Useful excercises for translators
As we all know, practice makes perfect. I personally believe that you can’t be a good translator until you translate a few million of words. This creates certain habits, gives you the chance to stumble across “critical” situations and forces you to find a solution, or makes you go through a fair amount of different […]
Five necessary skills of translators
When thinking about a career in translations, many people have to answer the question of what skills are required to succeed. Is language proficiency enough? Or is there something else? Below, I briefly describe skills that in my opinion every professional translator needs to master. Critical thinking This skill is needed in numerous professions, but […]
Chinglish – a real challenge
Perhaps nothing is more challenging for a translator than attempting to translate a text written in English by someone whose grasp of that language is, to put it politely, not the greatest. Chinglish is an excellent example. The term “Chinglish” is a portmanteau of “Chinese” and “English.” It refers to English language that has been […]
Machine Translation
When translating English text into other languages, you might sometimes be tempted to use machine translation to speed up your work. In some languages, for instance German or Spanish, it works fine for the most part – a few minor adjustments can make your text presentable. However, you should definitely not rely on machine translation […]
Flexibility in translation
There’s a popular saying among translators, which reads “Dictionaries are like watches – even the best one is not entirely correct, but the worst one is better than none”. If dictionaries were enough to successfully translate texts, translators would have absolutely nothing to do. Machine translation mechanisms would complete the raw process, and you don’t […]
Tłumaczenie maszynowe a język polski
Tłumaczenie maszynowe staje się coraz lepsze. Mogłoby się wydawać, że rozwój ten stanowi zagrożenie dla zawodu tłumacza. Myślę jednak, że tłumacze języka polskiego mogą spać spokojnie: automatyczne tłumaczenie tekstów z języka polskiego oraz na ten język jest nadal bardzo nieporadne. Mam podać parę przykładów na poparcie mojej tezy? Proszę bardzo: Children are so pig-headed nowadays. […]