Remember the MythBusters show? Today, I’m going to become a myth-buster myself, to bust a couple of common myths about translation and translators. What is a myth? Do I mean “a story from ancient times, especially one that was told to explain natural events or to describe the early history of a people”? Of course not. The myths I’m about to deconstruct here are, as […]
Technical writers! To the outside world, it may seem you’re experts-above-all, who know a technical area inside-out, every nook and cranny, and write this knowledge down in understandable English. Those who actually do the job know very well that this is partly true; technical writers have broad technical knowledge, but their expert knowledge often comes from a subject matter expert (SME). However, usually SMEs and […]
I think everyone has been through something like this at one point in their lives. You’re listening to a lecture, a webinar, or you’re just asking someone about something. For example, you’d like to know how a nuclear plant works. You get a very simple answer indeed: “In a coolant-filled vessel, fuel rods undergo a controlled nuclear reaction with the use of a moderator that […]
This happens all too often to freelance translators who start their journey. You buy your first Computer Aided Translation software (CAT), learn the basics, set up a project, and finish a job or two. There comes another job; and another; and another one. You feed your CAT with anything and everything that comes by, piling in projects. However, you don’t use the CAT to its […]
Photo by Jonathan Borba on Unsplash If you buy a blender, a washing machine, or a machine with conveyors for wrapping cardboard boxes with heat-shrink film, you’ll get an instruction manual, a user guide, or a similar document. Even though these three devices are radically different, their manuals share similarities, especially in the case of various industrial machinery. If you deal with technical translation, you’ll […]