About Back Translation

Translators get all kinds of request.  Most of the time it's just a straight-up translation job.  But once in a while, a client will ask a translator to provide a "back translation" for some existing translation.

What is that, you ask?  Simply put, a back translation is the translation of a translation back into the source language.  For example, someone translated an English document into Japanese.  Then, the client who ordered the Japanese translation asks someone else to translate the Japanese document back into English.  That's called a back translation.

In fact, if you've ever asked Google Translate to translate a phrase, and then switch the translation direction just to see what Google Translate says it means in the source language, you've already had Google Translate do a back translation for you.

Here are some examples from Google Translate, in the order of source/translation/back translation:

back translation/回譯/Back translation
一触即发/On the verge/濒临
epic fail/史诗般的失败/Epic fail

You may wonder why someone would go through all that trouble to have something translated back and forth.  (It certainly isn't for kicks, like the Google Translate scenario above.)  The short answer is for quality assurance.  A back translation will help the client figure out whether the first translation faithfully conveys the meaning and flavor of the source material.  This is especially important if the content has to do with advertising or customer service, where the human factor plays a key role.  A sample back translation can serve as a "spot check" of the entire document.

In the QA phase of localization, back translation helps QA leads, managers, and engineers (most of whom may not know this particular language) judge the severity of a linguistic issue.  Oftentimes the tester is asked to back translate the questionable localized text into the source language (and suggest a suitable translation), so a team leader can decide if a new translation is needed.

Of course, sometimes a client asks for a back translation because the quality of the first translation is in question.  However, this kind of practice is rare, since most translators are pretty conscientious about the quality of their work.  Moreover, many clients have their own gatekeepers to weed out bad translations way in advance to avoid this altogether.

Please translate responsibly.