Why Translation Proofreading Is Essential in Localising Your Content for Global Reach
Creating content that resonates with global audiences isn’t easy. You’re probably eager to take your content localisation game to the next level, but what about the hidden traps of translation mistakes, awkward phrasing, and cultural relevance?
Localising your content to meet the linguistic, cultural, and semantic needs of target audiences is challenging, even for native speakers of a second language. An article may be perfectly understandable to its intended audience, but incomprehensible to another audience with different reading habits and customs. You need to be sure that your content will be optimally understood and appreciated by an international reader base. So, what exactly is the best way to accomplish this?
As you know, translation allows you and your company to see beyond geographical and linguistic barriers — but you might not know that professional translation proofreading plays a significant role. Poorly proofread content can distort or obscure the original meaning and can, in worst-case scenarios, jeopardise your business.
In this blog post, you’ll learn why proofreading is essential when localising your content for the global market, and the answer to a question we hear all too often: what is proofreading in translation? Read on to discover why you need a final check from a native speaker who understands both your audience and the region you’re targeting.
A guide to proofreading
Proofreading is essential for any content, ensuring clarity, grammatical accuracy, and the integrity of the message being conveyed. Translation proofreading is all the more important due to the nature of the text, and how easily the intended message can be accidentally skewed. Grammar or spelling mistakes in any language will read as unprofessional, but when translating content, a mistake can even be insensitive or offensive. That’s why proofreading is a vital aspect of the translating process.
What is proofreading in translation?
Translation proofreading is a crucial final stage of the translation journey, but exactly what is proofreading in translation? Translation proofreading involves a professional, specialised proofreader — with native-level knowledge of the language pair — combing through each word, sentence, and section of the content to find and eliminate errors.
They edit the text to correct any typos, whilst ensuring the overall message is maintained through grammar, context, and clarity. It’s basically the same job as proofreading in the original language, but there’s more work — and more focus — on catching cultural faux pas.
Proofreading text that has been translated differs from proofreading untranslated text (so, still in its original source language) in one key way: it’s easier than you might think to miss certain cultural and linguistic nuances in the target language which can completely change the meaning. Even regional differences in the same target language can occur, which is why translation proofreading is so important.
Why is translation proofreading an essential step?
Poor proofreading of translated content can result in grammatical errors and embarrassing mistakes, or phrases that make no sense to native speakers of the target language and can make your business look unprofessional. At worst, some words or phrases can carry an offensive connotation if translated incorrectly or not checked for relevant nuance. For example, the Spanish word ‘chucho’ has completely different meanings in almost every country that speaks Spanish as a first language, including ‘stingy’, ‘cold weather’, ‘little dog’ or ‘mongrel’, ‘jail’, ‘skillful’, and even a nickname! Regional translation and proofreading is essential in catching these sorts of linguistic complications.
Don’t the original translators proofread the content?
Yes, of course they do. Your original translator will proofread their final translated text before considering it complete. However, translation proofreading is a unique skill of its own, and is often required as an additional service to ensure flawlessly-crafted international content.
Whilst translators do an incredible job at ensuring content is clear, fit for purpose, and grammatically correct, we all need a helping hand at times. Proofreaders see things from a fresh perspective, bringing an additional layer of knowledge, technical ability, and understanding of contextual nuance. This new perspective helps to identify and fix any remaining grammar, content, and transcreation conflicts.
What do professional proofreaders do?
To proofread translation of content accurately and professionally, a variety of checks are necessary. These ensure a well-polished and perfected final translation.
These checks are generally split into two categories: content-targeted, which refines the content itself, and language-targeted, which focuses primarily on perfecting grammar and readability.
Refining with content-targeted proofreading
Content-targeted proofreading covers several factors that the proofreader must check throughout the content.
When focusing on content, the main checks include ensuring that the essence of the content fits with the target audience’s culture, language, and demographics. Essentially, the proofreader will check the content is relevant to the audience it’s aimed at and is written in a way they can understand. This is where knowledge of regional differences comes in extra handy.
Other content-related translation proofreading includes:
Fact-checking the translated content against the original
Ensuring the correct terminology is used
Checking that the text is consistent and fits the context
Ensuring correct abbreviations are used
Identifying and removing inappropriate words or phrases
Perfecting with language-targeted proofreading
Language-focused translation proofreading isn’t that different to proofreading content in its source language — it’s all about ensuring that the entire text is accurately written and enhanced for the platform it’s meant for.
