If you make a living from business document translation, then you will be well aware that proofreading your translated documents before releasing them to a client is so essential. It’s not just little mistakes like typos and spelling that show you up as a sloppy translator but the whole feel of the document you have just translated. You don’t need to use the proofreading services of someone else, although if you have a heavy workload, getting a second person to do the proofreading too makes sense. But are you sure you know how to proofread your own work effectively? Here are some tips to make sure that your proofreading is perfect and you continue to have happy clients.

1. Take a break

One of the easiest ways to improve your own proofreading is to give yourself a break between the time you finish your translation and when you do the proofreading. It’s amazing how you can be so engrossed in what you are doing that you simply do not ‘see’ simple mistakes.

2. Read your document out loud

By reading your document out loud, either to yourself, or to a listener, you can easily pick up mistakes which you might gloss over if you were to simply read the document silently to yourself.

3. Build up your technical vocabulary

Make sure that you double check the translation of key terms. This is especially important for legal or medical documents, but it is important in any sort of technical document translation services. It’s important to keep your knowledge of the language you are translating into up to date and take every chance to expand your vocabulary where possible.

4. Proofread your document backwards

This is an easy trick to catch little mistakes that again your eye doesn’t see when you are reading the document the “right way” round. You can either read each line from right to left or from the end of the page up to the beginning.

5. Print off the document before proofreading it

Instead of trying to proofread the translated document from the desktop of your computer you will do a much better job reading off a hardcopy version. This is again because it is easier to spot mistakes when the document you have been working on is presented in a more unfamiliar format.