The Translator Guide

The #1 resource for ambitious professional translators and students

By Adriana Tassini

Sponsored by:

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The Translator Guide was created to provide translation professionals and students with a free source
of career advice, business building tips, and translation best practices. Throughout this guide you will
find articles on these three areas, and this resource will be updated twice a year with more advice,
interviews, tools and links to additional resources.

Top 4 Translator Resume Tips

Within this article I would like to provide a few tips on how to

make your resume better. First of all, there isn't a perfect
resume. Some translators have not yet finished college but
make over $100 grand a year working as a freelance translator
or in a translation company. Every line on your resume should
build the case of how much experience you have working in
the translation industry and how valuable you will be for the
company once they hire you. This is your chance to show-off and move on to the next step; the
interview!!!

Here are my Top 4 Translator Resume Tips:

1. Write a very short paragraph on the top of you resume explaining why you would fit in
the company that you are applying to.
2. Add a summary of your qualifications, how many years of experience you have in the
industry, familiarity with computers, add extra curriculum courses you have taken, and
write 1-3 bullet points about your interpersonal skills and ability to work in a team.
3. Add your professional experience, this is your chance to show the firm how
knowledgeable you are in the field. Make a list of places that you have worked as a
translator before, add dates and provide all the languages that you are specialized in
translation.
4. On the bottom of your resume, provide education and professional training, such as
names of schools that you have attended, and all of the translation certifications that
you have earned.

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How to Become a Successful Translator

Starting a translation career can be fun but it is also challenging,

I have personally been both a freelance and in-house corporate
translator in the past and here are some tips on becoming a
successful translator.

1. Having the ability to write well is very important.

2. You have to know a second language just as well as you know your first so that you can
converse with those who so speak the language natively.
3. A degree is not necessary, but holding a university degree or qualification in translation
such as a certificate in translation can be very important when looking for jobs or
working as a freelance translator.
4. Be confident in your target language and within the specific industries you serve clients
in such as finance and banking or sports marketing.
5. Be familiar with the subject matter of what is to be translated before accepting
assignments or full time positions.
6. Practicing your second or third languages daily or participating in exchange program or
work abroad is highly recommended.

Translator Internships

There are many ways to gain initial experience as a translator;

a popular one is volunteering to work for free for a translation
company. It is always better to do this with a local firm or
sometimes this work can be done remotely over the web as
well. But if you chose to not work for free, don’t forget that the
salary will depend on how many years of experience you have working as a translator.

If you are starting up your career as a translator you may have to accept very low pay for your
first few projects so that you will be able to build a portfolio of past work to show to potential
clients.

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The Term Translation

Etymologically, translation is a "carrying across" or "bringing

across". The Latin translatio derives from the perfect passive
participle, translatum, of transferre ("to transfer" — from trans,
"across" + ferre, "to carry" or "to bring"). The modern Romance,
Germanic and Slavic European languages have generally formed
their own equivalent terms for this concept after the Latin
model — after transferee or after the kindred traducere ("to
bring across" or "to lead across").

Additionally, the Ancient Greek term for "translation", μετάφραςισ (metaphrasis, "a speaking
across"), has supplied English with metaphrase (a "literal translation", or "word-for-word"
translation)—as contrasted with paraphrase ("a saying in other words", from the Greek
παράφραςισ, paraphrasis"). Metaphrase corresponds, in one of the more recent terminologies,
to "formal equivalence", and paraphrase to "dynamic equivalence."

A widely recognized icon for the practice and historic role of translation is the Rosetta Stone,
which in the United States is incorporated into the crest of the Defense Language Institute.

What is Translation?
Translation is the interpreting of the meaning of a text and the subsequent
production of an equivalent text, likewise called a "translation," that
communicates the same message in another language. The text to be
translated is called the source text, and the language that it is to be
translated into is called the target language; the final product is sometimes
called the target text.

Translation must take into account constraints that include context, the
rules of grammar of the two languages, their writing conventions, and their
idioms. A common misconception is that there exists a simple word-for-word correspondence
between any two languages, and that translation is a straightforward mechanical process; such
a word-for-word translation, however, cannot take into account context, grammar,
conventions, and idioms.

Translation, when practiced by relatively bilingual individuals but especially when by persons
with limited proficiency in one or both languages, involves a risk of spilling-over of idioms and

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usages from the source language into the target language. On the other hand, inter-linguistic
spillages have also served the useful purpose of importing calques and loanwords from a source
language into a target language that had previously lacked a concept or a convenient
expression for the concept. Translators and interpreters, professional as well as amateur, have
thus played an important role in the evolution of languages and cultures.

The art of translation is as old as written literature. Parts of the Sumerian Epic of Gilgamesh,
among the oldest known literary works, have been found in translations into several Asiatic
languages of the second millennium BCE. The Epic of Gilgamesh may have been read, in their
own languages, by early authors of the Bible and of the Iliad.

With the advent of computers, attempts have been made to computerize or otherwise
automate the translation of natural-language texts (machine translation) or to use computers
as an aid to translation (computer-assisted translation).

Translation Dictionaries
Although it is one of the most useful resources in the translation industry, it
is not the best resource to rely on when translating. We know that the
dictionary is a great tool to be used when looking for a term or a sought
explanation. But you need to be aware that dictionaries become quickly
outdated and yours may be too old to use. Otherwise, it can give you
problems in the translation and can cause the use of misleading words.

Dictionaries do not have all the words and terms a translator needs, nor do they contain all the
information which specialized references may have.

Direct Clients versus Translation Agencies

If you decide to work for a translation agency all you have to do is

send out your resume and hopefully they will call you for an
interview. But if you decide to work directly with clients, you should
expect to spend a lot more time to approach potential client before
obtaining your first client. You should also follow some additional
steps in order to gain new clients or work with translation agencies.

1. You can find a lot of translation agencies in the Yellow

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 Pages or in the internet, when it can be much harder for you to find clients through
Yellow Pages or in the internet.
2. You can send your resume with your qualifications to translation agencies while also
looking for potential clients of your own at the same time as these often take some time
to develop.
3. By working for a translation company you know exactly how much you will get paid at
the end of the week. It can be very different from working directly with clients where
you have to establish a different price for different projects and most of the time the
client will renegotiate the price.

Legal Translation | How to Become a Legal Translator?

Legal translation is the translation of texts within the field of

law. As law is a culture-dependent subject field, legal
translation is not a simple task.

Only professional translators specializing in legal translation

should translate legal documents and scholarly writings. The
mistranslation of a passage in a contract, for example, could
lead to lawsuits and loss of money.

When translating a text within the field of law, the translator should keep the following in mind.
The legal system of the source text is structured in a way that suits that culture and this is
reflected in the legal language; similarly, the target text is to be read by someone who is
familiar with another legal system and its language. Most forms of legal writing, and contracts
in particular, seek to establish clearly defined rights and duties for certain individuals. It is
essential to ensure precise correspondence of these rights and duties in the source text and in
the translation. Legal translation may also involve, Certificates of Accuracy, Witness
Statements1, Depositions, Trusts, Wills, Articles of Incorporation, Litigation Documents,
Immigration Documents, Property/Exhibit Labels and in some cases attendance in court by the
translator(s).

