The Importance of Proofreading (or: Why You Can Translate with a Glass of Wine, But Never Proofread with One)

We’d like to share an unwritten rule from the world of translation with you:
If it happens that you're still working on a Friday evening and craving a glass of good red wine, go ahead and indulge—but only if you’re translating! If you're proofreading, then put the corkscrew back in the drawer, stash the wine in the dark corner of the pantry, and treat yourself to that delicious glass of Cabernet tomorrow instead.

Let’s grab the bull by the horns – proofreaders are often unnecessary, right?

You might find it completely unnecessary to send documents written in your native language for proofreading. But proofreading texts that are meant for more eyes than just your own is not only welcome—it’s recommended and highly advisable.

Don’t believe us? Imagine you had to lay washable tiles on your patio. You work at a bank, but you’ve walked on plenty of such tiles in your life, and everyone you know has them. So, how hard could it be? Just lay them flush next to each other (because you read that on Uwe’s blog and in the hardware store brochure) and you’re done!

We don’t doubt that you can lay those tiles yourself—maybe even in a straight line.
But we do have some doubts about what will happen after the first heavy rain, a few months down the line, when the tiles start shifting left and right due to an improperly compacted foundation (because, as a banker, you really couldn’t have known you had to consider that too!).

Are we getting closer to a compromise on whether professional proofreading is necessary?

What does a proofreader actually do?

A proofreader is a linguist who plays just as vital a role in a translation project as the translator—because they’re the last set of eyes before delivery (at least the last pair focused on language). While the translator focuses primarily on the translation and terminology, the proofreader ensures that the target text reads smoothly and complies with grammar, spelling, and stylistic guidelines.

A proofreader who conducts bilingual editing has several tasks. Let’s look at the five most important:

Task 1: Bilingual Comparison

The proofreader first compares the translation with the original, word by word and sentence by sentence—correcting, adjusting, and improving as needed.

Task 2: Consistency and Error Correction

They ensure consistency in repeated phrases and unify terminology while correcting spelling, grammar, and stylistic errors.

Task 3: Monolingual Review

After the bilingual check, they perform a monolingual review of the target text to ensure it flows naturally—as if originally written in the target language.

Task 4: Spellcheck

This includes using built-in tools (in CAT tools, Word, or copying from Excel into Word) to ensure spelling is error-free. This step must never be skipped.

Task 5: Quality Assurance (QA)

In CAT tools, QA checks uncover inconsistencies based on the translation memory and terminology database—catching errors like mistranslated numbers, typos, double spaces, etc. It’s a crucial step that ensures consistency within the text and across texts for the same client.

But what’s the role of proofreading for texts written in just one language?

For monolingual texts, the proofreader’s role becomes even more important. They can focus entirely on the single-language content, giving it their full attention. This includes correcting grammar, spelling, and style—especially if the text doesn’t flow well or sounds unnatural.

In a proofreader’s dictionary, EGO is just a brand name

People are different—and so are proofreaders. If you work with many, you’ll eventually come across one who replaces every grammatically correct and contextually suitable word with synonyms—just to justify the time spent.

But remember this golden advice:
A good proofreader only corrects parts of the text that are truly mistranslated, poorly written, or awkwardly literal.

The unwritten rule for proofreaders with a healthy ego:

Don’t fix it if it’s not broken.

The rule for excellent proofreaders:

Instead of making unnecessary edits, they’d rather praise the translator for a job well done. It doesn’t hurt—promise!

Who even needs proofreading? We all speak our own language!

We studied German for at least 11 years in school—some even longer.
We’ve read a sea of books for reading programs and homework. We were sent to language competitions. We use language every day—not just through news or subtitles, but also literature, technical writing, and business documents.

All of that does strengthen language skills—if the original content is high quality. But language is a living organism. It evolves. And we’re just human. We forget the rules we once could recite at 3 a.m.

“Let us know when you come, and be on time! Later after meeting Maja and Sonja will share the agendas the event that on 31st April 2019 will take place. On page 5-9 you find the directions – and after few minutes they have time for questions.”

The paragraph above hides ten obvious errors—ones a professional proofreader would never miss, but that might easily be overlooked by someone not working with language daily.

Want to test if your business needs proofreading?

Send in a document you’re absolutely sure doesn’t need proofreading.
A self-test like this might cost you around 10 euros—but could turn out to be far more valuable in the long run.

Corrected version:

“Let us know when you’ll arrive, and please be punctual! After the meeting, Maja and Sonja will distribute the agendas for the event, which will take place on April 30, 2019. You’ll find the directions on pages 5–9—and after a few minutes, there will be time for questions.”