I Don’t Speak Xhosa So How Do I Check It?

Well, without being flippant, and short of finding yourself an agent who does speak the lingo and whom you trust, you can’t. That means you’re reliant on your translation agency to get it right.

But there are some checks you can ask for over and above soliciting just a translation, which are tools to help you ascertain the quality of what you’re getting.

Here at RP Translate, we have developed a specialist verification service, which provides an independent check of your translation, complete with proposed changes and full explanations of those proposals.  The document is designed to put you in charge, whether you speak the language in question or not, and to leave you with as good a translation as possible, fit for purpose and error-free.

Alternatively, you can opt for a back-translation service.  This, as with Mr Ronseal, does exactly what it says:  it translates from the target language back into English, hopefully enabling you to pick up any mis-translations or other errors in the process. However, we have found over time that back-translation may not always provide you with the best solution. 

Any translator worth their salt will adapt a translation so that it can be read more easily and comfortably by its target audience, and back-translation is no exception to this.

Back-translation will NOT, therefore, reveal any typos, mis-spellings, grammar errors or even minor mis-translations.  Moreover, costs are based on final word count, so you will effectively end up paying twice for the same thing, once to have it translated in the first place, and once to have it back-translated for checking.

Verification, on the other hand, as a rule of thumb, and working on the assumption that the translation is of a reasonable quality, will cost approximately half the original translation cost, and is designed to provide you with a fully-usable text of which you can be completely confident.