Each part of life has it’s own terminology.

 

Google translate and other machine translation applications (and bad human translators) don’t distinguish between different contexts or specialist fields. They will choose the most frequently used translation or the first entry in the dictionary. The result will be a totally incomprehensible and in the worst case, embarrassing, translation.

 

When working for you, I will ask you questions

 

The information in the source text is not always clear – sometimes a text might have been taken out of a larger context, images might be missing, or the topic is extremely specific or complex. And if I find anything even slightly ambiguous in your text, I will ask you about it.

 

I may sound like I am a nitpicker, but believe me, only bad translators pretend they know everything – they will simply assume that in your business, a certain word has a certain meaning, or just guess the missing context. It goes without saying that the results can be disastrous. I believe that every topic is worth exploring with enthusiasm, and no skill level is ever good enough.

 

Understanding the feelings and thoughts of others is one of the foundations of good communication. And ultimately, translation is communication.  When you have a text translated, you have a certain target audience in mind – and this audience expects to be addressed in a certain manner. Only someone linguistically and culturally fluent in the source language is able to detect different nuances in texts and only a good writer can compose a text that reproduces the exact nuance appropriate for the target audience. It takes a good translator to combine these two skills, crafting a translation that speaks to your audience and effortlessly conveys the meaning of the original text.

 

It is needless to say that even the most sophisticated machine translation applications will not be able to match this  ability in the near future.