I hope your week is going well! We have been talking about best practices in translation over the last few weeks.
From my doctoral research, I have identified three areas of quality in translation: Fidelity, Readability and Conformity. When we say that a translation has Conformity, we mean that it follows grammar rules and standard writing practices. This includes such things as prepositions, verb tenses, subject-verb agreement, spelling and accents, and punctuation.
But how do you make sure your translation has conformity? From the 9 best practices for translators that I developed during my research, #7, #8 and #9 relate to Conformity. Today, we’ll take a quick look at these 3 best practices, and over the next 3 weeks, we will look at each in more detail.
Best Practice #7: Use the Right Tools
One of the most important things a translator can do is to be equipped with good tools. This does not mean using Google Translate! Automatic translation tools are imperfect and require intervention by professional translators who have been trained in post-editing. But there are many tools you can use effectively, and a lot of them are free. We’ll find out more next week!
Best Practice #8: Verify Your Verbs
Another translation myth or trap is that it is not necessary to spend much time on choosing the right verb tenses when translating. In reality, verbs are crucial in helping the reader understand a translation. It’s important to pay attention to verb sequencing and what to do when a verb tense doesn’t exist in both languages. We’ll tell you more about that in a couple of weeks.
Best Practice #9: Take Care of the Details
A third trap is to think that readers won’t notice typos or inconsistencies in grammar, spelling and punctuation. The reality is that many people will stop reading a text if they discover several errors. There is a way to efficiently clean up these problems in a translation.
We’ll cover each of these 3 Conformity Best Practices in the coming weeks; stay tuned!
Have a great day!
Liane 🙂
