What is a back translation?

House of Translation - What is a back translation?www.houseoftranslation.ae

Reverse translation, better known as “back translation,” refers to the translation process where a document is translated to a given target language and then that translation is translated back to the original language.

In most cases, a translated document is translated back into the source language for the purpose of verifying the level of coincidence of the translation. This serves to detect errors in meaning and omissions.

By carrying out this process, we try to reconstruct the ideas of the original document as closely as possible.

In general, the ideas and concepts are faithfully translated but the words don’t always match. When doing a back translation, words are often replaced with synonyms and rarely match the original text.

The idea behind a back translation is to ensure that the translated text is as close to the original as possible. This is especially relevant in areas of study such as medicine, marketing, biology and any other exact science, where the meaning of certain words must be translated as faithfully as possible.