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Back translation

back_translation · translation · catalogued

A rendering translated onward and then returned to its own language, so the divergence from the original becomes the text.

Provenance

  • Source: Traditional; a standing exercise in translation studies
  • Attribution: traditional — classical or folk; no single origin to name
  • Checkability: none — no computable acceptance criterion exists
  • Attested: codified — formulated as a rule by a tradition rather than declared by an author

Details

  • Kind: both
  • Languages: en
  • Requires: tokens
  • Deterministic: no
  • In other languages: Rückübersetzung (de), Rétrotraduction (fr)

Notes

No acceptance criterion exists. Deciding that a text was translated onward and returned requires translation, not comparison: any difference from the source is equally consistent with a bad back-translation and with an unrelated text.

Prompt hint

Translate out and back again, and present the return rather than the original.

Why this has no checker

This procedure has no computable acceptance criterion, so it will never be implemented. It is catalogued because the form belongs in an honest survey of the field, and denckring status counts it separately rather than reporting a gap that cannot close.