Back translation is a way to verify the accuracy of a translation and sometimes used by Clients to check the accuracy of the source text translated by asking an independent third party translator to translate the translated text and comparing it with the initial source text. Most common areas for back translations are science and medicine as accuracy in texts of these nature is of utmost important and at the same time hardest to translate. For instance, let’s say a client submitted a document in Chinese for translation into English. A back translation would involve using the translated text in English as the source document and translating it back into Chinese. The client would then compare the original Chinese text with the translated Chinese to make sure the English text was a correct translation of the original. For medical and science translations, it is especially important that all information is accurately represented in both languages.
Although additional cost is incurred using Back translation, it is at times necessary to ensure the quality of a translation as an inaccurately translated text may mean a potential loss of clients and in the worst scenario, resulting in client utilizing the translated texts wrongly and leading to unwanted situations.