target language. So, because of this, you’ll find that
some back-translations may be unnaturally written, or artificial. But, if major semantic
differences are found between the source and back translation, and it’s unclear as to whether
the issue is with the forward or back translation, you may decide in favour of reconciliation.

Sometimes Back Translation is a Requirement

Some institutions and organizations request a back-translation to verify content, and for many
this has become a regulatory and legal requirement. In clinical trials, for example, most IRBs
(Institutional Review Boards) and Ethics committees require that certificates of accuracy and
back-translations are submitted with all translated materials. This requirement is to ensure
that all translations of such important materials are accurate and of the highest quality.

Other review boards and regulatory review processes request back-translations to test and
verify promotional and advertising claims. The Pharmaceutical industry is an example of this.
When you have valuable and sensitive information that must be completely accurate,
regardless of the language it’s translated into, or if the forward translation has associated risk
or is quite complicated, then it should automatically undergo back-translation as part of the
whole translation process. Using the back-translation process helps satisfy legal and
regulatory requirements.
The Results of Back-Translation and Reconciliation

Back translation and reconciliation add two additional Quality Assurance phases to the
whole translation process. Besides translation, editing, and proofing, both back-translation
and reconciliation provide two additional opportunities to refine and assess your translation
results.

We certainly advise that you have these services added upfront to your high-risk, high-
value multilingual translation projects, instead of taking the risk of a mistranslation not being
discovered. As any experienced translator can attest to, one error, or just one mistranslated
word, can have serious consequences. Unfortunately there are stories of translators
mistranslating just one word, ruining research projects, and costing their clients a lot of money
and time. Using back-translation and reconciliation services upfront can prevent any
potentially serious errors; saving money, time, and lost opportunities due to incorrect
translations. By using these services you’ll have peace of mind and you’ll be adding accuracy
and quality assurance to your translation results. The alternative should not be an option!
Fidelityandtransparency translation
1. 1. Fidelity and Transparency
2. 2. The concept of fidelity and transparency Fidelity (or faithfulness) and transparency are two qualities that,
for millennia, have been regarded as ideals to be striven for in translation, particularly literary translation.
These two ideals are often at odds.Thus a 17th- century French critic, Gilles Ménage, coined the phrase les
belles infidèles to suggest that translations, like women, could be either faithful or beautiful, but not both at
the same time.
3. 3. The concept of fidelity and transparency Fidelity pertains to the extent to which a translation accurately
renders the meaning of the source text, without adding to or subtracting from it, without intensifying or
weakening any part of the meaning, and otherwise without distorting it. Transliteration with machine
translation comes closest to this school of thought, with the caveat that it usually fails to properly convey the
message because of its rigid faithfulness to the original document
4. 4. The concept of fidelity and transparency Transparency pertains to the extent to which a translation
appears to a native speaker of the target language to have originally been written in that language, and
conforms to the language's grammatical, syntactic and idiomatic conventions. The translation caters to
native speakers and the target audience, such that idiomatic, syntactic, and grammatical conventions are
followed while cultural, political, and social context is kept in mind at all times. Adaptation and localization
comes closest to this school of thought, with the caveat that a bit of sacrifice in terms of the intended
message will inevitably happen whenever translators use this approach in their translation
5. 5. The concept of fidelity and transparency A few simple examples should illustrate some of the choices and
strategies that translators need to make, which confer them a voice in the resulting translation, together with
a brief explanation of the process of selecting a particular strategy. In the localization project of a British
software license reselling company introducing their services in Spain, which involved the translation of their
website and related documentation, the translator decided to keep a number of IT references in English
(software, hardware, type of licenses). In translational terms, this would be seen as a foreignizing strategy,
or the use of source text loan words in the target text. However, the translator was aware of the acceptance
of some of this terminology by the Real Academia Española (the authority in Spanish language matters)
6. 6. The concept of fidelity and transparency and the perceived preference in Spain of English terms in
dealing with IT topics. In the translation of the home page, “Are you taking advantage of the current
exchange rate?” was rendered as “ Aproveche la actual cotización de la libra esterlina”. This is an example
of transposition, where the interrogative sentence was changed into an imperative one, reflecting a more
direct style preferred by Spanish speakers. In another section, the webpage referred to software licensing
procurement explaining the process of insolvency of British companies, including terms such as insolvency
practitioners and case managers.This required the adaptation not only of the specific terminology but also of
the process of company insolvencies in Spain in order to successfully communicate the operational issues
involved in the procurement of licenses.
7. 7. Are you taking advantage of the current exchange rate? Aproveche la actual cotización de la libra
esterlina Take advantage of the current price of sterling
8. 8. English •please, buy me a bottle of sunflower oil in the retail store Filipino •mangyaring, bumili ako ng
isang bote ng langis mirasol sa tingian tindahan
9. 9. The concept of fidelity and transparency One final situation where a reader is aware of the presence of
the translator is bad translations. In this example of reverse translation, it is obvious that the process of
recoding suffers from a lack of knowledge of theTL and the reader is well aware that s/he is reading the
words of the “translator.” “Please, buy me a bottle of sunflower oil in retail stores” “Mangyaring, bumili ako ng
isang bote ng langis mirasol sa mga tindahang”
10. 10. In all these examples--even in the last one--the purpose behind the selection and application of
translation strategies by the translator is to produce aTT that “respects the norms of the target language,
that has vis à vis sentence structure, terminology, cohesion of the text and fidelity to the author and his/her
intention" (CIOL 2006:16).Venuti (1995), though, goes further and states that nowadays aTT is deemed
acceptable by readers, publishers and reviewers when there is an absence of foreign linguistic or stylistic
peculiarities and it reads fluently in theTL.The Chartered Institute of Linguists (2006:12) seem to prove this
point, as in their criteria for assessing translations “reading like a piece originally written in the target
language” is regarded as what translators should aim for when producing a TT.
11. 11. However,Venuti warns us (1995), the more fluent a translation is the more invisible the translator
becomes. Schaffner (1999:61) believes that the expectation is that the translator will produce “a faithful
reproduction, a reliable duplicate or a quality replica" of the ST that is as good as reading the original, thus
rendering the translator “transparent.”This shows a trust in the integrity of the translator and in his/her
capability to produce a text that is as good as the real thing and without whom intercultural communication
would not be possible (Hermans 1996). Interestingly, however, the expectation also is that a TT is most
successful when it is not obvious that it is a translation, requiring the translator not to leave any trace of his
work (Schaffner 1999:62).
12. 12. So it could be argued that, on the one hand, the translator is--or should be--regarded as the central
piece allowing communication between languages and cultures to take place and that a translation is
deemed good when it reads as fluently as if it was written originally in theTL. On the other hand, however,
for this to take place it is necessary that the translator stays as invisible and quiet as possible, so that his/her
choices and strategies when producing the text are not apparent and the reader is not aware of them.Thus,
a translation is good when it does not read like a translation and when it produces the impression of being
an original.
13. 13. Citations . - See more at: http://www.onehourtranslation.com/translation/blog/fidelity-versus-
transparency-translation#sthash.SZyQ2FZQ.dpuf