In our previous entries we’ve told you what our standard days look like, what we actually translate, what tools (like CAT software here and there) and hardware we use. Now we would like to tell you what we actually do when we translate. *** Of course, this entry presents some general notes about our process of translation, as no two texts are translated exactly in […]
Quite often, we receive texts with a client’s note that “there’s only five pages, I want the translation done by tomorrow morning.” However, it turns out that these “five pages” are written over from margin to margin in small font size, with narrow line spacing, and, on top of that, in columns. What do we do then? As you can see below, apparently these are […]
Today’s text is going to be about the source texts sent to us to be translated. How to prepare a text for translation so that the process of translation is smooth and undisturbed by unnecessary problems? The clients can do a couple of things which will help the translators achieve an even better quality of the target text. They can save the translator’s time which […]
As promised a long time ago, we’re here with a text about what it is that translators dislike. There are a couple of examples to mention; however, lest we sound too negative, we encourage you to start with our first article about translators’ likes. What makes us angry, irritated, and annoyed, even if we’re hiding it well? What gets on our nerves, tests our patience, […]
Today, you are officially invited behind the scenes of our office and we’re going to let you take a sneak peak of our everyday translation work. And life, too. It’s hard to say for sure where and when one ends and the other begins. It’s safe to say, though, that no day in the life of a translator is like any other. There is no […]
For many people, the end of the year is a time of looking back on the previous 365 days and drawing necessary conclusions. For us too – we like to take a look at some statistics from time to time and see our work in a rear-view mirror. Needless to say, the year 2019 has passed so quickly and we’re quite surprised to see the […]
In the previous entry, I told you what Computer Aided Translation software was and, also, I covered the CAT basics, namely translation memories (TMs) and glossaries. Today I’m going to describe some other useful features of CATs. Since, as you remember, we operate on Wordfast PRO, I’ll focus on this programme. Projects – where files are gathered First of all, the texts we translate are […]
As we have already mentioned, a majority of translators have cats. Or CATs, actually. What are they? What can they do? What are their functionalities? How do they help? Do they release translators from all their duties and let them fool around and do nothing? Today, we’d like to answer these questions for you. The nature of CATs The CAT abbreviation stands for Computer Assisted […]
Today’s post is going to be somewhat technical, just like the previous one, and dedicated to those of you who are at the beginning of their translation career path. I’m going to tell you more about the computer equipment which is good for translators at present. I’ll focus on PCs and laptops working with Windows, as they are what we use on a daily basis. […]
You certainly have some ideas about how the translator’s work and the process of translation itself looks. They usually involve the translator sitting in front of a computer, ‘transcribing’ the source text – in a digital or printed form, looking up words in a big, old, traditional bilingual dictionary (or a pile of dictionaries), sometimes searching the web. Is this what it actually looks like? […]