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Is proofreading a separate profession in its own right?
Thread poster: Baran Keki
Baran Keki
Baran Keki  Identity Verified
Türkiye
Local time: 02:30
Member
English to Turkish
Apr 1, 2021

I'm wondering if there are people who make their living not by translating, but solely by proofreading other people's translations.
Are there such people employed by translation agencies (as opposed to translators who've listed proofreading/editing among their services) on an in-house or freelance basis, who actually compare the target text against the source text, checking it only for punctuation, grammar and translation errors rather than imposing their own version of the translation, t
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I'm wondering if there are people who make their living not by translating, but solely by proofreading other people's translations.
Are there such people employed by translation agencies (as opposed to translators who've listed proofreading/editing among their services) on an in-house or freelance basis, who actually compare the target text against the source text, checking it only for punctuation, grammar and translation errors rather than imposing their own version of the translation, their understanding of style and their preferred wording and sentence structure (i.e. sticking to the ethics of proofreading, if such a thing exists)?
Secondly, in relation to this question, do you think translators (seeing as how, by default, they're considered as 'proofreaders' by almost every translation agency) generally make good proofreaders?


[Edited at 2021-04-01 12:54 GMT]
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Dan Lucas
Dan Lucas  Identity Verified
United Kingdom
Local time: 23:30
Member (2014)
Japanese to English
One for the experienced Apr 1, 2021

Baran Keki wrote:
Interesting question/s

Think Sheila has some experience here. Be interested in what she has to say.

Dan


Maria Teresa Borges de Almeida
Michele Fauble
 
Mr. Satan (X)
Mr. Satan (X)
English to Indonesian
One-two Freddy's coming for you... Apr 1, 2021

Aren't post MT jobs exactly that?

[Edited at 2021-04-01 13:26 GMT]


 
Samuel Murray
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English to Afrikaans
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@Baran Apr 1, 2021

Baran Keki wrote:
I'm wondering if there are people who make their living not by translating, but solely by proofreading other people's translations.


Well, 70% of my income come from proofreading other people's translations. And I suppose it must be possible to train oneself to do such a job only, but being a translator (and having skills as a translator) helps tremendously when it comes to being a good proofreader.

If you include MTPE in your definition of "proofreading", then I think a sizeable number of "translators" are just proofreaders and not translators.

...who actually compare the target text against the source text, checking it only for punctuation, grammar and translation errors rather than imposing their own version of the translation, their understanding of style and their preferred wording and sentence structure (i.e. sticking to the ethics of proofreading, if such a thing exists)?


I think there are many people who fulfill such a role, but I'm not sure if they always have that role for every client. I may be only a proofreader for client X, but only a translator for client Y. There are clients for whom I do mostly or only proofreading.

Do you think translators (seeing as how, by default, they're considered as 'proofreaders' by almost every translation agency) generally make good proofreaders?


Not always. I have met translators who can write very eloquently from scratch but they are unable to beat another translator's poor writing into something better. The opposite is also true: some people are very good at improving an existing translation but may only be able to produce a mediocre translation from scratch.


MollyRose
Beatriz Ramírez de Haro
Christine Andersen
Catherine Brix
 
Lingua 5B
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English to Croatian
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Maybe not completely separate but... Apr 1, 2021

Requires some different skills and orientation/training, similar to teaching, training or error spotting. Even in software, there are developers and there are quality testers and they usually work predominately in only one of the two. An example would be that a quality tester could tell you a long list of common errors expected to be found in a software and what to do about them if you wake them up in the middle of the night. Something like an engineer/designer vs. field service engineer.
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Requires some different skills and orientation/training, similar to teaching, training or error spotting. Even in software, there are developers and there are quality testers and they usually work predominately in only one of the two. An example would be that a quality tester could tell you a long list of common errors expected to be found in a software and what to do about them if you wake them up in the middle of the night. Something like an engineer/designer vs. field service engineer.

