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 translation of agreements, terms and conditions, and similar legal texts. TRANSLATION OF AGREEMENTS AND LEGALESE Legal texts are in a way similar to technical documentation. If their writing is sloppy, they become […]
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 about the joy of proofreading, but from a slightly different perspective. Why do I Iike working with texts? A disclaimer is necessary before I start. Although we have enumerated the strict differences between checking, revising, reviewing, and proofreading in one of […]
We help others by translating texts, but we’d like to tell you more about some of our other services as well. 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 […]
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. In this article, we clarify this somewhat confusing terminology and describe the particular stages of the […]
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 and what our translation process is. Translation process – first steps Of course, this entry presents some general notes about our translation […]
We often 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? How to calculate translation size? As you can see […]
This article is 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? As a client, you can do a couple of things which will help the us, the translators, achieve an even better quality of the target text. You can save the translator’s time […]
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 are translators’ dislikes? What makes us angry, irritated, and annoyed, even if we’re hiding it well? What gets on our […]