Must Have Qualities in a Good Technical Translator
Technical Translator
While recruiting a technical translator for a subject specific translation assignment, you must make sure that he or she meets certain perquisites. It is a good thing if the translator has a wide-ranging knowledge on the subject but what you need really is someone who can do a bit of research too. It is more essential that the person should know how to go about the task of researching on the subject and should have a good grasp over what the topic is all about.
An expert on the subject can give a hundred pages on the topic and can go into the in-depth translation of it, but that will only be appealing to technical readers. For those who are not very conversant in the subject, all that matter will really amount to nothing. The writing should appeal to a larger audience and the translator should be able to reach the average reader too.
The material should have the ability to attract attention of the readers and should keep them engrossed. Some translators are very good with the way they use words to give the matter a good flow and make it more attractive. They pride themselves on the fact that they not only translate the text, but also lend it a magical touch that makes it charming.
A translator should know the right jargon to be used to make the text more simplified and familiar to readers. They should be able to relate the words to the product that is being talked about in the language that they are translating the text to. Using similar words and repeating them at intervals will help make a connection with the non-technical audience.
Some translators might not have a formal education or learning about the subject but if they have an idea about it, they can still do a good job. Some might have had a field experience in the area and could provide a more practical insight into the subject. This insight is more endearing to readers and helps them associate the subject to the real world. These translators are generally people who have had a prior experience in the area and are now looking to share the knowledge.
Also ensure that your translator has all the relevant books, encyclopaedias, reference material necessary to write an informed piece. It is your duty to provide him with all this and more so that the end product is a well rounded piece of translation that meets your requirement. TranslationArtwork.com has a rich database of more than 2500 qualified translators specializing in various subjects with immense knowledge and experience. Are you a technical translator? How do you treat a technical piece of text while translation?
That’s why most of translators are also localizators… Research is essential, inspite of all the knowledge we can have on the subject, there are always new items to take into consideration.
Interesting article, but there is one thing missing.
The translator is and must never be alone. Translation, particularly in the technical world, means not only researching but also communicating and finding the words the client prefers or is accustomed to. It also sometimes means having to go and see the machine (the one of the user or maintenance manual you are translating) at work or following a service engineer at work during a day to understand exactly the ins and outs of.
Depending on your target audience, you need to be extremely specific and sometimes awfully jargons.
Often ideally you would need to discuss with the author in order to understand exactly what was meant.
Unfortunately, this requires time and money and fewer and fewer clients want to do this because the hard work of translation is not always understood and it always comes down to basic economics.
We have a slow and painstaking work, but nobody but us know what we go through to produce a work of quality.
When I am doing a translation i.e. from French to Serbian, I am not only using the French-Serbian dictionnary, but sometimes practically all those I have at hand: near 30 different ones in the most different languages, to be sure I am using the best expressions. That means also that a technical translation can’t be done by 1 person only – you have to work in team – because even the people with non-technical can help you by their point of view. And every 10 year one has to change all his dictionnaries, specialized and not specialized, because if not not, one falls out of the technical routine and jargon, very quickly.
I’m an Italian Tecno-scientific translator…You have some work for me please contact me
@ Rosanna – Please register yourself on http://www.translationartwork.com
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