What is a sanity check?
A sanity check, or sanity test, is a quick review of a final document or website before finally being published or going live with a product. It is primarily focused on reviewing the target text without referring to the original source text. It’s easy and quick to identify subtle cultural issues such as graphics that are inappropriate for the text, when the final version has been laid out to the target language.
What’s involved?
The sanity check is charged on an hourly basis. This allows for fine control over the level and detail required. For instance, sometimes it may be just appropriate to have a quick check of graphics, headings and overall layout.
The final delivery or output of the sanity check could be some comments in a PDF, an email or, a short report depending on the level and detail required.
Sometimes for critical projects such as those for Marketing, Life Sciences or, those of a financial nature, it may be more appropriate to do a full in-context proofreading.
Issues to check:
- corrupted characters
- truncated text
- missing translations
- misplaced translations
- incorrect layout
- text that is inappropriate in relation to pictures or other text
