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7 Translation Review Best Practices and How to Handle Negative Translation Feedback


by Soraya Guimarães Hoepfner

7 Translation Review Best Practices and How to Handle Negative Translation Feedback

smileys with checkboxes on a notebook sheet and with sad smiley checked
Image by Adrian from Pixabay

If you are a freelance translator, chances are you have received feedback you found unfair or manipulative at least once in your career. Dealing with ‘nasty reviews’ can be nerve-racking as you know it potentially impacts your reputation and client relationships. The impact of such feedback on your reputation can be significant, regardless of whether you are entitled to have a bad day or not. But here is the thing: keep in mind that if you are a professional and get extremely negative feedback, the issue may lie in how the review is performed and, ultimately, in the reviewer. Very few professional linguists know how to be a reviewer – and we need to talk about this! In this article, I share my experience handling negative feedback and seven translation review best practices that make a good reviewer.

That day, I was served with a bad, bad review.

After more than a decade as a freelance translator, I finally experienced it: a shockingly negative review. The reviewer was ‘really shocked with the quality of these translations.’ Opening the reviewed file, I was bewildered. As an experienced Brazilian Portuguese Translator and a Communication Specialist, I couldn’t find any significant issues and disagreed with many changes. The outcome was severe: a 40% deduction on the Purchase Order to ‘cover third-party arbitration expenses.’ I was also not entitled to any final feedback from the alleged arbitration, so my disagreements were not addressed. This experience prompted me to reevaluate my approach as a reviewer and think of what translation review best practices make a good reviewer. Perhaps because of my journalism background, I’ve noticed that many trained linguists are unaware of the reviewer role.

The 7 Translation Review Best Practices That Make a Good Reviewer

Here’s a revelation: translating and reviewing are two entirely distinct tasks. Experience in translation doesn’t automatically qualify you to review or proofread translations. Project managers and clients, who often don’t master the target language, rely heavily on the reviewer. This might be a translator switching roles to fit the agency’s workflow. The only criteria, besides rates, are often the secrecy between the parties, an outdated dynamic that can bring more cons than pros to the process.

The translation review best practices that make an excellent reviewer are a combination of expertise that goes beyond language skills. A good reviewer is someone with a broader view of the translation industry. Not surprisingly, good reviewers are not necessarily holders of a translation diploma but talented writers in the first place because what they need to know better is how translation jobs are done and, ultimately, their own native language. Here are seven translation review best practices that make for a good review job and, therefore, a good reviewer:

 

1. Focus on the big picture

You need to remember that the proofreading or review job is part of the grand scheme. Therefore, working against the translator means working against the translation job. Workflows that give you the impression that the reviewer colleague is an issue-hunter are not productive or beneficial for any part, especially not for the end client. Regardless of anonymity, adopting a collaborative approach allows the team to share their knowledge, and the goal becomes to work together toward a better outcome instead of aiming at spotting mistakes. This subtle difference significantly impacts the workflow upstream and downstream, and translators are likely to incorporate improvements in their future jobs when they feel they are teaming up and not defending themselves.

2. Be specific and provide actionable feedback

Negative feedback can still be good if it is actionable. Offer relatable feedback with clear and contextualized examples of issues and improvements. Transparency is the key, and an overall remark should not be enough. Many workflows do not allow paid time or the right tools to provide constructive feedback and identifying relevant issue patterns – not punctual issues – can be very beneficial. For example, instead of saying, “Style is totally inappropriate,” consider contextualizing and offering concrete examples of where terminology fails to address that public, like “Please note the use of technical jargon such as ‘X,’ and ‘Y’ are inadequate for the lay audience. Consider ‘Z’ and ‘W’ instead”. Offering a rationale creates actionable feedback that can empower the translator to improve their work. It also avoids debatable counter-arguments such as “these changes are preferential.

3. Understand the mechanics of translation

Several hidden factors impact the ability of a translator to deliver an excellent job besides their skills, like the CAT tool used or tight deliveries. While they cannot be officially factored in, they give precious clues to the translator’s performance. Therefore, ignoring the task mechanics can be unfair. For instance, the reviewer should always observe if mistakes are consistently made or if they are punctual. To rate a significant issue in grammar concordance when seeing the same translator got it right in every other instance is, in my opinion, an example of unfair review. That might be just due to involuntary typing, which is not detected by spellcheck, and we are humans, after all. Differentiating between incidental, collateral, or lack of expertise mistakes allows project managers to get the best out of their talent pool. Understanding these mechanics and dynamics can make you a more knowledgeable and competent reviewer.

