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Search engine : All categories test en Proofreading: what does it really mean? It may seem obvious, but in the translation industry proofreading can mean a variety of things. So what are we talking about? Of course it goes without saying that translators proofread their work. It's difficult to imagine them sending in a translation immediately after having typed it. Although with certain translations you might well wonder… In general, however, a good translator will only ever provide work of professional quality.   So proofreading usually means an extra checking step carried out by someone else. In this case, the proofreader either has the source text - the original document that has been translated - or not. Without the original text, proofreading is necessarily limited to revising the form (grammar, spelling etc.) and the style. If the proofreader finds an inconsistency, it may be possible to correct it on the basis of the context, but in many cases all that can be done is to report it, perhaps inserting a comment in the translation - the mistake cannot be corrected because its nature is unclear. It is obviously very hard to correct a translation error without the source text. With the original, on the other hand, the proofreader can easily correct any mistakes, and the revision can thus be much more thorough and detailed.   But is this effort really necessary? In two cases, certainly: proofreading a very important document, perhaps for publication, or a document written in a foreign language which needs to be of a sufficiently high quality. A proofreading stage after the translation from a single agency (in the first case) will generally cost about a third again as much as the translation alone. Proofreading by itself will cost about half the price of a translation. It is important to note that the first case is in fact relatively rare (despite the many translation agencies who will try to suggest the opposite…), and tends to be reserved for publishing houses. This is because the quality demands for this type of content are so much higher than those that usually apply to the vast majority of documents translated, and this is illustrated by the prestige of a book compared with that of a brochure or website. That said, however, there is nothing to prevent an extra proofreading step, especially when you have the necessary budget and you want to ensure a premium level of quality. It also seems clear that the best proofreading is the proofreading or post-editing done internally by clients, because no-one knows more than they do about the details of their own activities. A law firm, for example, would be very unwise not to proofread translations of its contracts. Would you yourself take the risk of publishing content on the web without checking its quality first? Not me.   My conclusion is that proofreading is only essential in two specific cases: when you are unsure of the quality of a text written in a foreign language, and when a text is translated for publication. Otherwise translation alone will be more than enough, as the best possible proofreading for almost all translation projects is the proofreading carried out internally by the client. Published on 05/02/2010 Pricing by the word - why? Hello, I am often asked for my prices, and people who are not familiar with the world of translation are sometimes surprised when I give a price per word. I explain that, in my view, this is the most accurate pricing method. I should point out straight away that I am talking about "source" words, because this makes it possible to give a precise, immediate quotation based on the text to translate. When pricing by "target" words, the final total is not known until the translation is complete - a clear disadvantage for the client. The target method may be justified, however, for PDF files or paper copy, where counting the number of source words can prove a difficult and complex process. Although administrations and certain companies (such as publishing houses) continue to prefer pricing by the line, it is not difficult to grasp that lines vary greatly, and that the first line in the body of this article - "Hello" - will take considerably less time to translate than the second. One objection to this is that there are words of one letter and words of fifteen letters. Of course. And yet a word has to be considered as a unit of meaning, and it is units of meaning that must be taken into account, rather than symbols or characters - another pricing method you might encounter. Why is this? Because a very short word in one language may have a relatively long equivalent in another, and vice versa. This remains an open question, but now you know my full view on the subject. I would only add that in the vast majority of cases, this is the pricing method I use. What do you think? Best regards, Jean-François. Download attached document Published on 12/10/2009 1