The lie about machine translation making translators obsolete
In his book Ten Arguments for Deleting Your Social Media Accounts Right Now, Jaron Lanier uses translation as example of how the current free...
The most important distinction: form versus content
The most important distinction: form versus content To translate well, you must be able to distinguish between form and content. When you first try...
Specialisation versus machine translation
At the METM16 conference, I saw a talk that caused me to ponder something I don’t think about very much: machine translation (MT). I...
MEMT16: learning, inspiration and fun!
Last weekend, Oct 13-15, we had the METM16 conference in Tarragona. As usual, I had my mind blown. But it was a fair price...
Translation is like teletransportation
And now for something borne out of the summer heat… Imagine a teletransporter. You know, the sci-fi closet that beams you to another spot...
Usable, useful and understandable
I think translations should be usable, useful and understandable. Usable basically means fit for purpose. The right type of translation for a given situation...
The legal translator as a practitioner
Seeing yourself as a practitioner is a powerful idea for legal translators. I first came across this idea in this blog post by Lloyd...
The term research process, it’s about the process; not the type of dictionary
What do you do when you come across a term you don’t know the translation for in a document you’re translating? In my case,...
Legal and menu translation
Legal translation is a lot like translating restaurant menus. Firstly, both types of translation are full of culture-specific or non-equivalent terms, i.e., terms that...
Don’t say it’s a good translation. If you can’t use it, it’s crap!
It’s amazing the insight you get when you speak to users of translations. The other day I was speaking to a friend of mine...
Why proofreaders are important and when to get angry with your translator
Don’t get upset when your translator sends you a translation containing simple writing errors — it could actually be a good sign! What you’re...
Example of a safe-bet translation
Someone recently emailed me asking for an example of a safe-bet translation, which I wrote about in this post. Safe bets are basically sitting-on-the-fence...
Safe-bet errors: a translation’s worst enemy
An easy way to wreck an otherwise good translation is to include the safe-bet translation of a term or two in it. What’s a...
A cognitive slip and something about the translation relationship
The following exchange on Twitter got me thinking about the difference between important and difficult translations and how I might have confused the two...
Should translations be literal?
This summer, quite unexpectedly, I got the chance to hear about a direct client’s experience buying translations. A friend of mine and his family...
The bearded don’t shave! Who buys good translations?
Coming across a badly translated website can be painful, particularly if you’re a translator. Sometimes, the translation is so bad, and the pain is...
