Targum Verify

The checkable trail for machine translation.

A language model can draft a translation of a classical text in an afternoon. Nobody can tell in an afternoon where that draft is wrong. Targum Verify produces the record an editor needs: every flag tied to the exact line, with the reason it was raised.

Targum is the translation engine behind Hekhal's editions. It works under a controlled lexicon, back-translates and reconciles what it renders, and keeps a per-word audit trail. Verify points the same machinery at translations other people have made, with any model, so the editor's time goes to the lines that need it.

What the trail checks

Term driftThe same technical term rendered three different ways across a corpus. Every term is checked against a controlled lexicon, and every inconsistency is listed with its lines.
Omission and additionA clause the draft silently dropped, or a gloss it silently added. Source and rendering are aligned clause by clause so the gap shows.
Reversed meaningThe draft is back-translated and reconciled against the source, which catches the fluent sentence that says the opposite of the original.
Invented referencesVerse numbers, page references and attributions that the source never gives. Each is flagged for a human to check.
Frame consistencyWhether a passage is being read literally, homiletically or esoterically, and whether that reading holds from one passage to the next.

How to work with us

  1. A free diagnostic. We run the trail on about twenty of your published passages and send you the flags, the term-drift table and the method. You keep it. If it is not useful, tell us why.
  2. A corpus audit. The full corpus, flags ranked by severity, a drift map, a frozen glossary and an editor worklist: where to look first, and why.
  3. A verified pipeline. Your drafts pass through the Targum gate before they publish, and the per-word trail can be published beside the text.
  4. Re-verification. Each time you change models or extend the corpus, we re-run the trail and report what changed, so you can show the new version did not get worse.

Languages: Hebrew and Aramaic, and Arabic, are supported today. Greek and Latin are in development; ask before sending them.

What it is, and what it is not

The trail does not certify a translation as correct. It shows a human editor where to look and why, and it says plainly what it did not check. Hekhal's own editions are, for the most part, machine-assisted drafts pending scholarly review, and every one of them is labelled that way. We hold your text to the same rule we hold ours.

Your passages and your editor's corrections stay yours. Nothing you send is published or reused as content without your written consent.

Ask for a free diagnostic

Send a link to a translation you have published, and tell us what worries you about it. We reply with the diagnostic, and, if you want more, with terms that fit your project's size and budget. See how the engine works on Targum and in the methodology write-up. Prefer email? Write to the editor.