The main problem is that 1) proofreading is paid horribly and 2) largely abused by agencies. An example is one of my recent projects...a client took a large file, separated it into 3 sections (about 20k words each), and sent to 3 different translators (I was one of them) to be done in 1 week, it was doable due to repetitions. They announced “all three sections will be sent to the same proofreader”. Now, if this proofreader is highly trained, they will be able to harmonize this Frankestein translation, but, I am pretty sure they will not be paid a great deal of money. All this, because the agency probably needed to promise to the client to complete 60k words in 1 week. To show their superiority and super human speed translation capabilities.
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William Dan
 
Kevin Fulton
Kevin Fulton  Identity Verified
United States
Local time: 19:30
German to English
If you include copyediting Apr 1, 2021

One of my side hustles for the past 10 years or so has been editing manuscripts for a journal. Most of the articles have been either translated into English or written by non-native speakers of English, so the process isn't much different from working on raw translations. I get about 50 manuscripts/year with generous deadlines (and am paid by the hour), which helps fill the gaps when I don't have translation tasks, and is a more remunerative alternative to watching television or napping.

Christopher Schröder
 
Adieu
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Ukrainian to English
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Well... Apr 1, 2021

Recently? Most of my stuff is some form of proofreading, whether "revision" jobs cleaning up after other translators or technical MTPE.

As long as it goes fast, why not? Less carpal tunnel syndrome. I don't miss that.

PS yes, in many fields MTPE sucks, but in technical/bureaucratic fields it certainly has its uses.


 
Maria Teresa Borges de Almeida
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Portugal
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English to Portuguese
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@Baran Apr 1, 2021

Though I’m not very fond of revising/editing/proofreading other people’s translations, I’ve been asked more and more often lately, so I probably could live from revision alone. During my in-house years (1986-2006), only experienced translators were revisers (EU career bracket L/A5-L/A4), but things have changed and nowadays all translators are also revisers.

P.S. I don’t do MTPE.


 
Christopher Schröder
Christopher Schröder
United Kingdom
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Swedish to English
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Proofreading and proofreading Apr 1, 2021

Yes there are proofreaders proper and there are specialist reviewers.

I have never come across a reviewer capable of just dotting i’s and crossing t’s.

Nor a translation where all I needed to do was dot i’s and cross t’s.

Fortunately most of my work goes out as is, and I very very rarely look at anyone else’s.

Dinosaur.


 
Michele Fauble
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Norwegian to English
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It happens Apr 1, 2021

Chris S wrote:

I have never come across a reviewer capable of just dotting i’s and crossing t’s.

Nor a translation where all I needed to do was dot i’s and cross t’s.


I reviewed one translation where all I needed to change was two commas and the translator’s translation of “til og med”.


Christopher Schröder
Maria Teresa Borges de Almeida
 
Baran Keki
Baran Keki  Identity Verified
Türkiye
Local time: 02:30
Member
English to Turkish
TOPIC STARTER
Proofreading/checking/editing human translations only Apr 1, 2021

I didn't have PMTE in mind when I formulated my question. I was thinking more about the standard translation agency practice of hiring two translators (one for translation, another for proofreading) for one project.
While I totally understand and appreciate that another pair of eyes (that of the second translator's) will spot the typos and errors in your translation no matter how carefully you thought you did the translation, I think this is far from a flawless system. The second translat
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I didn't have PMTE in mind when I formulated my question. I was thinking more about the standard translation agency practice of hiring two translators (one for translation, another for proofreading) for one project.
While I totally understand and appreciate that another pair of eyes (that of the second translator's) will spot the typos and errors in your translation no matter how carefully you thought you did the translation, I think this is far from a flawless system. The second translator may not turn out to be a good translator or not a translator at all (as it happened to me once some months ago, where I was literally offered to proofread my own translation by an Arabic 'LSP', who was in the translation agency's database for English to Turkish language pair and got the proofreading job as he missed out on the translation job, it was one of the strangest coincidences I've ever had).
And to answer my own question, in my experience (or rather in my language pair), most translators don't make good proofreaders. Some of them have this weird tendency to replace words with their synonyms (just for the sake of appearing to have 'done some work' when failing to find any errors, I guess) and thus consciously or unconsciously undermine the translator's work with so many unnecessary track-changes, which, more often than not, contain stylistically and terminologically wrong choices that help reduce and disrupt the quality of the translation. This, I'm convinced, is something that a proofreader by trade would never do.
That's why I'm wondering if there are full-time proofreaders, employed by agencies, whose only job it is to proofread translations from German or French or Spanish to English, or vice versa, on a daily basis. I realize that such a thing wouldn't be possible for less popular language pairs such as mine.
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Christopher Schröder
Christopher Schröder
United Kingdom
Member (2011)
Swedish to English
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I exaggerated Apr 1, 2021

