A short glossary: what each translation method actually means

Most authors who start asking about translation run into five or six terms and assume they know what they mean. Usually they do not. This glossary explains each of them in ordinary language, and what it means for your book in practice.

The reason this matters practically: the same sum of money buys entirely different things depending on which word appeared in the quote.

The translation methods themselves

Human translation. A person reads the original and writes the book again in another language. This is not word-swapping, it is writing: the translator decides how a character sounds, how a long sentence breaks, and what to do with a pun that does not exist in the new language. It is also the slowest.

Machine translation. Software produces the version in the new language with nobody going over it. Very fast and very cheap. For short, factual text it is usually reasonable; for a whole book it almost always shows, because the problems are not in the individual sentence but in what drifts across two hundred pages.

Post-editing of machine translation. Software produces a draft and a person goes over it and corrects. This is the common shape of the market today, and it comes in two strengths: a light pass that fixes only obvious errors, and a deep pass in which the editor rewrites freely until the text reads like text written in the new language. It is worth asking which of the two you are being offered.

A combined process with checking. Newer versions of the method above add automated checking steps — re-reading the translated text and looking for weak passages — before a person arrives. The idea is that the person gets a better draft to start from.

What happens around the translation

Localisation. Adapting the content itself for a different audience. If the book has a distance in kilometres, a sum in a local currency, or a reference to a television programme nobody abroad has heard of, localisation deals with it. In a novel it is used carefully, because it can erase exactly the local texture that makes the book interesting.

Editing. Somebody reads the translated text as text in its own right and asks whether it works. Clumsy sentences, broken pacing, dialogue that sounds stiff. This is the stage that most affects how the reader feels, and also the one most often skipped.

Proofreading. A final pass over spelling, punctuation and spacing. Important, but it does not repair a book that barely reads.

Back-translation. Translating the result back into your language so you can read what came out. Useful for spotting a real error — a name that changed, a sentence that flipped — but do not judge style from it. A back-translation of beautiful text sounds flat, and that is normal.

Terminology list. A short document that fixes in advance how every name, place and recurring term is written. This is the cheapest item on this list and the one with the most effect on the book's consistency.

Which questions to ask before you decide

Ask who goes over the text after it is produced, and how long they spend on it. "A person checks it" can mean two weeks of work or an hour of skimming.

Ask what happens if something does not sit well with you. Is there a round of revisions, and how many.

And ask how consistency across the whole book is handled, because that is the most common fault in long books — we went into it in why your heroine's name changes halfway through.

How to choose

The simple rule: the more the book's voice matters, the more human work is required. A well-organised non-fiction book and a professional manual tolerate an automated process with good checking. A novel, a memoir and poetry do not.

How this breaks down by kind of book we wrote separately in which translation route suits your kind of book. And if you are only starting to look into this, our frequently asked questions cover the rest.