Different types of language services for the correction and consistency of clients' material in foreign languages

SMG provides text correction services in over 160 languages, with respect to meaning, syntax, spelling, vocabulary, language register amd consistency with other texts.

Clients can take advantage of our multilingual revision, review and proofreading service to correct any inaccuracies or mistakes and optimise their multilingual material by making it consistent and updated. This service is not limited simply to checking and correcting texts translated internally by the client or proofreading company documents; rather, it is about periodically aligning your multilingual documentation, ensuring that all company documents are consistent and up-to-date.

Unless otherwise agreed on with the client, SMG performs revision, review and proofreading in accordance with the international UNI EN 15038 and ISO 17.100 standards, which lays down three different checking methods:

Revision

This phase involves checking the translation by comparing it to the original source text, in order to check its suitability for the agreed purpose of a given project. The suitability of the translated text is assessed with respect to the original according to specific parameters, such as consistency in terms of terminology, style and language register.

Standards UNI EN 15.038 and ISO 17.100 specify that the reviser appointed to perform the check must be a different person to the translator and must also have adequate knowledge of both the source and target languages. This ensures greater objectivity when checking texts and makes it possible to identify any omissions or errors of syntax and grammar, typos, or mistakes of any other kind which can occur during translation. However, the standards also specify that as part of the certified translation process the translator must always check his or her work for inaccuracies or errors before handing it over to the reviser.

Review (specialist review)

In this phase, solely the translated text is examined to make sure it is correct. A review is performed to check if fine-tuning or further adaptation in terms of vocabulary and style are required.

Specialist review must be performed by a specialist reviewer, or rather by an individual in a professional role who has previous experience in translation in the subject matter and in the s emantic areas covered by the same (at least in the target language of the document). Monolingual review is therefore crucial to ensure that the text is suitable for the purposes agreed in the project, as well as to draw attention to the need for any corrective actions and to implement them. Specialist review of a translation may examine aspects of the text such as the register and certain semantic conventions to be observed (as in the case of legal texts, or texts related to international law, or even texts drafted in compliance with European legislation that requires official translations to be used for certain terms).

Proofreading

Depending on the specifications agreed for each project, it may be necessary to proofread translations. If this is the case, the translation service provider (TSP) shall fulfil the order by ensuring that translation proofs are correct before printing. Proofreading is recommended, if not necessary, for projects of a journalistic, publishing and advertising nature, where copies of texts for printing are checked to elminate any errors they may contain, including with respect to layout (double spacing, text margins, or other formatting issues).

Once the Project Manager has received the corrections from the revisers, he or she then:

  • checks the consistency of the proposed changes with the client;
  •  asks the client for any clarifications and applies these to the final text together with the revisers;
  • delivers the translation to the client, attaching any files with notes on the corrections made.

Final assessment of revisers, reviewers and proofreaders

SMG revisers, reviewers and proofreaders are assessed at the end of each project according to specific parameters (Comprehension, Syntax, Vocabulary, Formatting, General/local knowledge or Reliability, etc.).  These continually updated assessments enable our Project Managers (the contact persons in our offices whose role it is to assist clients and coordinate language services) to identify the most suitable professionals according to the requirements of each specific project.

A further offshoot of the revision service has been developing in recent years, namely the post-editing of machine translations.

This service is provided by editors specialised in what could be termed quasi natural languages, meaning variants of any known language produced by machine translation software that we can to all intents and purposes define as ‘new languages’ because, despite being very similar, they often differ from veritable natural languages.

In fact, in almost all cases, these technologies provide imperfectly translated content with numerous errors and inaccuracies that require further refinement in order to be fully understood by the target audience of the translated messages.

This content must therefore undergo revision, which is essential to ensuring that your communication maintains the same message and is best conveyed in the foreign target language.

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