Apart from terminological lacunae, or lexical gaps, the translator may focus on the following
aspects. Textual conventions in the source language are often culture-dependent and may not
correspond to conventions in the target culture. Linguistic structures that are often found in the
source language have no direct equivalent structures in the target language. The translator
therefore has to find target language structures with the same functions as those in the source

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language.

Translators of legal texts often consult law dictionaries, especially bilingual law dictionaries.
Care should be taken, as some bilingual law dictionaries are of poor quality and their use may
lead to mistranslation.

Translator Certification Program

Online Course Option Offered By the Global Translation Institute (GTI)

One option available for professional translators who would like

to improve their translation career prospects would be complete
a relevant certification or training program. By completing such
a program you may improve your resume, translation
knowledge and increase the credibility of your business or
experience while working with new potential clients.

The CTP Designation is the only professional certification program for professional who work in
the translation industry or who would like to work within the industry. The CTP Program is a
100% online self-study program.

Learn more at TranslationCertification.org

Translator Training Courses and Programs

Starting a career as a translator is not an easy task, but, it is not that

complicated either. If you are just starting out as a translator and
you don’t have enough experience within the industry, here are the
top 3 tips for how to gain training as a translator.

1. Get an internship with a translation company where you are

going to work closely with other professionals and will have
the opportunity to watch and interact with other professional translators with many
years of experience. This can be a great way to gain more industry knowledge even if
your first internship is non-paid.

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 2. Practice your target language skills by reading books, translating example documents,
watching foreign movies and hanging out with others who speak the language fluently.
3. Education is very important too, by completing a relevant translator certification
program, university course or training program you may improve your resume,
translation knowledge and increase the credibility of your business or experience while
working with new potential clients.

Interpreting Versus Translation

Despite being used interchangeably, interpretation and

translation are not synonymous, but refer, respectively, to the
spoken and written transference of meaning between two
languages. Interpreting occurs in real time, in the presence —
physical, televised, or telephonic — of the parties for whom
the interpreter renders an interpretation. Translation is the
transference of meaning from text to text (written, recorded,
sign), with the translator having time and access to resources (dictionaries, glossaries, etc.) to
produce a faithful, true, and accurate document or verbal artifact.

A very common, layman's misconception of interpretation is that it is rendered verbatim, that

is, as a word-for-word syntactic translation of an utterance. That is impractical, because a
literal, verbatim interpretation of a source-language message would be unintelligible to the
target-language listener. For example, the Spanish phrase: Está de viaje, rendered verbatim to
English translates as: Is of voyage (senseless in English), yet its faithful, true, and accurate
denotational and connotational interpretations in context are: ‘He/She/You is/are traveling’ or
‘He/She/You is/are out of town’. That is, the overall meaning, tone, and style in the target
language are what matter, rather than the source-language syntax.

Interpretation is also held to a different standard of accuracy than translation. Translators have
time to consider and revise each word and sentence before delivering their product to the
client. While interpreters try to achieve total accuracy at all times, details of the original
(source) speech can be omitted from the interpretation into the target language, especially if
the source speaker talks very quickly, or recites long lists of figures without a pause.

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The procedure for translating to legal equivalence
The procedure for translation to legal equivalence differs from country
to country.

The standards of translation in Poland are regulated by a relevant

department of the Ministry of Justice and every translator wishing to
provide such services must pass a formal examination. Afterwards
such a person is recognized as a 'sworn' translator - just like in Mexico.
However, for ordinary translations (business, administration, and
correspondence) it is enough to have an independent expert in the
field.

Spain, only sworn translators can do a sworn translation in Spain. To become a sworn translator
in Spain you need to pass an exam by the Spanish Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Cooperation.
Passing that exam allows you to apply for the certification as a "sworn interpreter". Then you
register your stamp and signature and you communicate your rates for sworn translations to
the Ministry, and they include your data in a public list of sworn interpreters.

In South Africa, the translator must be authorized by the High Court, and must use an original
(or a sworn copy of an original) in his physical presence as his source text. The translator may
only swear by his own translation. There is no requirement for an additional witness (such as a
notary) to attest to the authenticity of the translation.

In Mexico, some local instances, such as the Superior Court of Justice, establish that a written
and oral examination shall be passed for a translator to be recognized as an expert or "sworn"
translator (this kind of translator does not swear before the court to be authorized).

The U.S. Department of Labor, Bureau of Labor Statistics states: "There is currently no
universal form of certification required of interpreters and translators in the United States, but
there are a variety of different tests that workers can take to demonstrate proficiency."

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Translation Evolution

Translation as an activity exists at least since mankind started

developing trade millennia ago; so, if we include interpreting, it
is no exaggeration to say that the origins of language industry
are older than those of written language.

Modern language industry has developed rapidly following

availability of the internet. Achievements of the industry
include the ability to quickly translate long texts into many
languages. This has created new challenges as compared with
the traditional activity of translators, such as that of quality assurance. There are some quality
standards such as EN 15038 in Europe and ASTM F2575-06 in the USA.

There are language industry companies of different sizes; none of them is dominant in the
world market so far.
There are human resources in translation of very different levels; internet has gathered
professional translators, students, language teachers and professionals from other disciplines,
all of them offering translation services. Apart from this, phenomenon such as crowd sourcing
are every day more frequent to find in big-scale translations, which has given place to several
polemics.

One field of research in the industry includes the possibility of machine translation fully
replacing human translation.

Bilingual Dictionary | Translation Dictionary

A bilingual dictionary or translation dictionary is a specialized

dictionary used to translate words or phrases from one language to
another. Bilingual dictionaries can be unidirectional, meaning that
they list the meanings of words of one language in another, or can
be bidirectional, allowing translation to and from both languages.
Bidirectional bilingual dictionaries usually consist of two sections,
each listing words and phrases of one language alphabetically along
with their translation.

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In addition to the translation, a bilingual dictionary usually indicates the part of speech, gender,
verb type, declension model and other grammatical clues to help a non-native speaker use the
word. Other features sometimes present in bilingual dictionaries are lists of phrases, usage and
style guides, verb tables, maps and grammar references. In contrast to the bilingual dictionary,
a monolingual dictionary defines words and phrases instead of translating them.

Prioritization and Omission of Information

There are many little tips and tricks which you pick up from
completing dozens of translation projects. This series of posts
will provide some of these tips to you so you can avoid making
mistakes that others commonly make in the industry.

For example, there are times when the translator is required to

take important decisions. The translator needs to know how to
work with prioritization and omission of information from the
original text to see how they are going to reach the end of the
translation without changing its meaning. In this case, the translator depends crucially on their
strategies to adapt their decisions into the translation being made. Be careful not to change the
meaning of the original text.

