Reverse translation refers to translating out of your native language into a foreign language, an activity that many interpreters do but not many professional translators. An excellent active knowledge of the foreign language is required, no doubt. Professional interpreters do this more than written text translators, and this is acceptable for a variety of reasons. In part, because interpreting is context driven and, usually, single use. Also because oral errors somehow seem less serious than written ones.
But this is not to say that reverse translation or writing in a foreign language is impossible, just that it is difficult. Previously, in Tradiling, we have mentioned eminent writers that published directly in a second or third language.
Back translation in the title of this article does not necessarily refer to writing or translating into a second language. What I am referring to here is re-translating any translated text back into its original language (without knowledge of the original). This activity is sometimes used in professional contexts as a quality indicator in translation processes, as described here:
Back translation and reconciliation services give you additional quality and accuracy assurance for your most sensitive translation and localization projects. Both back translation and reconciliation become important when you have high value content that you need translated across languages with as much certainty as possible that the exact meaning is conveyed.
From The What And Why Of Back Translation And Reconciliation, Language Scientific
Tradiling has frequently had occasion to refer to the translator’s friend, the Inter-Active Terminology for Europe (IATE) database. Here are links to our previous articles: 
