Comments on: Becoming a better translator

By: CPD Matters: Refining translation skills

CPD Matters: Refining translation skills — Wed, 26 Oct 2011 03:22:29 +0000

[...] Ginstrom summed it up very well when he said in his post on Becoming a better translator: “No matter how good your grasp of the source and target languages, if you can’t [...]

By: Translation

Translation — Tue, 28 Oct 2008 09:35:09 +0000

Great article… Often try to travel so I can better understand local language and traditions to enhance my skills in translation.

By: Ryan Ginstrom

Ryan Ginstrom — Fri, 10 Oct 2008 00:33:57 +0000

@Durf
“…when I see posts on the mailing lists from people who need help dealing with basic computing tasks it makes me less likely to want to send them work.”

Sure, you’re not likely to trust an artisan who doesn’t know her tools. But when I hire a carpenter, I don’t look at her tools; I look at the work she produces.

By: Durf

Durf — Thu, 09 Oct 2008 10:09:20 +0000

Your last sentence there is very apt. I do some of my best work longhand into a notebook on the train; gives me an extra chance to improve and polish when I transcribe it at the keyboard later on. The computer doesn’t make me a translator.

I do know, though, that when I see posts on the mailing lists from people who need help dealing with basic computing tasks it makes me less likely to want to send them work. A person who uses his tools effortlessly is a person who expends more brain power on the real job at hand.

By: Ryan Ginstrom

Ryan Ginstrom — Wed, 08 Oct 2008 09:32:01 +0000

@Durf
“I see things like “being able to read your Japanese document without your nose in a dictionary” as baseline skills, too.”
Being very fluent in the source language is part of the cost of getting into the game. If you’re out of your depth with the source language, all the google-fu in the world isn’t going to save you. But the quest for mastery ends only with death.

Certain technologies and skills have improved my throughput a lot. Remember back in the day when you’d have to make a trip to the library to dig out some obscure term? The Internet changed all that. I can’t remember the last time I had to make a trip to the library for research. Translation memory also helps me work a lot faster. I don’t think these skills and technologies have made me a better translator, though.

By: Durf

Durf — Wed, 08 Oct 2008 01:18:54 +0000

I dunno, I see things like “being able to read your Japanese document without your nose in a dictionary” as baseline skills, too. This profession is built on an awful lot of little blocks.

And actually, now that I think about it some more, I know a few translators (whom I consider enormously talented) who can’t hunt-and-peck more than 30 WPM. It doesn’t matter so much, though, since they’re still translating at the speed of thought—it’s not likely that you’re going to plow through your translation at anything close to 60 words a minute.

By: Ryan Ginstrom

Ryan Ginstrom — Tue, 07 Oct 2008 01:42:10 +0000

@Clint

I agree. That’s why I wrote in the article, “choose the area you’d least like to work on as one of your targets for improvement.”

By: Clint

Clint — Tue, 07 Oct 2008 01:33:08 +0000

One thing I think that is important to remember is that not only do we need to constantly improve, but we need to make an effort to improve in those areas that seem to be hard for us.

Many translators are averse to improving their marketing and sales skills, for example. Well, it’s good to work on those other areas but if we never improve in that area that we find difficult, our business will suffer.

By: Ryan Ginstrom

Ryan Ginstrom — Mon, 06 Oct 2008 08:38:14 +0000

@Durf

You’ve got a point. That might be a blind spot with me — I see proficiency with software and research as kind of baseline skills — like knowing how to type — although they certainly make a big difference in speed (i.e. income). I wouldn’t feel like I was progressing as a translator if I were just studying “Google Hacks” and working on getting my typing speed up to 60 wpm. Would you consider those types of skills to be professional advancement?

By: Durf

Durf — Mon, 06 Oct 2008 07:53:13 +0000

I’m actually surprised (this being your blog) that you don’t list the technical stuff somewhere–becoming a faster typist, mastering voice-recognition or glossary or TM software, knowing how to trouble-shoot the machine you use to produce a translation, and so on. I suppose that could be stuck into your list as a sub-category (part of 1? the nuts and bolts of actually writing in the target language?) or it could be an item all its own. The better we get at this mechanical aspect of producing a translation, the more time we have left over afterward to polish all these other areas.