Editing and proofreading
Do you have a text in Swedish or some other language, but you’re not sure how good it is? Let us go through it to make any corrections and ensure its quality.
What does it cost to get a text reviewed?
We can tell you the cost once we’ve been through your text to see what needs doing. We’re usually able to give you a fixed price, but it can sometimes be hard to predict how much work will be required, in which case we may need to invoice by the hour. You can also give us a budget and we’ll do the best possible job in the time at our disposal.
Types of language review from Exacta
Language review comes in many guises, with names such as proofreading, checking, editing and more colloquial expressions such as polishing a text. Language review is the collective name, and it can be done at different levels.
Read more about the different types of language review below.
Proofreading involves checking spelling and grammar, as well as correcting errors in meaning, typos and incorrect hyphenation. This service is usually employed at the end of the process, once the text is fully formed, as a final check before it can be published or presented in some other way. Note that a text can be entirely correct grammatically but still be with poor flow and the wrong choice of words for the target audience.
Proofreading is not meant to change the structure and style of the text. If you want checks on whether the paragraphs are arranged in a logical order, or that the register and style of the text are suitable for the target audience, you need our more comprehensive text editing service instead.
Editing takes into account the text’s purpose and aim, adding a stylistic review to the proofreading to make sure the text is well written, clear, easy to read and suitable for the target audience. We may need to rearrange the text and improve the structure, replace headings and delete or add paragraphs, subheadings and so on. We can also check for inconsistent use of terms or the accuracy of page references and tables of content.
Texts that might benefit from this type of review include scientific articles written by a non-native speaker or by multiple authors with different styles and language skills.
As a result, the text may need to undergo linguistic and stylistic adjustments, not least to meet the formal requirements for publishing in scientific journals.
Editing can also be useful for texts by an inexperienced writer who may be an expert in their field, but needs help to make the text more readable and the message more persuasive.
Texts mostly require this type of language review.
A text could require a complete rewrite if the purpose or target audience changes. A medication leaflet written for adults may now be aimed at children, for example. Or an advertising text may have been correctly translated, but can’t be used because the
marketing language differs between countries. In these cases, we can get a native copywriter to rewrite your marketing text or a language consultant to turn your information text into plain language that can be understood by everyone.
Machine translation is a way to speed up translation work. We see it as a tool to support the human translator, rather than something that can be used on its own without any oversight. Machine translation is improving all the time, but it still can’t be relied on 100 percent. A machine-translated text therefore needs to be carefully reviewed by a human, sentence by sentence and word by word.
The choice of words can often be wrong, as can the sentence structure. Getting a human reviewer or translator to check and edit the text can correct such issues and create a text that flows well and doesn’t sound translated. Contact us for more information if this of interest to you.
