Translation Quality Control (Proofreading)

12 min read·Last updated 1 September 2026

Proofreading means reviewing and correcting a written text in terms of language, expression and content until it is ready for publication. In translation quality control this work is done by reading the source and the target text side by side.

What proofreading is, and what it is not

Reading a text and pronouncing it "fine" is not proofreading. In translation quality control the real question is this: does the target text carry every piece of information the source carries? That question can only be answered by reading the two texts comparatively. A reading that looks only at the target cannot see a skipped sentence or an inverted negation, because the target text goes on looking internally consistent.

Our earlier site described the process this way: for a text that has already been translated, the source and target are checked and corrected comparatively; missing or faulty passages are reworked on the basis of the source. Shifts in meaning, inverted sentences and wrong word choices that break the integrity of the text are corrected at this stage. What follows unpacks that description step by step.

When is quality control needed?

Most requests for review arise from a handful of typical situations. If you recognise yours below, you are looking at the right service.

What these scenarios share is that you already hold a target text. If there is no target text, what you need is translation, not review.

How comparative review is carried out

The process begins by matching the two texts sentence by sentence. The aim is not to beautify the target but first to verify it; improvement comes after accuracy is established.

1. 01

   Alignment

   Source and target are aligned paragraph by paragraph. Skipped paragraphs and added sentences become visible immediately at this stage.

2. 02

   Information check

   Numbers, dates, currencies, proper nouns, units of measure and negations are compared one by one. This group quietly holds the most errors.

3. 03

   Terminology check

   Whether field terms are given with correct equivalents, and used consistently throughout, is examined.

4. 04

   Meaning check

   Whether sentences carry the meaning of the source is assessed. Shifts in meaning usually come from correct words wrongly related to one another.

5. 05

   Language and expression

   Inverted sentences, wrong word choices, repetitions and structures that disrupt reading flow are corrected.

6. 06

   Format and layout

   Heading structure, numbering, table alignment and footnotes are checked against the source.

7. 07

   Reporting

   The corrected text is accompanied by a note showing which types of error were found, so you can see what changed regardless of who produced the original translation.

The most common types of error

Errors found in review are not randomly distributed; they cluster in particular categories. The table below shows those categories and why each one escapes notice.

Review of academic texts

For academic texts the benchmark is the journal's own style guide. Even where the language is correct, a text can be returned on formal grounds if citation style, use of abbreviations, the position of table captions or abstract length do not follow the guide.

If you send us the target journal's style guide, the review follows it. Where no guide exists, the widely accepted usage of the field is taken as the basis and the choices made are set out in a note.

One voice across corporate texts

On long projects texts are produced at different times by different people. Each section ends up correct on its own, yet read together they form a fragmented document. Review in this scenario means giving the text a single voice while preserving accuracy.

1. 01

   Fixing register decisions

   Form of address, sentence-length tendency, the active-versus-passive preference and heading style are agreed at the outset.

2. 02

   Applying the term list

   Where the organisation has a term list, the text is aligned to it; where none exists, a list is extracted from the text and delivered to you.

3. 03

   Repairing the joins

   At the seams where sections from different hands meet, repeated or orphaned statements are resolved.

4. 04

   Final read

   The whole text is read end to end in one pass. Checks made piece by piece leave exactly the inconsistencies that only this reading reveals.

How is the review fee determined?

As in translation, fees are based on pages, one page being 20 lines under the Turkish Act of Fees No. 492. What determines how long a review takes, however, is not the page count but the condition of the text.

one page under Act No. 492

20 linesone page under Act No. 492

source and target, read comparatively

2 textssource and target, read comparatively

which error types were found

1 reportwhich error types were found

For that reason we examine a portion of the text before quoting. If the examination shows that review will not be sufficient, we say so and recommend retranslation instead. A review that papers over problems with a few corrections is riskier than the original, because it gives a faulty text the appearance of approval.

What the review report shows

Delivering the corrected text is half the work. The other half is making visible what changed and why. That lets the commissioning party make decisions with information, and stops the same error recurring on later jobs.

Grading matters because the number of corrections says nothing on its own. A text with a hundred formatting corrections may be sound; one with three critical corrections needs reviewing again. Because the report makes that distinction, it also gives you data on which translator to keep working with.

Checking against the audience

The same information is correct in different ways depending on who it is told to. This is the dimension of review most often skipped: a text can be accurate and still be written for the wrong reader. The work then is to move the expression towards the audience without changing the information.

If you tell us at the outset who the text is for, the review follows that criterion. Where that information is absent, the safest route is taken: literal fidelity to the source. Safe, but not best for every text; in marketing copy literal fidelity produces a result that loses the reader.

The limits of review

Review does not solve every problem, and saying up front where it cannot is part of the job. In the three situations below we recommend a different route.

1. 01

   Where the source is flawed

   If the source contains ambiguous sentences, contradictory clauses or missing information, correcting the target hides the problem. In that case we send you a list of the ambiguities in the source; the decision is yours.

2. 02

   Where the translation should be redone

   Once the error rate passes a certain threshold, correction takes longer than translating. When examination of a section shows this, we recommend retranslation rather than review.

3. 03

   Where the document must be sworn

   Review does not turn a translation into a sworn one. If an official institution requires a sworn document, the translation has to be produced from the start by a translator holding an oath record.

Your own check before sending it to us

You can gauge roughly whether the translation you hold needs review before sending it to us. It does not take a language specialist; the checks below are the kind anyone who knows the source text can carry out.

1. 01

   Compare the lengths

   Count the paragraphs in the source and in the target. If the counts do not match, a paragraph may have been skipped or merged. This is the fastest and most useful check there is.

2. 02

   Scan the numbers

   Read every figure, date and amount side by side in the two texts. Doable without knowing the language, this check catches a good share of the most serious errors outright.

3. 03

   Look at proper nouns

   Make sure names of people, organisations, products and places are spelled correctly. These are not translated; if they are written differently, something has been altered.

4. 04

   Follow one term end to end

   Pick one of the text's most frequent terms and check whether it is given the same equivalent every time. If there is inconsistency there, there is inconsistency across the text.

5. 05

   Read the last paragraph

   In long translations quality often declines towards the end. The final page tells you more than the first.

If two of these five turn up problems, the text needs comparative review. If none do, the text is probably sound and what you need may be copy-editing alone, which is shorter and less costly.

Frequently asked questions