A couple of weeks ago I received a request from a very well respected Medical Doctor to have his documents translated, but then he requested to have a back-translation as well. Although this is certainly not the first time I have had this request in my years as an Account Manager for one of the World’s leading Translations Agencies, it was the first time I really thought to myself…”why?”. When our company offers a 3-step process of translation, editing, and proofreading by industry specific translators, why would anyone want to pay the extra money for a back-translation? I did some research and spoke with some colleagues and I actually realized its importance.
First off, let me explain to my audience what a “back-translation” means. This job implies having an already translated text being translated back into the original source language but without reference to the source document. This immediately made me think of learning Algebra in the 6th Grade when my teacher would make me check my own answers by using “reverse operation”. Well, as much as I hated to do the same math problem twice, it did teach me the valuable lesson of double checking everything. The main difference in this regard is that numbers are mathematical symbols and will not change, but words often times have different meanings and will highly depend on the context in which they are embedded. While translating, you do not translate everything literally, and there is a whole range between a literal translation, like a legal one, up to a creative writing sought to translate a novel
This brought me to the conclusion that maybe a back-translation is not always accurate and may not actually show you the true quality of the translation. However, and more often than not, it serves the purpose of spotting avoidable mistakes in the forward translation or those ones arising from a poor understanding of the meaning of the source text. This happens to be the case for translations and back-translations legally enforced (or mandatory) for clinical trials.
Nonetheless, what a dilemma I have gotten myself into? Will a back-translation always provide a reliable way of double checking your translation, or is it just going to confuse the translator? I guess that question shall remain…

Those in the translation industry have long laughed at machine translation and its incorrect wording, awkward sentence choice, etc., so when Google Enterprise product manager Cyrus Mistry proclaimed that the new Google Translate would be “analogous to giving every employee in a business 34 translators sitting at their desk and translating everything they want to look for within a 10th of a second,” professional translators the world over spit their collective coffee onto their computer screens.

With the shortcomings of computer translation programs like Babelfish and Promt no secret within the industry and, to some extent, in the general public, Google’s bold claim seemed outlandish. Google Translate however, is based on statistical analysis, a radical departure from the traditional “rules-based” approach to machine translation. Starting with over twenty billion words in seven languages (from official United Nations documents), Google Translate solicited contributions of human-translated documents in other languages to add into its database. What truly sets this program apart however, as more bilingual text is entered into the program, the results of the statistical analysis, and therefore the translations, become that much more accurate. By cross analyzing the new sources with the old, it is essentially improving its own translations.

Rather than write a scathing critique on how translation will always be an art form done by humans or wave a white flag and start looking at careers on monster.com, I will leave you with a few lines from John F. Kennedy’s Inaugural Address, its translation by Google Translate into Spanish, and the back translation into English.

Original

In the long history of the world, only a few generations have been granted the role of defending freedom in its hour of maximum danger. I do not shrink from this responsibility—I welcome it. I do not believe that any of us would exchange places with any other people or any other generation. The energy, the faith, the devotion which we bring to this endeavor will light our country and all who serve it—and the glow from that fire can truly light the world.

Spanish

En la larga historia del mundo, sólo unas pocas generaciones se han concedido el papel de defensa de la libertad en su hora de máximo peligro. Yo no rehuir esta responsabilidad-que acojo con satisfacción. No creo que ninguno de nosotros sería el intercambio de lugares con cualquier otro pueblo o cualquier otra generación. La energía, la fe, la devoción que aportan a este esfuerzo se iluminará nuestro país y todos los que sirven y que el resplandor del fuego que puede verdaderamente la luz del mundo.

Back Translation into English

In the long history of the world, only a few generations have been granted the role of defending freedom in its hour of maximum danger. I will not shirk this responsibility, which I welcome. I do not think any of us would exchange places with any other people or any other generation. Energy, the faith, the devotion they bring to this endeavor will light our country and all who served and that the glow from that fire can truly light the world.