Transhorsa

As a matter of fact, translation services cover all fields in society. Where languages are used, there may be the need for translation. When it comes to professional translation services, it presents an even more challenging job. Since society has never stopped its advances, more and more special areas have evolved along the way. With the deepening and broadening of knowledge base in nearly every discipline, the society calls for the dissemination of latest professional developments so as to facilitate all people to gain benefit from them. One way to reach this goal is through professional translation services. Therefore professional translation services are of great significance and importance to the development of society at large.

But for professional translators, it is not easy to provide qualified professional translation services. For any individual, it is just impossible for him to be a Jack of all trades. His intelligence and energy restrict him and it is impossible for him to become a master of all. Fortunately it is possible for him to become a specialist in a particular area so long as he devotes himself to learning the necessary expertise and skills. In order to provide high-quality professional translation services for his clients, he has to know himself, his strengths and weaknesses, and the nature of his assignments. There are means to help him provide better professional translation services.

First of all, whenever given an assignment, a professional translator should assess and judge whether he can handle the translation well. At times he encounters materials beyond his depth. When this happens, he would better leave it to someone who knows the specialty. A Chinese saying goes something like “difference in profession makes one feel worlds apart.” Even lots of daily used plain words have special meanings when used technically. It is just difficult for someone outside the profession to translate them correctly. To provide good professional translation services, mastery of language skills is not enough. Language serves as a way of expression of ideas, concepts, feelings, etc. what matters more is the content. A competent professional translator should at least feel free to translate in one field. He would be wise to decline the translation of those beyond his capacity. He will be very likely to give his best performance when he is in his own territory.

Second, professional translation services evolve with the time. Along with the ever-advancing technology updates, new terms and words are being coined while old ones may become obsolete. Professional translation services should keep pace with technology. To maintain his competitiveness, a professional translator should always keep himself well informed with the latest technological developments. Never make blind guesses. When encountering a word whose meaning you are not sure about, check it up, since the nature of professional translation services is provision of accuracy. If necessary, consult with some profession insiders. Poor translation will not only damage your reputation, but also mislead your clients.

Third, lay emphasis on the individual development of professional translation service providers. A set of conduct codes needs to be in place to guide them in their work. Every profession has its own generally-recognized ethics and working practices that require all the practitioners to respect and follow, and the professional translation service industry is no exception. A translator should keep in mind that he needs to improve himself both morally and professionally throughout his life. Taking training courses on a regular basis is one way to recharge oneself. Self-teaching is convenient in that it can be done at a flexible time and location. Literally you can learn something to your interest anytime anywhere by making use of the information available at hand. Constant improvement can put you in a better position in the translation service market.

Last but not least, communication skills are also needed in the provision of professional translation services. Communication serves as a bridge between you and your clients, which can help clear up misunderstanding on the material for translation in the first place. It can also lead you to better the relationship with your clients who will feel willing to cooperate with you once more.

Anyway attitude is the most important of all factors leading to good professional translation services. If you really want to do it well and strive for it, you will make it. You will harvest what you have sown. It is a general principle.   

Summery: In this article, the author discusses how to provide good professional translation services in aspects of translation assignment assessment, keeping pace with the evolution of professional translation services, self-improvement of professional translators, communication skills.

Author Information:

Jane Yu

Market Researcher of

Transhorsa Translation Co., LTD., Shanghai

http://www.transhorsa.org

Native translator & Proofreading

Uncategorized high quality translation service, language translation services, professional translation service

    The article proposes an indirect way for multilingual translation with English language serving as a bridge between Chinese and the target language.

China’s economy has been building momentum for three decades since it opened up to the outside world, with its foreign trade volume registering a year-on-year increase. As more global companies enter into the vast Chinese market, feeling that they cannot afford to miss out on the opportunity to get a share of this tempting “cake”, multilingual translation business, as a byproduct of prosperous economy, is also thriving at a rate that has never been seen before. However, despite its bright prospects, multilingual translation in China now is not immune from problems, resulting from the unique local circumstances here.

