Professional Back Translation Services for Mission-Critical Multilingual Communication
Stepes (pronounced /’steps) provides comprehensive back translation services and solutions to support linguistic validation, multilingual clinical trials, and high-quality language translation requirements in over 100 languages.
Accurate Back Translations You Can Trust
Back translation is an important language localization best practice to ensure the highest language quality of translated material. It’s a required step in professional Linguistic Validation, an integral component of modern clinical trial translations for regulatory approval. In a nutshell, back translation is the process of translating already translated content back into its source language by linguists who have no knowledge of the original source language content. The goal is to validate and verify important information is accurately, faithfully preserved and conveyed. Stepes provides robust back translation services for our clients in life sciences, legal, and financial industries between English and Spanish, English and Chinese, English and French, and all other European, Asian, and Latin American languages. We have the linguistic resources, best-in-class processes, and industry-leading cloud translation management technologies to deliver professional back translation services on-demand.
Back translation is often performed following Forward Translation by linguists whose native languages are the same as the original source languages. However, one important requirement is that the back translator does not see or have knowledge of the original source language text. This is to ensure a completely unbiased back translation service. Within the language industry, there are typically two types of back translations: single back translation and double back translation. Single back translation is usually performed by one linguist translating the content back to the source language, whereas double back translation is performed by two independent translators translating the content back at the same time.
For many of our clients, Stepes provides both forward and back translations with different linguists for each translation direction. We also have experience providing independent, 3rd party back translation services for clients conducting multilingual clinical trials and other mission critical communication requirements. When it comes to the best back translation performance, the key is to preserve all the technical information, or faithfulness to the source. This is different than marketing translations that sometimes deviate from the source language due to transcreation. Stepes has the linguistic resources, technical know-how, and innovative language technologies to deliver language back translation results that are better than ever.
How It Works
At Stepes, we have well defined localization workflows to ensure the most efficient back translation services. Clients engage Stepes for either full-service or limited back translations. In the case of full-service back translation, Stepes takes care of forward translation, back translation, comparison, and reconciliation. The following is a diagram of our full-service back translation workflow.
- Client sends us the source language document for back translation.
- A qualified Stepes linguist translates it into the target language.
- A second linguist translates the content produced by the first linguist back to the source language (without refereeing the original source document.)
- A third translator compares the original source document and retranslated content to generates a linguistic review (discrepancy) report.
- The initial translator revises the translation for delivery.
Single and Double Back Translations
Stepes provides both single and double back translation services based on our clients’ specific technical requirements. As the names suggest, a single back translation is usually performed by one linguist translating the content back into the source language, whereas double back translations are performed by two separate, independent translators doing the reverse translation at the same time. In either case, the goal is to ensure the translated content has the exact same meaning as the original document. Stepes linguists perform single- or double-back translations by focusing on the technical meaning of each text sentence through a process called literal translation. This is in contrast to marketing translations where transcreation techniques are often employed.
Spanish Back Translation Services
Are you looking for a professional back translation service between Spanish and English? Then look no further than Stepes. We have a large team of professionally trained Spanish-English translators and subject matter experts to provide the most reliable back translations between Spanish and English as well as linguistic reconciliation work. Depending on the subject matter, Stepes intelligent translation management system automatically assigns our pre-approved Spanish linguists with the right skills to work on translating. Stepes has a large team of Spanish resources so we can complete large scale back translations with speed. To learn more, please visit Stepes professional Spanish Translation Services page.
Simplified Chinese Back Translation Services
Having one of the world’s largest populations that is rapidly aging, China presents large and unique opportunities for multinational clinical trials for a variety of new drugs. This is why you need Stepes. We provide on-demand, high quality English-Chinese back translation services from English to Chinese and from Chinese to English. Stepes works for some of the leading pharmaceutical companies and CRO organizations for their back translation needs in Chinese. In addition to back translations, we also have experience with Chinese patient recruitment, cognitive debriefing, as well as providing adaptive translation services with medical subject matter experts.
Back Translation for Legal Documents
In addition to medical localization, back translation is frequently used in the legal field to compare the translated content with the original source document for linguistic accuracy and integrity. Back translation services are highly recommended for translating complex legal materials where language quality is paramount. Stepes provides back-translations for our legal clients in a variety of languages as part of our professional localization solutions, covering international contracts, investment agreements, and legal patents. Please visit Stepes Legal Translation Services for more information.
Back Translation for Financial Services
Banks and financial institutions regularly translate a variety of monetary, accounting, and auditing documents between English and other languages to support international finance and business operations. Financial risk management best practices as well as global regulatory compliance requirements often compel companies to validate translation results though back translation in order to achieve the highest linguistic accuracy. As a premier provider of financial services translations, Stepes delivers expert back translation solutions to help multinational banks, investment companies, or corporate accounting departments produce multilingual content with the highest linguistic accuracy. For more information, please visit our Financial Translation Services page.
Need Fast and Professional Back Translation Services?
Call Us: (800) 611-5698
