If you are concerned about the quality of the translations provided by your foreign associates or translation provider, one way to check for accuracy is to ask a company like Morningside to perform a back translation. What is a back translation? It’s the process of translating a document that has already been translated into a foreign language back into the original language. The two documents are then compared and reviewed for accuracy. To manage costs, you can have a back translation performed only on the claims. It makes sense to have back translations performed on several claim sets to get a broad picture of the translation quality your current vendor is providing. Questions about back translations? Call Morningside and we will be glad to help.

The most effective way to ensure precise document translation is through performing back translations. This process first includes the initial translation from English into the target language by one linguist, and editing of the translation by an equally qualified second linguist. The target translation is then translated back into English by a separate translator independent of the project and with no prior knowledge to make sure that the original English has been properly translated into the foreign language.

The back translation can never be exactly like the original English text. The back translation can only give a fair idea of the content of the text and make sure that the correct meaning is conveyed. For example, in a medical survey, expressions such as, “to feel blue, to feel sad, to feel down, to be in low spirits, etc.” have more or less the same meaning, and the back translator may only use one of these.

Back translations are an extremely useful tool in ensuring that the proper meaning of the text has been conveyed. It also adds an additional level of quality check to a document translation.