For one thing, in a translation company which conducts multilingual translation business, there has to be a number of translators who master other languages beside Chinese. The fact is, nearly every university in China offers English courses, but as for other foreign languages of less popularity, there are not a number of learners enough to meet the demand for multilingual translation in these languages. Without such translators, the direct translation between Chinese and the target language renders impossible.

There is a simple solution to this problem being faced by multilingual translation venders. Considering large numbers of English speaking people, we may take English language as a go-between for translation from Chinese to the target language. English has long been considered as a universal language. It has been adopted as the official language by 75 countries and the people taking it as their second language are the largest in number. Therefore in case that direct translation of Chinese to a particular target language cannot be managed, we may resort to a round-about way, that is, via Chinese-to-English, English-to-target-language.

Of course inevitably there will be more information lost this way than direct multilingual translation. To minimize the information loss, translation quality in both Chinese-English translation and the English-to-the-target-language translation should be guaranteed at high levels.

With the help of Internet, geographic restriction for multilingual translation cooperation is no longer a problem. However distant the two companies are from each other, the communication between them can virtually be just a click of the mouse. Information exchange is quick and convenient on Internet. Right now many translation companies have already set up translation platforms on Internet which can be accessible by more people.

If translation companies from all countries can be combined into a multilingual translation network, then theoretically any translation from one language to another can be made available. There is another element that may hinder the implementation of this bold promising strategy-cost. This indirect translation method certainly involves more people and resources in the process, thus making costs rise. Unless we can keep the cost at a reasonably low rate which can be accepted by our clients, we cannot survive the fierce competition in the market.  

The whole world has already become a “global village” via Internet; let us hope in the future that such a multilingual translation network will be established as soon as possible. Exchanges across all areas will become even more active and efficient at that time when language barriers are overcome.

Industry News high quality translation service, multilingual translation, multilingual translation companies

Abstract:   Providing the clients with high-quality professional translation services is not an easy job. A qualified translator to provide their clients with professional translation services must meet the following three requirements: an expertise in source and target languages, some basic knowledge of the specific branch of science your translation concentrates upon, and a lot of discipline in carrying out your translation practice.

 Doing a little casual translation may be not difficult, but, if you want to engage in professional translation services, you need to have the following key qualifications: an expertise in source and target languages, some basic knowledge of the specific branch of science your translation centers on, and much discipline in translation practice.

First of all, if you want to gain competence in professional translation services, you need to have an expertise in at least two languages. A good command of the source language is the most basic requirement for professional translators to start their works. Take E-C translation as an example, before you translate a text into Chinese, you need to perfectly understand which the branch of science it belongs to, like what the  English text is talking about, the associative meaning, including the syntactic structures, all the nuances of the stylistic devices, the language tenor and mode, and the cultural context of such an English text, etc. Otherwise, it will be impossible for you to achieve faithfulness to the source language during the process of translation. In addition to a perfect understanding of the source language, you also must skillfully master the target language (here it refers to Chinese) so that when you are entrusted with a translation task, in order to make your translation totally understandable and acceptable to the counterpart experts in such field of science who can speak and read only the target language, you can know very well how the text shall be conveyed and organized and what kinds of words and phrases you shall choose to use in the target language. To make it short, high proficiency in at least two languages is a must foundation for good performance in professional translation services.

Apart from an expertise in the source and target languages, for those translators delivering professional translation services to the clients, a basic knowledge of the scientific field the text to be translated is categorized into is a must. Usually, a language can be grouped into different genres according to the content and purposes of the text. For instance, English can be classified into news English, English for science and technology, English used in drama, English used in daily life, ect. As for English for science and technology, they may involve the knowledge of different branches of scientific learning, such as physics, medicine, computer science, architecture, electronics, telecommunications, law, and so on. If you have to put theories or scientific procedures of a specific branch of science to paper, you need to resort to the specific language domain where the words and phrases are at, which may contain technological terms that you might have never seen before if you are unfamiliar with such a branch of learning. Therefore, professional translation services require that the translators be equipped with some knowledge of the scientific field to which the translated text belongs.

