The Importance of Proofreading

Sophie Godon — Thu, 02 Mar 2017 21:29:31 +0000

You may think that skipping the services of proofreaders, when creating collateral for your business, is an easy way to save money. But you will quickly find that the money that you think you might be saving, may be slipping out of your grasp in the loss of prospective sales or potential clients instead.

Nowadays, everything comes down to image and first impressions. People’s time has become increasingly precious, due to the many distractions facing each one of us every day. Individuals have little time to waste and thus are very quickly turned on, or off, by advertisements, social media content, print articles or other types of material. Customers will promptly decide whether they are or aren’t interested in the product or services that you offer based on their impression of your business.

If you’re not representing a business, you may be a student applying for a position, or submitting a thesis that you’ve put very long hours into. If that job application or document is filled with mistakes, be it typos or grammar issues or omissions, your submission will not have the impact that you had anticipated, on a potential employer or professor. And, although the basic content of your research or resume may be impressive, the poor quality of the presentation will most certainly affect your final score, or hiring potential.

Don’t make the mistake of underestimating the impact of well presented, well articulated, error free and cleanly written content. You may find your business overlooked by potential customers due to the poor quality of the material that was created to represent you and your organisation. They will choose to go to a competitor instead. As previously mentioned, image is everything.

Here are a few examples of written work that has left a poor taste in the public’s mind:

I haven’t heard of power towels before. Is that new?

Even worse when targeting the field of education!

Maybe this sign was put up by the local hospital.

The hard work that you put into setting up a business, drafting your resume, writing that all important article or thesis or research project, etc. will be representing you and what you stand for! It deserves to be checked by a second pair of eyes.

No matter how talented some of us can be in the writing department, when one spends hours on a same document, we can easily get to a point where we read it how we think it reads and are no longer able to discern mistakes. We may start experiencing a type of brain fog, for lack of a better word. We are all human after all.

Please don’t skimp on quality; hire a proofreader. We are here to help you make the right impression!

Oh boy! 🙁

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Bad Translation

lcm_focusfirst — Wed, 09 Nov 2016 15:07:28 +0000

How many times have you looked at a bilingual restaurant menu, the services directory in your hotel room, a company’s web site or product packaging and noticed spelling, grammar, or terminology mistakes? How did that make you feel about the business that that documentation was attached to? Exactly; lack of attention to detail, sloppiness, poor presentation… it makes you think that they didn’t care enough to make sure that they put forth content of the highest quality for their clients and prospective customers. It can make you question just how attentive those brands or establishments really are to the quality of the service or product that they offer.

Granted, some bad translations can make for a good laugh among friends or colleagues, but translation mistakes can lead to misunderstandings, arguments and unnecessary tension between a company and its clients, two people or companies doing business together, different individuals and even countries.
Bad translations can also go beyond that; they can cause safety hazards, especially in the case of a product’s handling or installation instructions, or warning signs in a construction zone or along a path or cliff out in a provincial park or conservation area.

Many examples of such can be found online. Here are just a few, to help illustrate just how far the translated text can stray from the content and intent of the original message:

Euh… if you say so!

Écrous = Nuts as in joining elements
(mechanical components)

Need I say more?

Additional examples, in different languages, can be found on the following page, as well as many other web sites.

Other than being caused by typos or terminology mistakes, bad translations can also come from literal or ‘word for word’ translation. You can see, in this case of a French to English translation, how the result in no way represents the original meaning. (By the way, expressions do not translate; at least not in English and French. I can’t speak for other language comparisons.)

Which brings me to think about translation software… But that discussion is for another day.

From making no sense whatsoever to creating confusion and possible problems, bad translations can easily be avoided.

First of all, by employing a qualified and experienced translator or translation company of good reputation.
Or, at the very least, by seeking a second set of eyes to review the work of your translator = hiring a proofreader.

Believe me, it is well worth the extra time and money to ensure that you get the right people to do the right job for you. After all, you’ve worked so hard to get your business off the ground, to write your novel, to create your web site… Whether you’ve decided from the start to offer services in dual languages or if you’ve reached such a level of success that you now wish to expand to reach a larger audience, don’t you think that that same effort that you initially applied to your project should be carried forth in its translation and adaptation to a new market?

Food for thought.

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