In the previous article Signs that translation is good, we review things that make the translation good. Now let us see and discuss the signs of a bad translation in order to avoid these things in the future.
- The text is hard to read
We mean by this thing not that the quality of the printed text is bad. We mean the text form. Some translation types require full sentences with descriptive words that are a big number of, others – simple sentences. We recommend first defining the text type and then making sentences that suit this type.
- The number of inconsistencies
This is a common error in translation. There are a few reasons for it: the client provides the translator with a piece of the source text (not the whole one) and the source text is enormous that the translator could lose the connection and translate the word with a synonym.
- Lots of punctuation and spelling errors
When you meet lots of such mistakes, it means that the translator is incompetent and has not found time to proofread the text before sending it to the client.
Conclusion: in order to avoid the above-mentioned things, a translator should be given more time to do a quality assessment of his/her work: proofreading step and quality assessment by QA software programs. If you implement our recommendation, the quality of the translation will be definitely increased!