The world is populated with number of languages, and every language has thousands of monolingual or bilingual orators. Any effort to establish a translation company is a challenging task, because the figure of prospective competitors is vast. Once you have started your
translation company, very soon you will get to know about serious competition and the translation myths that still prevail in today's wireless communication world.
Everyday, you as a
translator have to face a mounting combat from misinformed clients who knew very small about
translation business or generally have mistaken belief about translators and the translation business. In most of the occasions translators have to teach the customers about the profession so as to throw light on the myths that give the impression to keep on moving year after year. Here are some of the major myths and misconception that can further used as instructive tools for helping your clients appreciate what you do as a translator:
1. Translators can talk two or more languages: This is one of the most fruitful myths present outside the translation business. One should understand that simply different knowing languages do not signify that an individual can convert any matter in those languages.
2. Translators can decode any matter if the stuff is in a language they are acquainted with: One has to understand that it is not always necessary for a translator to translate any matter if the content is in a language he or she knows. Any talented translator is specialized in different but correlated areas, and this allows him or her to keep current with changes in their profession and keeps them well informed of current tendencies. Moreover, if any translator states that he can translate whatever thing is either inexperienced or bad translator.
3. Translating from one language to another (i.e. Japanese or Spanish to English) is as similar to translating in the opposite order (i.e. English to Japanese or Spanish): There are few talented translators who can perform expert translations in both different languages. In most cases, customers consider that performing translation is the alike and it doesn't matter which way the translator is performing translation. Customers need to understand that translators have central languages and it is generally in the paramount significance of the translator and client for the translator to translate into his/her expertise area of that language.
4. A native narrator is always a superior translator than a non-native one.
It is a next major myth circulating in translation industry. Simply being a native narrator of a language does not necessary ensures that an individual is eligible enough to translate sufficiently. For instance all across there may a billion native speakers of Japanese, but only few of them can be relied upon to own the decision it takes to choose if a translation is linguistically correct in a given business context. We should never think that a native narrator is a talented translator in his own language. For any language a translation requires discipline, study, and continual practice.
5. Only translators being associated with a professional or certified translation business can perform effective translation: There are number of translators around the world who perform an excellent translation job with no association with any organization. However, it is not essential for every so-called professional organization to be a governing body. One has to understand that a listing of pleased clients from a translator is a far better sign of a translator's capability.
6. One can verify the accuracy of a translation by doing a back translation: It is next common delusion that the value of a translation can be reviewed by having a second translator who can re-translate a translated text back into its source language. However this statement is totally false and in-fact the reverse is true; poorer the translation, the closer the back translation will stick to the original. The cause for this is that a bad translation usually follows very closely the wording of the original, but not the meaning.
7. Translation is fundamentally an informal industry with extremely low profit margins: This is again the most circulated wrong misconception in translation profession. As per recent studies it has been found many people in the Netherlands and in Eastern Europe have the long-established picture of the translator, where translator has to slave away from daybreak till nightfall. Though the translation process is really labor intensive, and in spite of all computerization tools, the picture clearly signs that it will basically stay a physical affair for many years to come. Moreover, if you are competent of offering high-quality translation and geared to meet your client's requirements, you will be taken sincerely and pleased by very upright bottom line profits.
After evaluating all these cases we cannot fail to distinguish that frequent communication must take place between the customer and translator, so that the myths one have probably been carried from one to the other can be rectified soon.
Mashariq Legal Translation Services , a
language translation company provides
language translation services in Japanese, Spanish and English languages in Europe.