What

The team works with trained Translation Consultants who check the drafts at various points in the translation process and then work closely with the team to address any potential problems that come up. 

How

Once the team has gone over their drafts and are fairly happy with the quality, they will send it to the Consultant. The Consultant then reviews all the drafts to make sure they are accurate to the original text, clear to the potential recipient, natural to JSL, and acceptable to the Deaf community in Japan. For our team, this happens once before we have it viewed by members of the community, once before we go into final recording, and then the final recording is approved by the Consultant before publication.

Translation Consultants also usually participate in Community Comprehension Checks to verify that the community understands the translation as it was intended to be understood.

Why

It is important for the team to receive third-party feedback on their drafts from a Consultant trained in exegesis, linguistics, and sociocultural aspects relating to translation. This is one of the steps that ensures a high-quality, widely-usable final product. Translation Consultants sometimes also play the role of training, encouraging, and otherwise providing support to the teams that they work with.