Translation Theories

A good translation is not necessarily a fast translation. It is

required that you have a good knowledge of translation so
extreme changes to the meaning won’t happen to the text
being translated. You always have to make sure that your
translated text is keeping the same meaning as the original and
be careful not to add new information.

To become a good translator, it is necessary to understand the internal system of a language

and the context of the entire text being translated. Thus, the translator will be able to produce
the same effect in both languages.

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Translation | Level of Reflection

To translate properly, it is essential that the translator increases the level

of reflection on the nature and cognitive aspects of translation.
Consequently, this fact will contribute for a very significant increase in the
quality of their translations. In other words step back and really think
about the meaning behind what you are translating instead of simply
translating the literal words from one language into another. Make sure
the overall meaning and message behind the translation works remain consistent from the
source to end translated documents.

Translation Secondary and Tertiary Source

Secondary sources are written accounts of history based upon

the evidence from primary sources. These are sources which,
usually, are accounts, works, or research that analyze, assimilate,
evaluate, interpret, and/or synthesize primary sources. These are
not as authoritative and are supplemental documents
concerning the subject under consideration. These documents or
people summarize other material, usually primary source
material. They are academics, journalists, and other researchers,
and the papers and books they produce. This includes published accounts, published works, or
published research. For example a history book drawing upon diary and newspaper records.

Tertiary sources are compilations based upon primary and secondary sources. These are
sources which, on average, do not fall into the above two levels. They consist of generalized
research of a specific subject under consideration. Tertiary sources are analyzed, assimilated,
evaluated, interpreted, and/or synthesized from secondary sources, also. These are not
authoritative and are just supplemental documents concerning the subject under
consideration. These are often meant to present known information in a convenient form with
no claim to originality. Common examples are encyclopedias and textbooks.

The distinction between primary source and secondary source is standard in historiography,
while the distinction between these sources and tertiary sources is more peripheral, and is
more relevant to the scholarly research work than to the published content itself.

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Source Text | Translation Primary Source

A source text is a text (sometimes oral) from which information or ideas

are derived. In translation, a source text is the original text that is to be
translated into another language.

Primary sources are firsthand written evidence of history made at the time
of the event by someone who was present. They have been described as
those sources closest to the origin of the information or idea under study.
These types of sources have been said to provide researchers with "direct,
unmediated information about the object of study."

Primary sources are sources which, usually, are recorded by someone who participated in,
witnessed, or lived through the event. These are also usually authoritative and fundamental
documents concerning the subject under consideration. This includes published original
accounts, published original works, or published original research. They may contain original
research or new information not previously published elsewhere. They have been distinguished
from secondary sources, which often cite, comment on, or build upon primary sources. They
serve as an original source of information or new ideas about the topic. Primary and secondary,
however, are relative terms, and any given source may be classified as primary or secondary,
depending on how it is used. Physical objects can be primary sources.

Translation Idiom

An idiom is a phrase whose meaning cannot be determined by the

literal definition of the phrase itself, but refers instead to a
figurative meaning that is known only through common use. In
linguistics, idioms are widely assumed to be figures of speech that
contradict the principle of compositionality; however, this has
shown to be a subject of debate.

John Saeed defines an idiom as words collocated together happen

to become fossilized, becoming fixed over time. This collocation -- words commonly used in a
group -- changes the definition of each of the words that exist. As an expression, the word-
group becomes a team, so to speak. That is, the collocated words develop a specialized
meaning as a whole and an idiom is born. An idiom is a word or phrase that means something
different than the words imply if interpreted literally. When a person uses an idiom, the listener

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might take the actual meaning wrong if he or she has not heard this figure of speech before.

Idioms don't usually cross language boundaries. In some cases, when an idiom is translated into
another language, the meaning of the idiom is changed or does not make any sense as it once
did in another language. Idioms are probably the hardest thing for a person to learn in the
process of learning a new language.[citation needed] This is because most people grow up
using idioms as if their true meanings actually make sense.

Computer-Assisted Translation (CAT) | Translation Software

Computer-assisted translation (CAT), also called "computer-

aided translation", "machine-aided human translation (MAHT)"
and "interactive translation", is a form of translation wherein a
human translator creates a target text with the assistance of a
computer program. The machine supports a human translator.

Computer-assisted translation can include standard dictionary and grammar software. The
term, however, normally refers to a range of specialized programs available to the translator,
including translation-memory, terminology-management, concordance, and alignment
programs.

With the internet, translation software can help non-native-speaking individuals understand
web pages published in other languages. Whole-page translation tools are of limited utility,
however, since they offer only a limited potential understanding of the original author's intent
and context; translated pages tend to be more humorous and confusing than enlightening.

Interactive translations with pop-up windows are becoming more popular. These tools show
several possible translations of each word or phrase. Human operators merely need to select
the correct translation as the mouse glides over the foreign-language text. Possible definitions
can be grouped by pronunciation.

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Translation of Religious Works

Translation of religious works has played an important role in

history. Buddhist monks who translated the Indian sutras into
Chinese often skewed their translations to better reflect
China's very different culture, emphasizing notions such as
filial piety.

A famous mistranslation of the Bible is the rendering of the

Hebrew word ‫( קֶ ֶרן‬keren), which has several meanings, as
"horn" in a context where it actually means "beam of light".
As a result, artists have for centuries depicted Moses the Lawgiver with horns growing out of
his forehead. An example is Michelangelo's famous sculpture. Some Christians with anti-Semitic
feelings used such depictions to spread hatred of the Jews, claiming that they were devils with
horns.
Saint Jerome, patron of translators (and of encyclopedists)

One of the first recorded instances of translation in the West was the rendering of the Old
Testament into Greek in the third century B.C.E. The resulting translation is known as the
Septuagint, a name that alludes to the seventy translators (seventy-two in some versions) who
were commissioned to translate the Bible in Alexandria. Each translator worked in solitary
confinement in a separate cell, and legend has it that all seventy versions were identical. The
Septuagint became the source text for later translations into many languages, including Latin,
Coptic, Armenian and Georgian.

Saint Jerome, the patron saint of translation, is still considered one of the greatest translators in
history for rendering the Bible into Latin. The Roman Catholic Church used his translation
(known as the Vulgate) for centuries, but even this translation at first stirred much controversy.

The period preceding and contemporary with the Protestant Reformation saw the translation of
the Bible into local European languages, a development that greatly affected Western
Christianity's split into Roman Catholicism and Protestantism, due to disparities between
Catholic and Protestant versions of crucial words and passages.

Martin Luther's Bible in German, Jakub Wujek's in Polish, and the King James Bible in English
had lasting effects on the religions, cultures and languages of those countries.
See also: Bible translations and Translation of the Qur'an.

