Agreeing the depth of translation revision

A translation revision brief sets the aspects to check, the depth of intervention and whether the reviser will compare the translation with the source, taking account of the audience, budget and deadline.

The revision task

Revision is careful reading to identify problematic words, sentences and paragraphs and correct or improve them where necessary. ¹ Much of it resembles editing, but it also catches unidiomatic wording caused by source-language interference, mistranslations and unnecessary additions. ¹ Translators usually both translate and revise their own text before finishing an assignment. ¹ A second translator should ideally compare it with the source and make the changes needed to preserve meaning; rushing that review can harm quality. ² Revisers correct and improve specific aspects of a text rather than giving it a vague look over. ³

Needs and quality criteria

Quality depends on the translation's needs, so readability may need to be very high for one text and only adequate for another. ⁴ A document can require two levels of quality: information quality for material used briefly in-house by a few readers, and publication quality for material read by many outside readers over time. ⁴

Three concepts of quality lead to different revision priorities: ⁵

• Client satisfaction directs attention to requirements such as the client's terminology.
• Fitness for purpose asks whether the translation suits its readers and their intended use.
• Protection of the target language is a concern in communities beside a formerly or currently dominant foreign language, including English-to-Spanish medical translation.

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The reviser should ask who will read the translation, such as international clients, the public or healthcare professionals, and consider that audience alongside budget and deadline. ⁶ The proposed revision level should then be discussed and agreed with the client. ⁶

Revision parameters

Brian Mossop's model groups twelve parameters into four areas: ⁷

• Transfer: accuracy and completeness.
• Content: logic and facts.
• Language: smoothness, tailoring, sublanguage, idiom and mechanics.
• Presentation: layout, typography and organisation.

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Experienced revisers tend to check these together while comparing translation and source sentence by sentence and paragraph by paragraph, also checking spelling, punctuation, bold, underlining, italics and presentation. ⁷ The model's questions can help translators produce a better first translation as well as guide revision. ⁷ Even a revision limited by time or focused on house style and glossaries may reveal consistency and content errors. ⁷

Levels of intervention

In 2018, translation practice had no consistently used vocabulary for revision levels: editing, proofreading, revising, reviewing and rereading could overlap or be used interchangeably. ⁸ Publishing also used revision differently, for amending a published work before a new edition. ⁸ The following four levels are a working scheme rather than an industry standard, and the choice of degree is subjective. ^{8, 6}

Full revision ideally checks all twelve parameters. ⁹ Particularly poor translations may need parts rewritten, which should always be discussed with the client beforehand. ⁹

General revision checks a selected handful of parameters; for example, a brief may require correct spelling and punctuation and checked medical terminology while preserving the author's voice, with no rewriting. ¹⁰

Partial revision, or a good-enough approach, addresses a limited budget or deadline by explaining that the translation cannot be improved as far as desired and asking the client which one or two areas to prioritise. ¹¹ Those might be spelling and punctuation; coherence, readability and phrasing that does not sound translated; or terminology accuracy. ¹¹ This is the most difficult level to apply. ¹¹ Mossop's rule is to ask whether a sentence needs improvement, rather than whether it can be improved, avoiding unpaid time on extra corrections. ¹²

Scan check, or quality control, is generally bilingual, moving between source and translation to check the following: ¹³

• Spelling.
• Completeness, ensuring all text is present.
• Layout matching the source.
• Correct reproduction of visuals such as tables and graphs.
• Numbers matching the source.

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Any level can be conducted bilingually, comparing the whole source and translation, or monolingually, treating the translation as a standalone text and consulting the source only where it cannot be understood. ⁸