The first thing a proofreader usually looks at their checklist for is grammar. The proofreader will ensure that sentence structure, tense, punctuation, and spelling are all in line with the target language’s grammar rules. This is the bread and butter of the proofreading world, regardless of language.
Different languages across the world have varying grammar rules. Some are more complex than others, and some are more straightforward. No matter which one the target language falls under, the proper use of modifiers, pronouns, and subject-verb agreement is essential to accuracy and comprehension.
Another thing that a proofreader will check is the length of the text. Many languages have very different average word and sentence lengths, and a proofreader may have to edit down the translator’s content in order to fit a pre-established word count or page size. It’s important to note that the initial translator will usually do this check too, but a professional proofreader will pay more attention and really focus on these restrictions.
Let’s take German, for example: German is 10-35% longer than English on average, making it a bit of a struggle to get content to fit without rewriting the source or redesigning the medium it’s meant for. For instance, if you have a character restriction which means you can only have 30 characters, and you have exactly 30 characters in English, you can bet that a very literal German translation isn’t going to fit. This is where the translator and proofreader would work to produce the same sentiment as in the original English, but keeping the new character count within the limit.
Then you have languages like Korean and Japanese, with characters considered ‘double-width’ by some platforms, including Google Ads. So, in this scenario, character restrictions of 150 in English would be 75 for Japanese or Korean. Conversely, however, Japanese can often summarise an entire concept in only a few characters, which may save a lot of space in larger bodies of text.
Proofreaders and translators fix these issues by working together to ensure that your localised content fits into the space it’s designed for. They condense the text where possible, whilst maintaining the same message and meaning.
Also, a professional proofreader will check for typos, formatting, and visual consistency, so you receive a perfectly translated and fully-proofed piece of content.
The benefits of hiring a professional for translation proofreading
Like all text, translated content reads poorly if there are errors in areas like spelling or syntax. Any proofreader works to spot and fix these errors, but a translation proofreading expert will specialise in catching the unique issues and complications that arise from translating content. So, how do they do that?
Proofreaders make your content make sense
Legibility is essential in any language, but it can become more challenging to achieve in translated texts. The main reason is cultural and grammatical differences within a language pair. For example, the source and target languages might have completely different rules regarding how certain people of a specific role or social status are addressed. They might have different ways to structure a sentence or convey certain ideas.
A professional proofreader knows all this, and they are masters at the target language that they are proofreading. Native speakers with years of linguistic experience can quickly identify anything that doesn’t match the essence of the source text, and edit it for clarity.
Ensuring that your translations make sense is essential to convey the intended message. Communicating the intended message is vital to maintain the text’s purpose.
If your text is written to inform the reader, you need to ensure the information comes across accurately. If your text is written to persuade the reader, you need to ensure that the persuasive message and undertone aren’t lost in translation. If your text is written to entertain or intrigue the reader, it’s important to ensure that quips, jokes, and colloquialisms are suitable for the target language and audience. Not only do jokes often not translate well literally, but sense of humour can differ wildly across cultures, too.
Proofreaders do all of this. They use their entire range of technical skills and mix in knowledge from their years of experience, and the result is perfect content with a localisation that can increase your international reach.
Proofreaders make your translations look professional
No matter how industry-leading, quality-assured, or knowledgeable your company is, if your content isn’t top-notch, you will look unprofessional, and potential customers will lose trust in your company. Translation proofreading yields the best results when done thoroughly by an expert.
Professional proofreaders correct grammar, context, and localisation errors in your text so it flows smoothly and reads well in the target language. High-level grammar and a clear message make any company seem more professional, giving you a leg up in the international market.
In addition, well-written content in a new target language can actively increase trust from customers who speak that target language — it shows that you’ve taken the care to understand their cultural and regional nuances, rather than take shortcuts. This reassures a global audience that they are valued as consumers and respected as people.
Who should I appoint as proofreader?
So, now that we’ve answered the question of ‘what is proofreading in translation’, it’s time for a very important follow-up: who’s the best person for the job?
As we’ve pointed out, it can be easy for minor errors in translated content to ruin your entire message, and your brand image along with it. Ideally, your proofreader would be a master at the target language (their native language), and have knowledge of the subject matter, culture, and context.
Finding a proofreader with that profile can be difficult, but with ZippyLingo, we’ll rid that challenge for you. We have a collection of expert proofreaders who are linguistic maestros and often specialise in specific subjects.
If you want to know how a high-quality, professional proofreader can help your business, get in touch with the ZippyLingo team today and reap the rewards of high-quality, professional translation proofreading.