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History of Translation Theory
Discussions of the theory and practice of translation reach
back into antiquity and show remarkable continuities. The
distinction that had been drawn by the ancient Greeks
between metaphase ("literal" translation) and paraphrase was
adopted by the English poet and translator John Dryden (1631-
1700), who represented translation as the judicious blending
of these two modes of phrasing when selecting, in the target language, "counterparts", or
equivalents, for the expressions used in the source language:

When [words] appear... literally graceful, it were an injury to the author that they should be
changed. But since... what is beautiful in one [language] is often barbarous, nay sometimes
nonsense, in another, it would be unreasonable to limit a translator to the narrow compass of
his author's words: 'tis enough if he chooses out some expression which does not vitiate the
sense.

Dryden cautioned, however, against the license of "imitation", i.e. of adapted translation:
"When a painter copies from the life... he has no privilege to alter features and lineaments..."
Cicero

This general formulation of the central concept of translation — equivalence — is probably as

adequate as any that has been proposed ever since Cicero and Horace, in first-century-BCE
Rome, famously and literally cautioned against translating "word for word" (verbum pro verbo).

Despite occasional theoretical diversities, the actual practice of translators has hardly changed
since antiquity. Except for some extreme metaphrasers in the early Christian period and the
Middle Ages, and adapters in various periods (especially pre-Classical Rome, and the 18th
century), translators have generally shown prudent flexibility in seeking equivalents — "literal"
where possible, periphrastic where necessary — for the original meaning and other crucial
"values" (e.g., style, verse form, concordance with musical accompaniment or, in films, with
speech articulatory movements) as determined from context.

In general, translators have sought to preserve the context itself by reproducing the original
order of sameness, and hence word order — when necessary, reinterpreting the actual
grammatical structure. The grammatical differences between "fixed-word-order" languages
(e.g., English, French, and German) and "free-word-order" languages (e.g., Greek, Latin, Polish,
and Russian) have been no impediment in this regard.

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When a target language has lacked terms that are found in a source language, translators have
borrowed them, thereby enriching the target language. Thanks in great measure to the
exchange of calques and loanwords between languages, and to their importation from other
languages, there are few concepts that are "untranslatable" among the modern European
languages.
Samuel Johnson

In general, the greater the contact and exchange that has existed between two languages, or
between both and a third one, the greater is the ratio of metaphrase to paraphrase that may be
used in translating between them. However, due to shifts in "ecological niches" of words, a
common etymology is sometimes misleading as a guide to current meaning in one or the other
language. The English actual, for example, should not be confused with the cognate French
actuel (meaning "present", "current") or the Polish aktualny ("present", "current") or Russian
актуальный ("urgent, topical").

The translator's role as a bridge for "carrying across" values between cultures has been
discussed at least since Terence, Roman adapter of Greek comedies, in the second century BCE.
The translator's role is, however, by no means a passive and mechanical one, and so has also
been compared to that of an artist. The main ground seems to be the concept of parallel
creation found in critics as early as Cicero. Dryden observed that "Translation is a type of
drawing after life..." Comparison of the translator with a musician or actor goes back at least to
Samuel Johnson's remark about Alexander Pope playing Homer on a flageolet, while Homer
himself used a bassoon.

Roger Bacon
If translation be an art, it is no easy one. In the 13th century, Roger Bacon wrote that if a
translation is to be true, the translator must know both languages, as well as the science that
he is to translate; and finding that few translators did, he wanted to do away with translation
and translators altogether.
Martin Luther

The first European to assume that one translates satisfactorily only toward his own language
may have been Martin Luther, translator of the Bible into German. According to L.G. Kelly, since
Johann Gottfried Herder in the 18th century, "it has been axiomatic" that one works only
toward his own language.

Compounding these demands upon the translator is the fact that not even the most complete
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dictionary or thesaurus can ever be a fully adequate guide in translation. Alexander Tytler, in his
Essay on the Principles of Translation (1790), emphasized that assiduous reading is a more
comprehensive guide to a language than are dictionaries. The same point, but also including
listening to the spoken language, had earlier been made in 1783 by Onufry Andrzej Kopczyoski,
member of Poland's Society for Elementary Books, who was called "the last Latin poet".
Herder
Krasicki

The special role of the translator in society was well described in an essay, published
posthumously in 1803, by Ignacy Krasicki — "Poland's La Fontaine", Primate of Poland, poet,
encyclopedist, author of the first Polish novel, and translator from French and Greek:
“ *T+ranslation... is in fact an art both estimable and very difficult, and therefore is not the labor
and portion of common minds; [it] should be [practiced] by those who are themselves capable
of being actors, when they see greater use in translating the works of others than in their own
works, and hold higher than their own glory the service that they render to their country.

Translation of Sung Texts

Translation of a text that is sung in vocal music for the purpose of

singing in another language — sometimes called "singing translation"
— is closely linked to translation of poetry because most vocal music,
at least in the Western tradition, is set to verse, especially verse in
regular patterns with rhyme. (Since the late 19th century, musical
setting of prose and free verse has also been practiced in some art
music, though popular music tends to remain conservative in its
retention of stanzaic forms with or without refrains.) A rudimentary
example of translating poetry for singing is church hymns, such as the
German chorales translated into English by Catherine Winkworth.

Translation of sung texts is generally much more restrictive than translation of poetry, because
in the former there is little or no freedom to choose between a versified translation and a
translation that dispenses with verse structure. One might modify or omit rhyme in a singing
translation, but the assignment of syllables to specific notes in the original musical setting
places great challenges on the translator. There is the option in prose sung texts, less so in
verse, of adding or deleting a syllable here and there by subdividing or combining notes,
respectively, but even with prose the process is almost like strict verse translation because of
the need to stick as closely as possible to the original prosody of the sung melodic line.

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Other considerations in writing a singing translation include repetition of words and phrases,
the placement of rests and/or punctuation, the quality of vowels sung on high notes, and
rhythmic features of the vocal line that may be more natural to the original language than to
the target language. A sung translation may be considerably or completely different from the
original, thus resulting in a contrafactum.

Translations of sung texts — whether of the above type meant to be sung or of a more or less
literal type meant to be read — are also used as aids to audiences, singers and conductors,
when a work is being sung in a language not known to them. The most familiar types are
translations presented as subtitles projected during opera performances, those inserted into
concert programs, and those that accompany commercial audio CDs of vocal music. In addition,
professional and amateur singers often sing works in languages they do not know (or do not
know well), and translations are then used to enable them to understand the meaning of the
words they are singing.

Translation Pidgins and Translation Cribs

Literal translations ("cribs," "ponies") are sometimes prepared for a

writer who is translating a work written in a language he does not know.
For example, Robert Pinsky is reported to have used a literal translation
in preparing his translation of Dante's Inferno (1994), as he does not
know Italian. Similarly, Richard Pevear worked from literal translations
provided by his wife, Larissa Volokhonsky, in their translations of several
Russian novels.

Often, first-generation immigrants create something of a literal

translation in how they speak their parents' native language. This results in a mix of the two
languages in something of a pidgin. Many such mixes have specific names, e.g. Spanglish or
Germish. For example, American children of German immigrants are heard using "rockingstool"
from the German word "Schaukelstuhl" instead of "rocking chair".

