Corporate communications materials are some of the most difficult and most business-critical documents out there when it comes to translation. The company culture, the target audience, the spin that the company wants to put on its news, the most-used grammatical structures of the source and target languages; all of these enter into the picture when [...]
Archive for the ‘Translation quality’ Category
Link: Tips for translating corporate communications
Posted in Translation quality, Translation technique on September 24, 2008 | Leave a Comment »
Paper dictionary to the rescue
Posted in Translation quality, Translation technique on August 26, 2008 | 4 Comments »
Web-based terminology databases are a wonderful thing for translators. As compared to the research tools of times gone by, we now have access to resources that are vast, free, and easily updated when new terms arrive on the scene. A few of my favorites are: Le Grand Dictionnaire Terminologique Inter Active Terminology for Europe (IATE) [...]
How to do an acceptable job on a rush job
Posted in Translation quality, Translation technique on July 29, 2008 | 7 Comments »
First, note that the title of this post is not “How to do a good job on a rush job,” because often the two concepts are mutually exclusive. Realistically, no translator does her/his best work under extreme time pressure, but the nature of the industry is such that deadlines are often tight. So, when a [...]
Some thoughts on translation specializations
Posted in Freelancing, Translation quality on July 16, 2008 | 6 Comments »
One of the issues with which beginning translators most frequently struggle is specializing: what to specialize in, how to decide what to specialize in, what the most/least requested specializations are, how important it is to specialize, etc. While there aren’t too many hard and fast rules when it comes to translation specializations, here are a [...]
Update on tags in OmegaT
Posted in Nubbin, Technology, Translation quality on June 30, 2008 | Leave a Comment »
A while ago, I wrote about both my love of the free and open source translation environment tool OmegaT and my frustration with tags in OmegaT. Since then, I’ve found that the easiest solution, as long as the document doesn’t contain complex formatting, is to save the document as plain text, then translate in OmegaT [...]
Proofreaders’ marks reference pages
Posted in Links, Translation quality on May 22, 2008 | 2 Comments »
If you’re looking for a quick reference sheet of proofreaders’ marks (and I promise, using them is so much faster than doing the corrections in longhand), here are two that seem useful: one from Merriam-Webster and one from Espresso Graphics. Both of these can be printed on one page, and they include helpful examples for [...]
Editing skills; the USDA Grad School
Posted in Freelancing, Translation quality on May 19, 2008 | 4 Comments »
Recently I’ve been taking some copy editing classes with Alice Levine, a Boulder-based editor and trainer whose praises I’ve sung here before. In the translation industry, I think it’s not uncommon that translators who earn a client’s trust are often “promoted” into the role of a translation editor, although very few of us have extensive [...]
Like, not enough into-English interpreters?
Posted in Links, Nubbin, Translation quality on May 6, 2008 | 1 Comment »
Here is an interesting post from the blog “Working Languages” about the EU’s shortage of qualified into-English interpreters. The EU blames the candidates’ poor English skills, characterized by overuse of the word “like,” while the blogger argues that a larger culprit is the lack of financial incentives for qualified interpreters.
Dispute resolution in the translation industry
Posted in Freelancing, Translation quality on April 21, 2008 | 4 Comments »
For better or for worse, the translation industry does not currently have a standard procedure or body for resolving disputes between translators and clients. So, clients who feel that a translator has delivered substandard work and translators who feel that they’ve been unfairly treated by clients do not have a standard avenue of recourse and [...]
The cost of inadequate language services
Posted in Links, Nubbin, Translation quality on April 18, 2008 | Leave a Comment »
Here is an interesting post from Nataly Kelly’s blog “From Our Lips to Your Ears,” about the real costs of using unqualified or incompetent interpreters.
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If you enjoy Corinne’s blog, check out her book!
Corinne McKay is an ATA-certified French to English translator specializing in international development, law and non-fiction books. She launched Thoughts on Translation in February, 2008 as a way to connect and share ideas with freelance translators around the world.
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