Beyond language – the extraordinary skill set of a professional translator

 

[quarterback*]

There is a common misperception that a professional translator only requires certain, easily attainable language abilities. These include thorough knowledge of the target language, which is shared by any person raised and educated in a country whose official language is the one required; and a reasonable knowledge of a foreign language learnable through a couple of years of high school study or a few months of Internet effort. Add a bit of machine translation or AI magic. Voila, you too can become a professional translator in a few months.

Reality is quite different. Clearly, the above-mentioned qualifications do not guarantee any language proficiency. Furthermore, professional translators require subject-matter knowledge so they can understand the material and use the correct terminology. However, beyond the required language and subject matter proficiency, professional translators must also be adept in the following technical skills:

Word – The visual aspect is an essential part of a professionally translated document. Therefore, translators must know how to fully format documents, including charts, margins, fonts, paging, borders and colors. As they must do their work efficiently, they must be familiar with the short cuts and professional tricks of using Word. If you think you really know Word, try taking any serious Word proficiency test. In practice, most casual users are aware of only a small percentage of the program’s abilities.

PDF – A significant percentage of original documents received by professional translators are in PDF or jpg. It is often necessary to process these documents to ascertain the number of words, categorize the documents as convertible or not and convert the documents into a useable Word document if possible. Experience is vital.

CAT tools – Just as you would not expect a professional carpenter to tighteen each screw manually, whenever possible, most professional translators use computer aided translation software (CAT) tools, often MemoQ or Trados, to efficiently and effectively translate texts. These programs cost money and require time to learn. The failure to use them often leads to a lack of consistency and avoidable errors, not to mention a large waste of time.

QA – Just as there is no such thing as good writing but only good rewriting, there is no submittable first draft, only a final document that underwent directed and thorough rereading and checking. Therefore, an essential part of the translation process, sometimes taking 50% of the time, is the quality assurance. Programs such as spellcheck, Xbench and Grammarly provide effective ways to review large amounts of texts. Customers should be aware that  AI can be a problem as the quality of its suggestions depends on the prompts it receives. Furthermore and more importantly, use of AI can create a serious breach of security since the material generally enters public domain. Most customers insist on confidentiality.

Social Media – Translators work to make a living. Therefore, they require customers. One methods of attracting customers is the correct use of social media in all its forms. Using this application for business purposes is actually quite complex and requires expertise. By contrast, using them improperly is a waste of time. Depending on their area of specialty, professional translators must gain some proficiency in branding and marketing.

LinkedIn – For legal, financial and other business-oriented fields, LinkedIn is the most focused of all social media and is effective for B2B contacts. However, it takes skill and knowledge of the system to actually benefit from this platform.

Scheduling – Professional translators often work on many projects simultaneously. Being a professional means that the person delivers on time. Thus, serious freelancers take advantage of software that helps them prevent “forgetting”.

Billing – Customers and tax authorities alike require proper billing. Freelancers also need to keep track of payments if they wish to stay in business. So, professional translators must know how to use accounting programs.

For professional translators, this skill set involves constant learning. First, nobody is naturally proficient and/or even open to all skills. Even if a freelancer has background or knowledge, technology is constantly evolving. The modern dynamic business world forces professionals of all types to never stop developing their primary and secondary skills. The cost of the failure to do so is irrelevance.

For translation buyers, it should be clear that a professional translator has for more than basic language skills. Accordingly, such professional deserve to be paid. As this is the start of the American football season, I will compare translators to quarterbacks. It would be foolish for a professional NFL team to use a high school quarterback, no matter how skillful that person is, as they are simply not up to the task. Using a rookie or a low-cost option may be effective in certain situations but won’t get the team to the Superbowl. Paying a top player appropriate money is a major factor in raising the trophy at the end of the season. Translation buyers interested in creating an effective document in terms of content and impact should go with a pro, a person with many talents and skills.

* Picture captions help the blind fully access the Internet.

Picture credit - Pixabay

Teaching then and now

Computers have changed all aspects of life, including in Israel.  It is hard to imagine how people coped without instant, mobile and powerful computing devices.  After finishing a lesson a few days ago, I thought remembered how I used to prepare and teach a lesson when I began my career, some 30 years ago. The comparison with today really brought that message home.

I recall how careful I had to be organizing the materials in those days (for high school).  Photocopying had to be organized a few days in advance.  My teacher's briefcase was very wide and filled with numerous nylon bags, each with its handout, my "kit" if things went wrong as well as for that day's lesson. In a sandwich bag, I kept my chalk, which had almost been replaced by markers but not yet. At the start of the lesson, I checked role and confirmed that each student had brought his/her book or pamphlet (without which they could not participate in the lesson). Any change in the lesson required me to write on the board, preferably legibly, quite a challenge for me since I have the great ability to write illegibly in three alphabets, Latin, Hebrew and Russian. Of course, teaching was always in the framework of the book chosen by the staff. In other words, the material was not always relevant or up-to-date nor were the exercises exactly what I wanted. Bringing auto-visual materials to class was such an administrative hassle that I never did. At the end of the lesson, students handed in their homework handwritten on paper, adding to the paper load In other words, lessons were heavy, teacher centered and very structured.

My lesson this week was quite different. I walked in some five minutes early with a very thin portfolio bag, almost empty, basically containing attendance lists, pens and my glasses (the last change is not positive).  I downloaded the word texts from the Moodle site and turned on the overhead project and setup the YouTube video I wanted to show. I began the lesson by showing the students (college this time) a video on public speaking technique. After a short discussion, I had the students discuss in groups the organization of an article, which they downloaded from that same Moodle site, followed by the writing in pairs of a summary based on that discussion in class, of course in Word. I reminded them to use spell-check before sending it to my email and told them that I would return their graded summary by email with all editing clearly marked in track changes. One of the students had a question about sentence syntax. I opened up a blank Word document and wrote several versions to help explain my point.  My feeling was that we, or at least I, had had a stressless lesson.

It should be noted that the changes are truly fine and dandy as long as the computer and Internet work properly. If not, we are back to good old days, without the chalk of course. Still, to paraphrase, teaching sure ain't what it used to be.