No, the job was not proofreading, and proofreading in general is not unethical.

We can confirm that the job was proofreading. Please reread the original post(s).

In the case of a professional translator, it is something else - if a translator needs someone else to proofread his translation, you better change the translator as the quality of the work would be highly doubtful then. I have translated contracts, birth certificates, and other documents from Chinese into our local language, and some of them had to be sealed with my seal and my license number from court. If my translation contained mistakes and I needed someone else to proofread it, I would have done a pretty bad job.

A birth certificate is completely different from an 11,000 word text. It is not possible to find a translator who translates 11,000 words (or 20,000 words, or 60,000 words as with another project we have just launched today) without making a mistake. Saying that we should change translator because they make a mistake in a 20,000 word text is ridiculous.

A translator takes the legal responsibility for the accuracy of his translation;

No, a translator doesn't take the legal responsibility for the translation - the agency does. We'd like to see you jumping up and down in court to claim the responsibility if you submit an inaccurate translation to us - but it will never happen.

therefore, a professional translator would always work on the the entire textual portions and not merely on pieces of it. It is the latter what the OP had reported (more in detail on another forum), and if that was really the case, then it is a highly unprofessional procedure on the part of that company.

The OP said nothing of the sort. She worked on a partial proofread. Read the posts again. We only assign complete texts to translate, we do not break portions up amongst multiple translators. To suggest that we do so without even knowing our processes is unethical and libelous.

That company in question praises itself with a kind of machine-based translation device they claim to have invented. Now, we all know what a Google translation looks like, and to set things right, you need to go through the entire text and not only pieces of it. Got what I mean?

No, we have not invented a machine-based translation device. We have Babilu, which is a workflow and monitoring system, coupled with a CAT and a Translation Memory tool. For anyone who is further interested in this field, please look these terms up for yourselves. We are not going to get into a complex discussion here about the state of the art in the translation industry. However, anyone who has ever worked as a professional translator will know what a Translation Memory (TM) and a CAT Tool are, and the whole industry will jump up and down and scream in unison at you that these things are VASTLY different from Google Translate. To suggest that we use a machine-based translation device is again unethical and libelous.

I personally would refuse to "proofread" any "translation" from any third party only in terms of single textual portions as I could not guarantee for the quality of final product as a whole piece. As simple as that. Doing things to the contrary is highly unprofessional and could even be unethical if there were any negative impacts on other people as a result of this.

There is absolutely nothing wrong with breaking down a text into multiple sections for a proofread, if it has been compiled by a single translator. A proofreader is not there to change style, they are there to correct mistakes. As long as the style is consistent, of course - which it should be, with a single translator.

Making a quick buck without thinking about it is one thing; being ethical and thoughtful and feeling responsible for what you are doing quite another.

Making slanderous allegations against the work practices of a company one has never worked for, never done business with and knows absolutely nothing about behind a cloak of anonymity on the internet is unethical to the extreme. We are pursuing this further through our lawyers.