Translators inevitably make mistakes early in their careers. This is normal and natural: universities provide academic knowledge, but real life is more complicated than theory from textbooks. Yesterday’s students do not have enough professional experience to compete with established specialists. The good news is that experience is not without mistakes, so you should not be afraid of them.
Learning from your mistakes is effective, but frustrating. Another option is to learn from the experience of older colleagues. In this article, we want to share our observations about the mistakes best certified translators make at the beginning of their professional career and give recommendations on how to avoid them.
We have divided the article into two logical parts.
Common misconceptions and mistakes
In the first half we will talk about common misconceptions at the beginning of a career, in the second part we will touch directly on translation errors.
Translation is an unpromising industry
The first place where graduates of linguistic universities go to look for work is freelance exchanges. It so happened that exchanges offer the lowest possible payment for translation work. The young specialist sees low rates and high competition and comes to the conclusion that the translation industry is low-paid, highly competitive and not promising.
If you look for work only on stock exchanges, then it is, but the career prospects of a translator are not limited to them. Translators are needed in the staff of companies, and translation agencies, including foreign ones. There are professions of court interpreter services, guide-interpreter, and interpreter in international organizations.
The translation industry is developing dynamically, despite the pandemic and the improvement of machine translation technology. Another thing is that at the beginning of a career it is difficult to break into the ranks of well-earning ones. It is not easy, but it is possible with due perseverance and desire.
Fear to start
Some translators who have recently graduated from a specialized university and are faced with the realities of the market think that they still need to learn more to make a successful start. There is nothing wrong with this, unless behind this desire there is a fear of the difficulties of finding a first job. A novice specialist is frightened by the vicious circle in which employers are looking for people with work experience, but in order to get this experience, you need to get a job.
Experienced translators were also beginners without experience, which means that you can make your way, the main thing is to take the first step – the most difficult, but necessary. We are sure that you have an excellent education and potential, it remains to act. Search, make mistakes, draw conclusions and move forward
Randomness of actions
The goal for beginners is simple and clear – to find the first job. The plan is simple: prepare a resume, go to a job site or bureau site, and respond to offers.
But the results of their efforts can be seen far from immediately: many give up when the responses are ignored or refusals come. Having not received a quick result, the translator begins to act chaotically, while the goal is achieved only by systematic actions.
Setting specific goals and time management helps to cope with the chaos in the head and in life. For example, your goal is to cooperate with a translation agency. This goal can be broken down into tasks and set deadlines for them:
- Write a resume – 2 days.
- Prepare portfolio:
- translate an advertising brochure about trips to Lake Baikal – 2 days (translation + revision)
- translate the instructions for the vacuum cleaner – 3 days
- study the structure of the vacuum cleaner, find thematic dictionaries and glossaries.
- translate a text.
- check the translation and improve.
- Create a spreadsheet with translation agency contacts – 2 days.
- Send resumes to five translation agencies every day – 14 days.
- Continue to refine your resume and portfolio.
Communication errors
At first glance, the work of a translator is built according to the algorithm “I receive an order, I make a translation, I hand over the translation, I receive money.” In practice, everything is somewhat more complicated. The work of a translator is not only about relationships with the text, but also about relationships with people: managers of translation agencies, colleagues, direct customers.
Let’s take an example. Let’s say a translation agency chooses between you and a more experienced translator. You did a good job with the test translation, but your colleague did better. Nevertheless, the customer considered that both texts were imperfect and made reasonable corrections to them. You reacted calmly to the comments and readily set to work on finalizing the text, while your colleague, on the contrary, began to argue with the customer and prove the inconsistency of the edits.
In such a situation, the translation agency is more likely to choose you than your colleague: the ability to listen and meet halfway is valued in the work of a translator.
A positive attitude, the absence of unnecessary emotions, the ability to hear the client’s wishes are your soft skills, which are no less important than the ability to translate with high quality.
Translation errors
Next, let’s look at common mistakes related directly to the translation itself.
Misunderstanding the parameters of a translation project
At the beginning of the journey, the translator may not know that translations in different fields differ not only in terms of vocabulary and style. It depends on the type of translation what will be the volume of the text, what are the deadlines for the translation, how often clichés are used, how severely the translator’s mistakes are punished.
Understanding the parameters of a translation project will help you get an idea of what kind of work you have to do and prepare for it.
For example, technical documentation is characterized by large volumes of texts, a high degree of repetition of phrases, and a translator needs basic technical knowledge to work with it.
Legal texts, such as contracts, are replete with repetitive phrases and clichés, and translation deadlines are tight. In marketing translation, the translator works with small amounts of text, transcreation skills are required from him.
Translation is hard
Faced with the market for translation orders, novice translators may come to the conclusion that translation is difficult.
Previously unfamiliar, full of nuances and specifics, technical, legal, medical translation frightens inexperienced translators. On the first orders, they feel a great responsibility to the customer and are afraid to face a lack of their own knowledge – from this point of view, their fear is justified. But let’s not forget that fear has big eyes: sometimes everything is easier than it seems. The basic linguistic knowledge obtained at the university makes it quite possible to take the first projects.
It is difficult and scary in cases where knowledge is not enough. Do not be afraid to try new things, make mistakes and be sure to gain the missing knowledge.
Translation is easy
You can go to the other extreme and mistakenly think that there is nothing complicated in translation.
Translators have a saying: if the order looks easy, it only seems so. It necessarily has moments that are difficult to translate: they turned out to be unnoticed either due to inattentive reading or lack of experience.
Throughout a career, a translator learns and develops existing skills, the so-called hard skills: mastery of the native language at the highest level, excellent knowledge of a foreign language, background knowledge in a particular area, and knowledge of translation theory.
Agree without reading the original
Please review your order carefully before placing an order. And it’s not just about the topic. We hope you understand that it is definitely not worth taking into work in a text in which you understand individual words and do not understand the meaning of sentences.
It happens that customers are asked to translate an already translated text, that is, to make a translation from the translation. Not every client will warn about this: most often this can be understood only by carefully reading the text. It is especially unpleasant if the text that you are asked to translate is a machine translation, for example, from Chinese.
Such texts are dangerous because they may contain errors made in the previous translation. You will have to translate a text with an already distorted meaning, that is, the original meaning of the translator’s work is lost – to convey the truth in another language. In order not to receive such a “gift”, always carefully check the original.
