As we all know, a translation usually goes through three stages (in general): the translating per se, editing and proofreading (or proofing). In order to guarantee the quality of the final product, Trusted Translations always follows these three steps. The proofreading is the final quality control step where we check, once again, that the text doesn’t have any spelling mistakes, that there are no sections left untranslated and that the punctuation is correct, among other things.
As a general rule, it’s important that there be three different people to translate, edit and proofread a document. Otherwise, it gets pretty hard to notice mistakes in the final stage. In the next section, I share some tips that might come in handy when doing the final revision.
• Read your way backward from the last paragraph of the text to the first. This may sound strange, but it’s a good exercise to “forget” a little what we’ve read and focus instead on the details that we might not notice otherwise.
• Keep a list handy of the points on which you need to zero in. Things like: running the spell checker, checking for subject-verb agreement, looking at the punctuation and confirming that the format is correct.
• Do certain tasks separately. Numbers and capitalization are detail items that can often be missed when looking at the text as a whole. However, when we look at only one kind of detail at a time, such as checking the number sequence, we can catch errors that are easy to miss.
• Take a break. What often happens when we read something over several times is that our level of attention drops somewhat. After proofing a text, it’s a good idea to put it aside and clear your head by doing some other activity—have something to eat, go for a walk or read something different. After a well-deserved break, we can take up the revision with a clear, fresh mind.
We all have our own tricks and habits when it comes to doing the final proofing of a document. What strategies do you apply to the task?
To read the original Spanish post go to https://www.trustedtranslations.com/consejos-para-llevar-a-cabo-una-buena-revision-2012-05-24.html
