What is Back Translation and Its Importance

In today’s globalized world, ensuring the accuracy of your translated materials is crucial. The translation process is often more than just converting words from one language to another—it’s about conveying meaning, culture, and intent. Back translation, or reverse translation, is a method that helps ensure the highest level of accuracy for sensitive, high-risk content.

According to a study from Common Sense Advisory, 72.4% of consumers are more likely to buy products when the information is available in their native language. This highlights the importance of precise translation, especially in industries like healthcare, legal, and pharmaceuticals where miscommunication can be costly, or even life-threatening.

What is Back Translation?

The term back translation, also known as “reverse translation,” is the process of translating a previously translated text back to its source language. Back translation is used to check the overall quality of a once completed translation to spot potential differences in the meaning between the source and target text.

Although the back translation process aims to produce an accurate translation, it differs from an ordinary translation process. The starting point is the translation itself instead of a source text. Furthermore, this operation generally involves a second translator who has not contributed to the translation process of a given document. 

The objective of back translation is to check for differences between the initial translation and back translation in terms of the meaning and to find only differences such as terms of concept, function, and effect. Just because the two versions of content are identical, it doesn’t necessarily mean that the initial translation was accurate. What’s important is having an efficient process when using back translation with a proxy solution.

Back translation can be considered a three-step translation quality control method.

First, the text translation during the back translation process is completed back to the original language. In most cases, the back translator doesn’t see the source text so that they can focus on assessing the context instead of structure and word preferences.

Next, a comparison of that new translation with the original text occurs. 

Finally, the reconciliation process of the back translation is documented, showing what has been changed and why. The goal of reconciliation is to decide on an optimum final translation that correctly conveys the original document’s meaning.

Certain kinds of translation do not work with back translation. For example, Google Translate can’t accurately perform back translation, nor can machine translation or Computer-Assisted Translation (CAT). Back translation must be done by a human translator because the translation must include localization elements to compare the translations accurately. 

Why Use Back Translation At All?

Back translation involves the transfer of written text from the source language to its equivalent in the target language. It considers the users and readers of the translated document, the nuances of the language, and the culture of the country of the target language. It is a way to ensure the highest quality of all translated materials used. Back translation is mainly used for content that contains high-risk or sensitive materials. Here are some specific reasons:

You might wonder, why go through the effort of translating text twice? The back translation process can seem counterintuitive at first, but it serves an important purpose. According to Gala Global, translation errors in high-risk fields, such as healthcare, can result in life-threatening consequences. This is why back translation is recommended in industries dealing with high-stakes content.

Here are some specific reasons why back translation is critical for ensuring the accuracy of translations:

1. Quality Assurance in High-Risk Industries

For industries like healthcare, pharmaceuticals, and medical devices, back translation provides an additional layer of safety. A report from SDL found that back translation ensures that critical medical documentation, like clinical trials or consent forms, is accurate and meets regulatory standards.

Back translation also ensures the safety and well-being of patients by preventing misinterpretations of vital information. For example, misinterpreting drug dosages or medical terms can lead to catastrophic outcomes.

2. Accuracy of Localization

In fields like medical research and market research, back translation helps ensure the accuracy of localized content. Global market research firms rely on back translation to verify that survey questions and responses maintain their intended meaning across cultures. Without back translation, crucial data might be misrepresented, resulting in inaccurate findings.

3. Best for Technical and Legal Translations

In technical translations, such as those for pharmaceutical products, ethics committees and review boards often require back translation to validate the accuracy of translated documents, protecting consumers and patients from erroneous information.

For legal documents and contracts, back translation is vital for ensuring clarity and avoiding miscommunication. Legal language can be particularly tricky, and back translation helps pinpoint ambiguities or unclear terminology that might lead to misinterpretation or legal disputes.

Limitations of the Back Translation Method

Content for back translation includes high-level documents that readers in another language need to understand, whether for legal or medical reasons or when understanding cross-cultural research. There are limitations to using back translation, however. 

The back translation process is extensive and involves an incredibly close translation revision, which means it can become an expensive process. Back translations are much more time-consuming than the standard translation process, or utilizing neural machine translation. This is because the back translation process has to account for time needed to complete two independent translations and additional time for the reviewer, original translator, and back translator to evaluate and reconcile any discrepancies identified by the reviewer. If your translation project is under a tight deadline, back translation may not be feasible.

How to Pair Back Translation With Expert Linguists for Ideal Results

With back translation, translated text often stays very close to the original text. Therefore, back translation accounts more for quality control and ensures the translated text conveys what the original content is saying in a localization context. A successful back translation project is well-planned, using several professionals. A localization company, such as MotionPoint, can help you consider if back translation is appropriate for your project considering time, resources, and budget and plan and implement a back translation process that suits your needs.