Making A Professional Translation Worse

What happens when a customer takes a professionally prepared and delivered translation, and edits it to make its quality less (unintentionally of course)? Why would this happen?

Customers for professional translation services hire professional linguists for several reasons, one of them being their superior language skills relative to internal resources within their organizations. In so doing they pay for the professional judgment of the assigned translators. Professional linguists can give customer preferred translations priority when provided with a bilingual glossary or list of preferred translations in advance.

Still it can be tempting to change the work of professional linguists thinking it can be made better, often to conform more closely to a third party’s individual language preferences. In so doing, customers risk losing some of the value of the services they’ve paid for.

We don’t go out of our way to critique the post-delivery edits to delivered translations. We can provide an opinion if it’s requested. Still it’s up to customers to make changes to translations if they choose to, for better or for worse, and own the results.