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Target Language

A target language is a language that is the focus or end result of

certain processes.

* In applied linguistics and second-language pedagogy, the term

"target language" refers to any language that learners are trying to
learn in addition to their native language. The same concept is
often expressed as "second language" or "L2."
* In translation, the term "target language" is applied to the language that a source text is being
translated into.
* In computer science, a "target language" is the computer language that a compiler translates
source code into.

Literary Translation

Translation of literary works (novels, short stories, plays,

poems, etc.) is considered a literary pursuit in its own right.
Notable in Canadian literature specifically as translators are
figures such as Sheila Fischman, Robert Dickson and Linda
Gaboriau, and the Governor General's Awards annually present
prizes for the best English-to-French and French-to-English
literary translations.

Other writers, among many who have made a name for themselves as literary translators,
include Vasily Zhukovsky, Tadeusz Boy-Żeleoski, Vladimir Nabokov, Jorge Luis Borges, Robert
Stiller and Haruki Murakami.

Back-Translation

A back-translation is a translation of a translated text back into the language of

the original text, made without reference to the original text. In the context of
machine translation, this is also called a round-trip translation. It is analogous to
reversing a mathematical operation; but even in mathematics such a reversal
frequently does not produce a value that is precisely identical with the original.

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Comparison of a back-translation to the original text is sometimes used as a quality check on
the original translation. But while useful as an approximate check, it is far from infallible.
Humorously telling evidence for this was provided by Mark Twain when he issued his own back-
translation of a French version of his famous short story, "The Celebrated Jumping Frog of
Calaveras County".

In cases when a historic document survives only in translation, the original having been lost,
researchers sometimes undertake back-translation in an effort to reconstruct the original text.
An example involves the novel The Saragossa Manuscript by the Polish aristocrat Jan Potocki
(1761–1815). The polymath polyglot composed the book entirely in French and published
fragments anonymously in 1804 and 1813–14. Portions of the original French-language
manuscripts were subsequently lost; the missing fragments survived, however, in a Polish
translation that was made by Edmund Chojecki in 1847 from a complete French copy, now lost.
French-language versions of the complete Saragossa Manuscript have since been produced,
based on extant French-language fragments and on French-language versions that have been
back-translated from Chojecki's Polish version.

Similarly, when historians suspect that a document is actually a translation from another
language, back-translation into that hypothetical original language can provide supporting
evidence by showing that such characteristics as idioms, puns, peculiar grammatical structures,
etc., are in fact derived from the original language.

For example, the known text of the Till Eulenspiegel folk tales is in High German but contains
many puns which only work if back-translated into Low German. This seems clear evidence that
these tales (or at least large portions of them) were originally composed in Low German and
rendered into High German by an over-metaphrastic translator.

Similarly, supporters of Aramaic primacy—i.e., of the view that the Christian New Testament or
its sources were originally written in the Aramaic language—seek to prove their case by
showing that difficult passages in the existing Greek text of the New Testament make much
better sense if back-translated into Aramaic—that, for example, some incomprehensible
references are in fact Aramaic puns which do not work in Greek

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Mistranslations

Literal translation of idioms is a source of numerous

translators' jokes and apocrypha. The following famous
example has often been told both in the context of newbie
translators and that of machine translation: When the
sentence "The spirit is strong, but the flesh is weak" (an
allusion to Mark 14:38) was translated into Russian and then
back to English, the result was "The vodka is good, but the
meat is rotten." This is generally believed to be simply an amusing story, and not a factual
reference to an actual machine translation error.

Literal translation can also denote a translation that represents the precise meaning of the
original text but does not attempt to convey its style, beauty, or poetry. Charles Singleton's
translation of The Divine Comedy (1975) is regarded as a literal translation.

Literal Translation

Literal translation, also known as direct translation, is the

rendering of text from one language to another "word-for-
word" (Latin: "verbum pro verbo") rather than conveying the
sense of the original. Literal translations thus commonly mis-
translate idioms. Also, in the context of translating an analytic
language to a synthetic language, it renders even the grammar
unintelligible.

A literal English translation of the German word "Kindergarten" would be "children garden," but
in English the expression refers to the school year between pre-school and first grade. Literal
translations in which individual components within words or compounds are translated to
create new lexical items in the target language (a process also known as “loan translation”) are
called calques, e.g., “beer garden” from German “Biergarten.”

Literal translation of the Italian sentence, "So che questa non va bene" ("I know that this is not
good"), produces "Know(I) that this not go(it) well," which has English words and Italian
grammar.

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Translation and Speaking Tips

The best way to practice speaking a second language is with native

speakers of that specific language. Sometimes it can be very critical
to find a native speaker and speak with them as often as possible.
And if you live in a place where it is quite hard to find a native
speaker, you should look for a tutor or schools that might be able
to help students with conversation skills and overall
communication skills.

Another possible way to practice your second language is by joining a club whose members’
converse in that specific language; it could be a movie club, music club, travel club, etc. If a club
does not exist in your city, we encourage you to start one and invite native speakers to help you
get started. Good Luck!

Machine Translation

Early machine translations were notorious for this type of translation as

they simply employed a database of words and their translations. Later
attempts utilized common phrases which resulted in better grammatical
structure and capture of idioms but with many words left in the original
language. For translating synthetic languages, a morphosyntactic
analyzer and synthesizer is required.

The best systems today use a combination of the above technologies and
apply algorithms to correct the "natural" sound of the translation. In the
end though, professional translation firms that employ machine
translation use it as a tool to create a rough translation that is then tweaked by a human,
professional translator.

Machine Translation is a procedure whereby a computer program analyzes a source text and
produces a target text without further human intervention. In reality, however, machine
translation typically does involve human intervention, in the form of pre-editing and post-
editing. An exception to that rule might be, e.g., the translation of technical specifications
(strings of technical terms and adjectives), using a dictionary-based machine-translation
system.

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To date, machine translation—a major goal of natural-language processing—has met with
limited success. A November 6, 2007, example illustrates the hazards of uncritical reliance on
machine translation.

Machine translation has been brought to a large public by tools available on the Internet, such
as Yahoo!'s Babel Fish, Babylon, and StarDict. These tools produce a "gisting translation" — a
rough translation that, with luck, "gives the gist" of the source text.

With proper terminology work, with preparation of the source text for machine translation
(pre-editing), and with re-working of the machine translation by a professional human
translator (post-editing), commercial machine-translation tools can produce useful results,
especially if the machine-translation system is integrated with a translation-memory or
globalization-management system.
Claude Piron

In regard to texts with limited ranges of vocabulary and simple sentence structure (e.g.,
weather reports), machine translation can deliver results that do not require much human
intervention to be useful. Also, the use of a controlled language, combined with a machine-
translation tool, will typically generate largely comprehensible translations.