Michele Fauble wrote:

Chris S wrote:

I have never come across a reviewer capable of just dotting i’s and crossing t’s.

Nor a translation where all I needed to do was dot i’s and cross t’s.


I reviewed one translation where all I needed to change was two commas and the translator’s translation of “til og med”.

Was it one of mine?!

Once, back in 1993 when working in-house at Berlitz, I read a translation from German that was perfect and I was so in awe I rang the translator to say so. I think he was just embarrassed. No idea of his name now but he lived in Hull. Thank you, mysterious translator of Hull. You were a major inspiration.


Maria Teresa Borges de Almeida
Christine Andersen
P.L.F. Persio
 
Christopher Schröder
Christopher Schröder
United Kingdom
Member (2011)
Swedish to English
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Yes-ish Apr 1, 2021

Baran Keki wrote:
.
That's why I'm wondering if there are full-time proofreaders, employed by agencies, whose only job it is to proofread translations from German or French or Spanish to English, or vice versa, on a daily basis. I realize that such a thing wouldn't be possible for less popular language pairs such as mine.

Effectively I did just that for the first few months in-house. It’s a good way of learning all kinds of things. But I hated it.

But it beats me why anyone would make unnecessary changes. Why prolong the agony? Surely it’s also more lucrative to make the minimum of changes?

[Edited at 2021-04-01 19:53 GMT]


Baran Keki
Maria Teresa Borges de Almeida
expressisverbis
P.L.F. Persio
 
Adieu
Adieu  Identity Verified
Ukrainian to English
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Because they think they need to Apr 1, 2021

Chris S wrote:

Baran Keki wrote:
.
That's why I'm wondering if there are full-time proofreaders, employed by agencies, whose only job it is to proofread translations from German or French or Spanish to English, or vice versa, on a daily basis. I realize that such a thing wouldn't be possible for less popular language pairs such as mine.


But it beats me why anyone would make unnecessary changes. Why prolong the agony? Surely it’s also more lucrative to make the minimum of changes?

[Edited at 2021-04-01 19:53 GMT]


They're fully aware they have PMs who usually don't know anything and expect that some of them will simply track changes to see if much of anything was done.


Baran Keki
Gerard Barry
 
Baran Keki
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Türkiye
Local time: 02:30
Member
English to Turkish
TOPIC STARTER
Precisely Apr 1, 2021

Adieu wrote:
They're fully aware they have PMs who usually don't know anything and expect that some of them will simply track changes to see if much of anything was done.


And if the language pair is an exotic one (like Georgian to English or Turkish to English) where the PM is compelled to take the proofreader's (second translator's) word for the quality of translation, creating unnecessary track changes sends a clear 'message'.

Chris S wrote: But it beats me why anyone would make unnecessary changes. Why prolong the agony? Surely it’s also more lucrative to make the minimum of changes?


I agree with you 100%. That's how I go about proofreading jobs.
There is also a new trend emerging as part of rate reduction strategy: if your translation rate is too high, you're automatically given proofreading jobs. I actually prefer this when my proofreading rate is reasonably high and the cheaper translator is a good one. I stand to make more money in less time that way.


expressisverbis
 
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Is proofreading a separate profession in its own right?







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