Do: ask for a second opinion when you have a doubt

You've now sent a couple of documents to a translator, and everything seems ok. He charges you a very reasonable price and he respects your deadlines. And yet, something tells you there is something wrong. The problem is you don't know anyone who could tell you if the translations are good or not. You should not hesitate to get a second opinion. After all, this is what you would do for your health or your finances, so why not doing it for your translated documents?

You have two options when you want a second opinion, but since we've established that you don't know anyone who could tell you wether the translations are good or not, let's go to the second option. You need to contact another translator or translation company and ask them if they would do a "revision" of a document. A revision is a comparison of the source document (your original document) and of the target document (the translation) and, if necessary, the correction of the content and style of the translation. If they accept, send them a sample (the first few paragraphs of one of the documents should be enough, but you can send more if you want) and tell them you want a revision with "track changes" on so that you can see the changes, as well as their opinion of the translation. This shouldn't be expensive, but I strongly suggest that you ask for a quote before you proceed. Once you have received the "revised" document, you can either feel better about your original translator and keep him, or get back to him with the revision in hand and ask for explanations. Of course, one problem you can encounter is if the second translator or company is a bad apple, but we will discuss some ways of avoiding these in a future post.