Relying exclusively on unedited machine translation ignores the fact that communication in
human language is context-embedded and that it takes a person to comprehend the context of
the original text with a reasonable degree of probability. It is certainly true that even purely
human-generated translations are prone to error. Therefore, to ensure that a machine-
generated translation will be useful to a human being and that publishable-quality translation is
achieved, such translations must be reviewed and edited by a human. The late Claude Piron
wrote that machine translation, at its best, automates the easier part of a translator's job; the
harder and more time-consuming part usually involves doing extensive research to resolve
ambiguities in the source text, which the grammatical and lexical exigencies of the target
language require to be resolved. Such research is a necessary prelude to the pre-editing
necessary in order to provide input for machine-translation software such that the output will
not be meaningless.

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Translation Misconceptions

Newcomers to translation sometimes proceed as if translation

were an exact science — as if consistent, one-to-one correlations
existed between the words and phrases of different languages,
rendering translations fixed and identically reproducible, much as
in cryptography. Such novices may assume that all that is needed
to translate a text is to encode and decode equivalents between
the two languages, using a translation dictionary as the
"codebook".

On the contrary, such a fixed relationship would only exist were a new language synthesized
and simultaneously matched to a pre-existing language's scopes of meaning, etymologies, and
lexical ecological niches. If the new language were subsequently to take on a life apart from
such cryptographic use, each word would spontaneously begin to assume new shades of
meaning and cast off previous associations, thereby vitiating any such artificial synchronization.
Henceforth translation would require the disciplines described in this article.

Another common misconception is that anyone who can speak a second language will make a
good translator. In the translation community, it is generally accepted that the best translations
are produced by persons who are translating into their own native languages, as it is rare for
someone who has learned a second language to have total fluency in that language. A good
translator understands the source language well, has specific experience in the subject matter
of the text, and is a good writer in the target language. Moreover, he is not only bilingual but
bicultural.

It has been debated whether translation is art or craft. Literary translators, such as Gregory
Rabassa in If This Be Treason, argue that translation is an art – a teachable one. Other
translators, mostly technical, commercial, and legal, regard their métier as a craft – again, a
teachable one, subject to linguistic analysis, that benefits from academic study.

As with other human activities, the distinction between art and craft may be largely a matter of
degree. Even a document which appears simple, e.g. a product brochure, requires a certain
level of linguistic skill that goes beyond mere technical terminology. Any material used for
marketing purposes reflects on the company that produces the product and the brochure. The
best translations are obtained through the combined application of good technical-terminology
skills and good writing skills.

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Translation has served as a writing school for many prominent writers. Translators, including
monks who spread Buddhist texts in East Asia and the early modern European translators of the
Bible, in the course of their work have shaped the very languages into which they have
translated. They have acted as bridges for conveying knowledge and ideas between cultures
and civilizations. Along with ideas, they have imported, into their own languages, loanwords
and calques of grammatical structures, idioms and vocabulary from the source languages.

Website Translators

Most website translators do not translate languages correctly. This

usually happens when symbolic languages are translated into letter
languages (for instance: Chinese to English). Ineffective website
translators will also lose the language's sense and flow when they
translate from a language like German to English. Believe it or not,
there are many translators that have this type of weakness and some
of them don't have all of the languages.

Some website translators don't work on certain platforms such as PHP. Before buying a
translator you need to check out that the website translator works on a platform that is
available at your web hosting company. There are a few website translators that will work on
every kind of platform or at least the most common platforms. However, these website
translators are the very expensive.

There is also another problem, which is probably the worse one. Some translators are not
designed to work on certain templates such as word press. Most website translators will usually
work only on standard HTML sites. Therefore, you must check to see if your website translator
will work on the template you have available before applying it to your website. If an HTML
website translator is installed on a word press site, it may malfunction and turn your whole site
into one big mess. Again, this will end up in loss of traffic to your site.

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Translation Jobs - Top 10 resources for those looking for translation jobs.

Please find a list of 10 Translation Companies located in the

United States.

1. Company: AE Inc.-Translations. Website http://www.aetrans.com.

2. Company: Academy of Languages Translation and Interpretation Services (AOLTI).
Website http://www.aolti.com/.
3. Company: Accurapid the Language Service. Website http://www.accurapid.com.
4. Company: Advanced Language Translation. Website
http://www.advancedlanguage.com.
5. Company: American Translation Partners (ATP). Website
http://americantranslationpartners.com.
6. Company: Bruce International, Inc. Website http://bruceinternational.com.
7. Company: Asian Translation Service. Website http://asiantranslation.com.
8. Company: DTS Language Services, Inc. Website http://www.dtstrans.com.
9. Company: Certified Translation Services. Website
http://www.certifiedtranslationservices.com.
10. Company: Global Language Solutions. Website http://globallanguages.com.

Translation Fidelity vs. Transparency

Fidelity (or faithfulness) and transparency are two qualities that,

for millennia, have been regarded as ideals to be striven for in
translation, particularly literary translation. These two ideals are
often at odds. Thus a 17th-century French critic coined the phrase
les belles infidèles to suggest that translations, like women, could
be either faithful or beautiful, but not both at the same time.

Fidelity pertains to the extent to which a translation accurately

renders the meaning of the source text, without adding to or
subtracting from it, without intensifying or weakening any part of the meaning, and otherwise
without distorting it.

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Transparency pertains to the extent to which a translation appears to a native speaker of the
target language to have originally been written in that language, and conforms to the
language's grammatical, syntactic and idiomatic conventions.

A translation that meets the first criterion is said to be a "faithful translation"; a translation that
meets the second criterion, an "idiomatic translation". The two qualities are not necessarily
mutually exclusive.

The criteria used to judge the faithfulness of a translation vary according to the subject, the
precision of the original contents, the type, function and use of the text, its literary qualities, its
social or historical context, and so forth.

The criteria for judging the transparency of a translation appear more straightforward: an
unidiomatic translation "sounds wrong", and in the extreme case of word-for-word translations
generated by many machine-translation systems, often results in patent nonsense with only a
humorous value (see Round-trip translation).

Nevertheless, in certain contexts a translator may consciously strive to produce a literal

translation. Literary translators and translators of religious or historic texts often adhere as
closely as possible to the source text. In doing so, they often deliberately stretch the boundaries
of the target language to produce an unidiomatic text. Similarly, a literary translator may wish
to adopt words or expressions from the source language in order to provide "local color" in the
translation.

In recent decades, prominent advocates of such "non-transparent" translation have included

the French scholar Antoine Berman, who identified twelve deforming tendencies inherent in
most prose translations,[13] and the American theorist Lawrence Venuti, who has called upon
translators to apply "foreignizing" translation strategies instead of domesticating ones.
Schleiermacher

Many non-transparent-translation theories draw on concepts from German Romanticism, the

most obvious influence on latter-day theories of "foreignization" being the German theologian
and philosopher Friedrich Schleiermacher. In his seminal lecture "On the Different Methods of
Translation" (1813) he distinguished between translation methods that move "the writer
toward [the reader]", i.e., transparency, and those that move the "reader toward [the author]",
i.e., an extreme fidelity to the foreignness of the source text. Schleiermacher clearly favored the
latter approach. His preference was motivated, however, not so much by a desire to embrace

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the foreign, as by a nationalist desire to oppose France's cultural domination and to promote
German literature.

