freftz
New member
- Joined
- Aug 21, 2014
- Member Type
- Student or Learner
- Native Language
- Spanish
- Home Country
- Guatemala
- Current Location
- Guatemala
Hi, could you guys please check out my translations, and let me know if there are any mistakes, thanks in advance.
Translation 1
Translation 2
Translation 1
How to become a professional translator?
Professionalism begins with an honest evaluation of abilities and aptitudes of the translator. Accepting work in which the translator is less than well qualified is not a benefit, damaging the profession is the only thing you gain. It is a fact that clients do not realize about the importance and complications of translation, this neither can be understood by some people that want to translate without preparation. As academic training is in the initial stage and a translation certificate is not a must for working, this might be consider as an abuse. It is essential to respect the profession and your own work.
Since most translators do not have academic training in translating, it is necessary to fill up this emptiness somehow. If they want to add value and improve their ability, they can consider increasing their studies by their own or attend an institution. It is unfortunate that translation ability cannot be easily taught, because translation by excellence is an interdisciplinary field. The studies translators engage will mostly depend in their personal interests or degrees they plan to take. People interested in industry will choose engineering and courses designed to write about technical issues, meanwhile those interested in working for government organizations, commercial or literal translations, will be inclined to social sciences and humanity courses.
Basic aptitudes are easier to define. Starting, of course, with the ability between two or more languages, good writing capacity, attention to detail and mainly, a non-common sensibility to language and to communication. Investigation will consume a lot of time of professional translator that is why it is essential to have an insatiable curiosity and inquisitive mentality.
Other matters to mention; usually professional translators only translate from one language to their native language. They recognize that “the power of expression” in a second language is not enough to give a text the same impression like a native speaker. Natural expression spontaneity would be missing in the translation. As we will soon see, an essential requirement is that a translation should not look like one.
Translation 2
Strategies to determine the meaning of a word inside the context it is used.
By association
In some cases based in the root of the word we can deduce the meaning of an unknown term, for example:
Stress can affect a person’s emotional health.
If the meaning “emotional”, is unfamiliar to the reader, he can infer that the word comes from “emotion”, so he can understand that it is referring to certain human psychological reactions.
By etymology
When we know the meaning of the most common prefixes and suffixes, it is possible to deduce the words they represent. Let’s analyze the following example.
José is a hyperactive kid.
We can deduce that “hyperactive” is referring to excess of activity, because “hyper” comes from the Greek hiper which means excess or superiority.
By context matter
We can frequently deduce the meaning of a word by the relation with other terms. For example:
Mr. Gonzales prepared his favorite family dish of kak-ik for us last night.
By the words of the sentence we can deduce that "kak-ik" is a type of traditional cultural food. In fact Kak-ik is a traditional dish in Guatemala.
Most of the times synonyms are used in the same paragraph to avoid composition mistakes. For example.
The district attorney´s chief against corruption gave yesterday before Ministerio Público her abdication from the post. The Fiscal General [roughly equivalent to district attorney] declares he will agree on Monday if he accept or reject such resignation.
We analyze that the words “abdication” and “resignation” are synonyms, hence if the reader does not know the meaning of the first word but he knows the meaning of the second word, he can deduce one from another.
