cotranslations

Cotranslation is a collaborative translation process in which two or more translators work together to produce a single translated text. Participants may work synchronously in the same workspace or asynchronously through drafts and revisions. The approach aims to combine diverse linguistic and cultural perspectives to improve accuracy, consistency, and style. Roles such as primary translator, reviewer, or subject-matter expert may be defined and rotated as needed.

Cotranslation is used in literary translation, film and subtitle localization, software and game localization, and crowd- or community-based projects. It is also employed as a research method to study translation processes, allowing researchers to observe how meaning is negotiated, how terminology is resolved, and how strategies emerge in practice.

Typical workflows include shared glossaries or terminology databases, translation memories, version control, and regular communication. Teams set goals at the outset, maintain documentation of disagreements and resolutions, and conduct multiple revision rounds. Attribution can be collective or allocated by contributor roles, depending on contracts or project norms.

Benefits of cotranslation include higher accuracy, richer cultural adaptation, and workload distribution. Challenges include coordinating schedules, reconciling conflicting interpretations, maintaining a consistent voice, and clarifying authorship and liability. In crowdsourced settings, quality control and fairness in credit can be ongoing concerns.

The term cotranslation is used variably across fields. Some writers prefer co-translation or collaborative translation as synonyms; others reserve cotranslation for real-time collaboration. Regardless of terminology, the practice reflects a collaborative approach to rendering meaning across languages.