For the most part, current Western practices in translation are dominated by the concepts of
"fidelity" and "transparency". This has not always been the case. There have been periods,
especially in pre-Classical Rome and in the 18th century, when many translators stepped
beyond the bounds of translation proper into the realm of ''adaptation''.

Adapted translation retains currency in some non-Western traditions. Thus the Indian epic, the
Ramayana, appears in many versions in the various Indian languages, and the stories are
different in each. Anyone considering the words used for translating into the Indian languages,
whether those be Aryan or Dravidian languages, will be struck by the freedom that is granted to
the translators. This may relate to devotion to prophetic passages that strike a deep religious
chord, or to a vocation to instruct unbelievers. Similar examples are to be found in medieval
Christian literature, which adjusted the text to the customs and values of the audience.

Interpretation Resources
What is Interpreting?
Interpreting, or interpretation, is the intellectual activity that
consists of facilitating oral or sign-language communication, either
simultaneously or consecutively, between two or among three or
more speakers who are not speaking, or signing, the same language.

The words interpreting and interpretation both can be used to refer

to this activity; the word interpreting is commonly used in the
profession and in the translation-studies field to avoid confusion
with other meanings of the word interpretation.

Not all languages employ, as English does, two separate words to denote the activities of
written and live-communication (oral or sign-language) translators. Even English does not
always make the distinction, frequently using translation as a synonym of interpreting,
especially in nontechnical usage.

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Where Do Interpreters Work?

The majority of professional full-time conference interpreter

works for international organizations like the United Nations,
the European Union, or the African Union. See the Career
opportunities with DG Interpretation in European Union's
institutions.

The world's largest employer of interpreters is currently the

European Commission, which employs hundreds of staff and freelance interpreters working
into the official languages of the European Union. The European Union's other institutions (the
European Parliament and the European Court of Justice) have smaller interpreting services.

The United Nations employs interpreters at almost all its sites throughout the world. Because it
has only six official languages, however, it is a smaller employer than the European Union.

Interpreters may also work as freelance operators in their local, regional and national
communities, or may take on contract work under an interpreting business or service. They
would typically take on work as described above.

The U.S. military in Iraq and Afghanistan employ hundreds of interpreters to assist with its
communications with the local population.

Simultaneous Interpreting

In simultaneous interpretation (SI), the interpreter renders the message

in the target-language as quickly as he or she can formulate it from the
source language, while the source-language speaker continuously speaks;
sitting in a sound-proof booth, the SI interpreter speaks into a
microphone, while clearly seeing and hearing the source-language
speaker via earphones.

The simultaneous interpretation is rendered to the target-language

listeners via their earphones. Moreover, SI is the common mode used by sign language
interpreters. NOTE: Laymen often incorrectly describe SI and the SI interpreter as 'simultaneous

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translation' and as the 'simultaneous translator', ignoring the definite distinction between
interpretation and translation.

Consecutive Interpreting

In consecutive interpreting (CI), the interpreter

speaks after the source-language speaker has
finished speaking. The speech is divided into
segments, and the interpreter sits or stands beside
the source-language speaker, listening and taking
notes as the speaker progresses through the
message. When the speaker pauses or finishes
speaking, the interpreter then renders the entire message in the target language.

Consecutive interpretation is rendered as "short CI" or "long CI". In short CI, the interpreter
relies on memory; each message segment being brief enough to memorize. In long CI, the
interpreter takes notes of the message to aid rendering long passages. These informal divisions
are established with the client before the interpretation is effected, depending upon the
subject, its complexity, and the purpose of the interpretation.

On occasion, document sight translation is required of the interpreter during consecutive

interpretation work. Sight translation combines interpretation and translation; the interpreter
must read aloud the source-language document to the target-language as if it were written in
the target language. Sight translation occurs usually, but not exclusively, in judicial and medical
work.
The CI interpreter Patricia Stöcklin renders Klaus Bednarz's speech to Garry Kasparov.
The CI interpreter Patricia Stöcklin takes notes Garry Kasparov's speech.
The CI interpreter Patricia Stöcklin renders Garry Kasparov's speech to the audience.

Consecutively-interpreted speeches, or segments of them, tend to be short. Fifty years ago, the
CI interpreter would render speeches of 20 or 30 minutes; today, 10 or 15 minutes is
considered too long, particularly since audiences don't like to sit through 20 minutes of speech
they cannot understand.

Often, if not previously advised, the source-language speaker is unaware that he or she may
speak more than a single sentence before the CI interpretation is rendered and might stop after
each sentence to await its target-language rendering. Sometimes, however, depending upon
the setting or subject matter, and upon the interpreter's capacity to memorize, the interpreter
may ask the speaker to pause after each sentence or after each clause.

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Sentence-by-sentence interpreting requires less memorization and therefore lower likelihood
for omissions, yet its disadvantage is in the interpreter's not having heard the entire speech or
its gist, and the overall message is sometimes harder to render both because of lack of context
and because of interrupted delivery (for example, imagine a joke told in bits and pieces, with
breaks for translation in between). This method is often used in rendering speeches,
depositions, recorded statements, court witness testimony, and medical and job interviews, but
it is usually best to complete a whole idea before it is interpreted.

Full (i.e., unbroken) consecutive interpreting of whole thoughts allows for the full meaning of
the source-language message to be understood before the interpreter renders it in the target
language. This affords a truer, more accurate, and more accessible interpretation than does
simultaneous interpretation

Interpreting Modalities

On-site, Telephone and Video Interpreting

Interpreting services can be delivered in multiple modalities. The most common modality
through which interpreting services are provided is on-site interpreting.

On-site interpreting
Also called "in-person interpreting," this delivery method requires the interpreter to be
physically present in order for the interpretation to take place. In on-site interpreting settings,
all of the parties who wish to speak to one another are usually located in the same place. This is
by far the most common modality used for most public and social service settings.

Telephone interpreting
Also referred to as "over-the-phone interpreting," "telephonic
interpreting," and "tele-interpreting," telephone interpreting enables the
interpreter to deliver interpretation via telephone. The interpreter is
added to a conference call. Telephone interpreting may be used in place
of on-site interpreting in some cases, especially when no on-site
interpreter is readily available at the location where services are needed.
However, telephone interpreting is more commonly used for situations in
which all parties who wish to communicate are already speaking to one
another via telephone (e.g. applications for insurance or credit cards that
are taken over the phone, inquiries from consumers to businesses that take place via
telephone, etc.)

