Some time ago I wrote a text about the features of technical documentation that make translation easier. As I was writing that post, I realized that I could write a similar article about agreements, terms and conditions, and similar legal texts. Legal texts are in a way similar to technical documentation. If their writing is sloppy, they become unclear, which, in turn, may have disastrous […]
I translate a lot of technical documentation, mainly instruction or installation manuals. Translation of such texts requires some knowledge of the topic in question, skill, attention to detail, and most importantly common sense. Yet even the best translators can go from mildly upset to seething with fury when an instruction manual poses problems and difficulties due to its poor structure and editing. I have decided […]
In our previous text, Paweł gave his answer to the fundamental question – why do we like revision? Today, Martyna will have her say, but from a slightly different perspective. *** A disclaimer is necessary before I start. Although we have enumerated the strict differences between checking, revising, reviewing, and proofreading in one of our articles, today I’m going to treat them as one and […]
We help others by translating texts, but today we’d like to tell you more about some of our other services. There are many people who have a text in English or Polish and they’re not interested in translation but they want their text to sound professional. There are many reasons for that: their English is good, but not as proficient as a translator’s, they have […]
When a text is sent to be translated, translation itself is only a part of the whole service ordered. Translation may come with revision, review, and proofreading, or any of those can be ordered separately. You may wonder, though, what do these terms mean? They sound near-synonymous, after all. Today we’ll clarify this somewhat confusing terminology and describe the particular stages of the translation quality […]
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, […]