About Personal Experience in Translation
Although I am an English teacher, I have been translating for dozens of years in my spare time. I feel that I would like to write something about technique of translation and advice on how to improve personal services to share with readers.
Nowadays, there are more and more freelance translators who provide personal translation services at home due to the development of computer and advanced network technology. They do not have to go out for working every day; but instead, stay at home and do what is required by employers or customers. The articles can be received and sent on line, and other necessary office equipments are also needed. But the most important thing that is needed is translators’ skills and experience, which guarantee good personal translation services.
For translators themselves, this working way is very convenient, because they can arrange work and their life freely. In addition, an experienced and good translator can earn much more money than in a company per month.
It is also good to the companies. The way can save much capitalized cost.
Companies do not need much room for their employees. Only a computer connected with network can solve the problems. At the same time, the bosses can make full use of the advantages of network sources, by which they can employ much more translation talents and receive business around the world. Unlimited network resources make personal translation services become more efficient and better than ever, which brings the companies huge profits.
If you are a fresh freelance translator, here, I will give you some personal advice to help you improve personal translation services. Some graduates from universities or professionals who mean to work on translation often find it much harder to be a good translator than they thought originally. Graduates only learn translation theory at school and lack practical experience, so they hardly know glossary, while professionals do not have systemic translation theory. Nevertheless, you should be confident in yourself. In fact, it is dogged that does it. If you keep digging into it and ask by any way when running into what you do not understand, you must be able to master the language. In my opinion, translation is beyond pure academia, and it is somewhat like technology. If you take it seriously, it will serve you well.
Next I would like to talk about some of my own translation experience. Although it cannot be compared with translation theory of many famous translators, I do hope that it would be of some use for your personal translation services. Because I am not a professional interpreter, I have less oral interpretation experience. Here, I put emphasis on written translation. In my opinion, for a beginner, you should try to learn as many translation theories of famous translators for all times and for all countries as possible. Theory is like a lamp, which guides you through the path of the translation. But only rich theory is not enough. As it is put, an ounce of practice is worth a pound of theory. You should master the theory in the process of practice. In addition, you should have rich linguistry of different languages, which is a generalized conception. Concretely, it includes different cultural background, grammar structure, idiom, etc. Because there are so many differences in the two languages, as a translator, it is nearly impossible to translate completely the same article as original one both in style and in meanings, but we should try our best to eke it out and make the translation get close to the original article. Therefore, we should read as many books of the two languages as we can in order to enrich our minds.
Then, I would like to talk about the methods of the translation. Some Chinese friends translate directly from Chinese to English at the beginning (and visa versa for some foreign friends), but they do not realize that it is a wrong translation method. If you want to translate your native language to another language, you must practice in a contrary order at first. For example, if a Chinese learns to translate Chinese into English, he should practice translating English into Chinese in the beginning. Only thus can he accumulate linguistry and improve English applied ability. Otherwise, his translation would be Chinglish. Finally, I would like to talk about the relations between literal translation and paraphrasing. In fact, many translators whether in ancient or in modern times have had different opinions and had personal tendency. As far as I am concerned, I prefer to paraphrasing. I think we should try our best to paraphrase. Of course, as I have mentioned above, different languages have different cultural background, so if we cannot find a proper idiom to describe the meaning of a foreign phrase or sentence, we can only translate literally.
The above is my personal opinions, and I hope it will induce others to come forward with valuable contributions. That is my purpose to write this article. I hope that it will be of any practical help to your personal translation services. Meanwhile, I welcome translators to discuss with me in order to help each other.