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Video interpreting
With video interpreting, interpreters work remotely with a video camera and audio feed, so
that the interpreter can hear and see the other parties, and vice versa. Much like telephone
interpreting, video interpreting can be used for situations in which no on-site interpreters are
available. However, video interpreting cannot be used for situations in which all parties are
speaking via telephone only. Video interpreting requires all parties to have the necessary
equipment. Some equipment enables interpreters to control the camera, in order to zoom in
and out and to move the camera toward the parties that are speaking.

Types of Interpreting
Media Interpreting

By its very nature, media interpreting has to be conducted in the

simultaneous mode. It is provided particularly for live television coverage
such as press conferences, live or taped interviews with political figures,
musicians, artists, sportsmen or people from the business circle. In this
type of interpreting, the interpreter has to sit in a sound-proof booth
where ideally he/she can see the speakers on a monitor and the set. All
equipment should be checked before recording begins. In particular,
satellite connections have to be double-checked to ensure that the
interpreter's voice is not sent back and the interpreter gets to hear only one channel at a time.
In the case of interviews recorded outside the studio and some current affairs programmed, the
interpreter interprets what he or she hears on a TV monitor. Background noise can be a serious
problem. The interpreter working for the media has to sound as slick and confident as a
television presenter.

Media interpreting has gained more visibility and presence especially after the Gulf War.
Television channels have begun to hire staff simultaneous interpreters. The interpreter renders
the press conferences, telephone beepers, interviews and similar live coverage for the viewers.
It is more stressful than other types of interpreting as the interpreter has to deal with a wide
range of technical problems coupled with the control room's hassle and wrangling during live
coverage.

Escort Interpreting

In escort interpreting, an interpreter accompanies a person or a delegation on a tour,

on a visit, or to a meeting or interview. An interpreter in this role is called an escort
interpreter or an escorting interpreter. This is liaison interpreting.

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Public Sector Interpreting

Also known as community interpreting is the type of interpreting

occurring in fields such as legal, health, and local government,
social, housing, environmental health, education, and welfare
services. In community interpreting, factors exist which
determine and affect language and communication production,
such as speech's emotional content, hostile or polarized social
surroundings, its created stress, the power relationships among
participants, and the interpreter's degree of responsibility — in many cases more than extreme;
in some cases, even the life of the other person depends upon the interpreter's work.

Sign Language Interpreting

When a hearing person speaks, an interpreter will render the

speaker's meaning into the sign language used by the deaf
party. When a deaf person signs, an interpreter will render the
meaning expressed in the signs into the spoken language for
the hearing party, which is sometimes referred to as voice
interpreting or voicing. This may be performed either as
simultaneous or consecutive interpreting. Skilled sign language interpreters will position
themselves in a room or space that allows them both to be seen by deaf participants and heard
by hearing participants clearly and to see and hear participants clearly. In some circumstances,
an interpreter may interpret from one sign language into an alternate sign language.

Deaf people also work as interpreters. They team with hearing counterparts to provide
interpretation for deaf individuals who may not share the standard sign language used in that
country. In other cases the hearing interpreted sign may be too pidgin to be understood clearly,
and the Deaf interpreter might interpret it into a more clear translation. They also relay
information from one form of language to another — for example, when a person is signing
visually, the deaf interpreter could be hired to copy those signs into a deaf-blind person's hand
plus include visual information.

In the United States, Sign Language Interpreters have National and State level associations. The
Registry of Interpreters for the Deaf (RID) is the national certifying body. In addition to training
requirements and stringent certification testing, the RID members must abide by a Code of
Professional Conduct, Grievance Process and Continuing Education Requirement.

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Sign Language Interpreters can be found in all types of interpreting situations, as listed in this
article. Most interpreters have had formal training, in an Interpreter Training Program (ITP). ITP
lengths vary, being available as a two-year or four-year degree or certificate. There are
graduate programs available as well.

Medical Interpreting

Medical interpreting is a subset of public service interpreting, consisting of

communication, among medical personnel and the patient and his or her
family, facilitated by an interpreter, usually formally certified and qualified
to provide such interpretation services. In some situations medical
employees who are multilingual may participate part-time as members of
internal language banks. The medical interpreter must have a strong
knowledge of medicine, common medical procedures, the patient
interview, the medical examination processes, and the daily workings of the hospital or clinic
where he or she works, in order to effectively serve both the patient and the medical
personnel. Moreover, and very important, medical interpreters often are cultural liaisons for
people (regardless of language) who are unfamiliar with or uncomfortable in hospital, clinical,
or medical settings.

Marketing Interpreting (Focus Group)

In focus group interpreting, an interpreter sits in a sound proof booth

or in an observer's room with the clients. There is usually a one-way
mirror between the interpreter and the focus group participants,
wherein the interpreter can observe the participants, but they only see
their own reflection. The interpreter hears the conversation in the
original language through headphones and simultaneously interprets into the target language
for the clients. Since there are usually anywhere between 2 to 12 (or more) participants in any
given focus group, experienced interpreters will not only interpret the phrases and meanings
but will also mimic intonation, speech patterns, tone, laughs, and emotions.

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Legal and Court Interpreting

Legal, court, or judicial interpreting, occurs in courts of

justice, administrative tribunals, and wherever a legal
proceeding is held (i.e. a conference room for a deposition or
the locale for taking a sworn statement). Legal interpreting
can be the consecutive interpretation of witnesses' testimony
for example, or the simultaneous interpretation of entire
proceedings, by electronic means, for one person, or all of the
people attending.

The right to a competent interpreter for anyone who does not understand the language of the
court (especially for the accused in a criminal trial) is usually considered a fundamental rule of
justice. Therefore, this right is often guaranteed in national constitutions, declarations of rights,
fundamental laws establishing the justice system or by precedents set by the highest courts.

Depending upon the regulations and standards adhered to per state and venue, court
interpreters usually work alone when interpreting consecutively, or as a team, when
interpreting simultaneously. In addition to practical mastery of the source and target languages,
thorough knowledge of law and legal and court procedures is required of court interpreters.
They often are required to have formal authorization from the State to work in the Courts —
and then are called certified court interpreters. In many jurisdictions, the interpretation is
considered an essential part of the evidence. Incompetent interpretation, or simply failure to
swear in the interpreter, can lead to a mistrial.

Conference Interpreting
Conference interpreting is the interpretation of a conference, either
simultaneously or consecutively, although the advent of multi-lingual
meetings has consequently reduced the consecutive interpretation in
the last 20 years.

Conference interpretation is divided between two markets: the

institutional and private. International institutions (EU, UN, EPO, et
cetera), holding multi-lingual meetings, often favor interpreting several foreign languages to
the interpreters' mother tongues. Local private markets tend to bi-lingual meetings (the local
language plus another) and the interpreters work both into and out of their mother tongues;

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the markets are not mutually exclusive. The International Association of Conference
Interpreters (AIIC) is the only worldwide association of conference interpreters. Founded in
1953, it assembles more than 2,800 professional conference interpreters in more than 90
countries.

Learn More
Interested in learning more about translation and improving your translation skills
and reputation?

Please see http://TranslationCertification.org for more information.

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