4. Maintain a respectful tone

Remember that there’s a person behind the other screen. Use respectful language focused on the job, not the person, so refrain from ad hominem remarks or general assumptions about the fellow translator. For example, formulating it as “The translator needs to check their grammar knowledge” is a bold statement. Alternatively, the reviewer can point out the substantial amount of grammar type issues by commenting on the job itself: “There were a higher than expected number of grammatical issues, especially concerning verbal concordance and punctuation (examples provided).” If there are many typos, instead of assuming the professional translator does not care to use spell-check, the reviewer can point out, “For this job, the amount of typo issues indicates the spell-check step was not performed.”

5. Balance criticism and praise

If a professional translator was in charge, something positive must be said, even if you consider the job a disaster. And remember, if the job was a total disaster, project, and talent management played a role by commissioning a job for which that specific translator was not the best match. Seek to highlight the strength areas besides pointing out any improvement needs. This helps maintain a positive and constructive tone. That also might include offering solutions or even further references. If the reviewer focuses on the best outcome for the job instead of disputes over winning the client, praising the colleague is not only possible but desirable. After all, the team performance is what matters.

6. Don’t overdo it!

Germans have a fantastic verb for this: Verschlimmbessern. When intending to improve something, one ends up ruining it by not knowing when to stop. Sometimes, reviewers can get carried away in their assumed villain roles, scrutinizing jobs and getting trapped into replicating corrections that quickly go from needed to preferential and then to inappropriate. A Professional reviewer knows their job is not measured only by the number of changes they make. It also uses its expertise to read the content and deem it “right or wrong” – that is what ‘proofreading’ literally means. Additionally, time is money: If you have not found any significant issues to correct or no actual mistake, refrain from endless preferential changes to leave your mark. Project Managers are pleased to know they can rely on you to double-check and ensure the translation is good, more than knowing you found issues.

7. Remember the truth in language has many sides

A professional reviewer understands the business of dealing with words and that this is not an exact science. Therefore, there is virtually no single source of truth when phrasing something. For instance, you can objectively point out the failure to adhere to a specific existing glossary. But anything that is left under your judgment, and that you are the trusted person to decide, should be done wisely, considering the mysterious ways language operates. This approach goes both ways: sometimes, preferential changes are a must to render a copy attractive and genuinely native.  Sometimes, grammar rules must be ignored to communicate an idea better in marketing localization. Sometimes, you need to double-check what you thought was right because there is more than one admitted way in the ever-evolving landscape of words. A professional reviewer confidently knows they cannot know everything, leaving room for active listening to the translator’s replies.

Handling Negative Criticism

If it happens, the colleague evaluating your work is not familiar with the translation review best practices that make a good reviewer, and you are surprised by unprofessional negative feedback, as it occurred to me, here are my tips on how to handle it in the best way:

  1. Stay professional — Even if you feel personally attacked, it’s crucial to maintain composure when receiving negative feedback. Take a deep breath and remember that a professional response is always best. If you can delay, avoid jumping on an immediate reply, take your distance, and provide the most professional response.
  2. Address the criticism objectively — When you think the corrections made have merit and strongly disagree with the reviewer, it is best to specify and point it out objectively and transparently. You are always entitled to ask for further details if alleged issues were not transparently communicated.
  3. Respond constructively — Always start by thanking them for the feedback and acknowledging any legitimate issues. A good translator will not waste the team’s precious time by trying to excuse their mistakes. Instead, they will explain how they plan to address the concerns raised in the future.
  4. Learn from the experience — In extreme situations, like unethical competition, take that opportunity to re-evaluate your market strategy. In this business, clients and agencies come and go, so if you feel there are no actual skills you need to improve based on the review, that might be an excellent opportunity to consider better matches for your talent.
  5. Protect your mental health — Translators work under enormous stress, juggling different jobs, systems, tools, fields, etc. The majority of them work in siloes, as agencies insist on old-school workflow models. Toxic feedback can take a toll on your mental health, potentialized by the invisibility of remote workspaces. Shield yourself by avoiding engaging in projects you feel under constant scrutiny – no translation job is worthy of your mental well-being.

Useful Links:

  • There is an ISO for everything, and surely there is the ISO 5060:2024 that provides general guidance on evaluation of translation output.
  • Elsevier offers a great free online course to become a Certified Reviewer. Even if it is aimed at scientific paper reviewing, the course and publisher guidelines offer a great insight into the translation review best practices.

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