When English is Not a DUer's First Language,

[MineralMan]

81. Reverse translation is also very useful when using Google Translate.

That's only true if you have some knowledge of the language being translated into, but back-translation will often catch errors in your original text. By modifying the source text until the back-translation produces the source text, you stand a good change of not making a horrible mistake.

I use that technique when corresponding with people in languages I don't know intimately. It has actually helped me write source text that lends itself well to accurate translation, so there's less editing required to produce comprehensible translations that seem as though someone with fairly good skills wrote the material.


When I had my business selling mineral specimens, many of my customers were not English speakers, and I got numerous emails that needed replies. My first sentence was always, "Please excuse my poor use of {language}. That helped when my methods failed. Available Internet translation was primitive when I was doing that. It's still iffy, but if you know the target language, you can usually do OK.