Comments on: Improving the quality of your translations

By: Judy Jenner

Judy Jenner — Tue, 20 Jan 2009 00:47:29 +0000

Those are good nuggets of advice. I think I will take an advanced writing class in English at some point, or even start an M.F.A. in fiction like I had planned for some time! I think taking a class in legal writing is also a fantastic practical idea for those of us who do legal translation.

I think another good strategy is to keep up-to-date with reading in your source and target language(s). As we know, language evolves and changes, so I make sure to read a lot of literature and to follow news and serious periodicals online from the countries I don’t live in. It’s fairly time-consuming, but it’s worth it.

By: Istvan Fulop

Istvan Fulop — Sat, 17 Jan 2009 15:13:03 +0000

What I do is get parts my own Hungarian to English translations proofread by a native speaker of English and discuss the reasons of the corrections. This is very helpful, quick and cost efficient.

By: Riccardo

Riccardo — Thu, 15 Jan 2009 21:11:02 +0000

Hi Corinne:

Good post, as usual. I would also add

1) Learn about quality control, quality assurance and translation QA tools (an excellent one, XBench, is available for free from http://www.APSic.com – I usually it all the time, both as a glossary management and look-up tool and for its very useful QA functions)

2) Especially if you are a self-taught translator, read books about translation. An excellent one I heartily recommend is Mona Baker’s “In Other Words”. Not all book about translation and translation studies are immediately useful to practicing translators, but I find they do with new ideas and prevent us from getting stale.