The last requirement for providing professional translation services is discipline. If you want to translate a book from one language to another, it means a lot of commitment, which demands effort necessary for fighting a war. Such a task will become a torture for those who are not prepared beforehand. If the book consists of 100,000 words, suppose you can translate 5000 words on average per day, you need to work continuously for twenty days. For those who don’t have much experience in professional translation services, they may work very hard during the first few days, engaging a lot of time and efforts, and then they have to rest for a day or two because they feel exhausted, but when the due time is round the corner, they might find that it would be impossible for them to fulfill the tasks. Even some green hand translators are   reluctant to do the job for the first few days, imagining that they can accomplish the work in an efficient manner by just using the rest of the days. In fact, magic will never occur. Experienced professional translators will always make an advance estimation of the average amount of the words that they can translate each day, calculate their time in taking care of their family routines under those circumstances, make a schedule of the translation task, and then try to carry out their plans day by day. In professional translation services, it’s not just the translator’s will to timely accomplish the assigned translation tasks, but is concerned with the fact that whether the translator can strictly observe the discipline and keep doing translation on a regular day to day basis.

To sum up, engaging in professional translation services is not as easy as it seems to be. But to be precise, to master the languages with maximum efforts, to accumulate some professional knowledge by learning some specific branches that your translation work mainly focuses upon and related to, and to develop a good, disciplinary habit in doing translation is very important and helpful to your work in the process of providing your clients with high-quality professional translation services.

Author Information

Marcia  

Translator of

Transhorsa Translation Co., LTD., Shanghai

http://www.transhorsa.org

Native Translator & Proofreading

Industry News high quality translation service, London translation company, professional translation service, professional translation team

Many methods have been released for a wide variety of managing a translation project. But some essential tactics have been hidden behind those articles that are published free on the Internet. These tactics include project definition, translator selection, professional proofreading and quality review. The problem is how we can use these steps to assure the quality of the final translation? As for the requirement definition to a project, we should learn the writing style of the original text, special terminology and the target market the translation is used for. Terminology is a direct characteristic for the audience to get the first expression. Grammatical correction is just a normal criterion for a quality translation. Words in a language are active in real life and business practice. Many words don’t mean their meanings in a dictionary. There are many extended and even implicative meanings for active words in language practice. Only a native translator or one who have lived in a mother tongue country for a long time can grasp these meanings except for technical document translations. For technical translation, the key is to choose an expert in the technical industry concerned. He has gone through many projects on the process of either management or technical direction. He knows how the technical process works and avoids misunderstanding the details of the translation contents. Terminology in technical fields (including social science) is standardized in language practice and is used in the most common ways. The important core for the quality management is to keep glossaries updated in related fields in comparatively real time with the development of project accumulated. A good translator may not be a good proofreader. For good translators, the important thing for him/her is to catch the stream meanings of sensitive sentences and rewrite them in an understandable and fluent way and this also demands the written sentences to reflect the original style even of very national characteristic. For example, “Fuwa” is the final name of Olympic mascot for Beijing Olympic Games. It means a mascot doll for 5 kinds of happiness according to the traditional social conventions. It is got by Chinese Pinyin Romanization, which reflects the origin and expresses the original pronunciation.

A quality review always needs a professional who has the ability to inspect the translation. Perhaps he is not a perfect translator, but he can examine the fluency of sentences and the terminology accuracy and the final writing style suitable to the original text. These items require much more ability of language utility and carefulness for the details in the translation. A good proofreader looks into the translation for errors in it. His most important ability lies in amending and correcting the minor mistakes or errors hidden in the translated sentences comparing with the original text. He plays a role to adjust the improper expressions and synonyms as well as correct the mistaken spellings to make the translation more professional. Self-check is often used for small translation projects. It requires translators’ high writing quality and self-examination ability. For some projects with more than 1000 words the self-check is beyond the scope the translator can undo the mistakes in the translation because the more translated words there are, the easier the mistakes occur.

It is a must to have the translation double checked by another one in this situation. A professional translation cannot contain any minor mistake in it. The translation for publication with mistakes can destroy the public image of an organization or a company. Any translation company pursuing zero rate of error can be considered as to be responsible to its clients. For anything the result is the most important. Whatever quality control process a translation company apply, it must guarantee an accurate, sterling, fluent translation without any minor error delivered to its clients.

Case Study global translation company, high quality translation service, legal document translation, technical document translation, thesis translation, translation resources