Few things for beginners to remember while translating

Translation is considered as an easy job whereas fact is it is as difficult as writing a new piece of paper, or sometime it becomes harder than this. You have not only to exactly express the same meaning which the author intended to do but also have to maintain his style so that reader wouldn’t find weirdness in the writing.  How to keep up balance between these two complementary things? Following are few tips which will help you overcome this problem.

Biggest mistake which most people do in translation is they try to translate by putting words precisely as it is written in dictionary. This is ridiculous. Never try to do this. Every language has his own grammatical structures, his own way of describing things. What you have to do is to just put those meanings in the target language. For example: in English we say “May I beg your pardon?” You will definitely not translate it as:کیا میں آپ کی معافی مانگ سکتا ہوں؟ Language is an essential part of culture; so you have to know the culture of both source and target languages.

Word to word translation can not only be bad but  also sometime gives contrary meaning .So you must be extra careful while doing translation, whether you are conveying the same meaning? It is very important that you carefully read once, twice or even thrice so that you fully understand the text. In literary or academic writings it becomes more important because author here uses more connotations. Its not important that you try to find alternate word in target language for every word. You can use two, three or a whole sentence, if necessary, to pass on those meanings instead of one word.

Another thing to remember is terms such as not present in target language, for example computer, mobile etc. You will come across this problem more often doing a technical translation. The best thing you can do is to “transliterate” them. Transliteration means to write that same word in target language. For example; Computer-کمپیوٹر (I will come up with a detailed article about transliteration later) National Language Authority Islamabad has tried to translate these kind of terms in their dictionary but for reader it becomes more difficult to understand those words. For example; Thermometer is translated as “آلہ پیمائش حرارت “. Point here is that thermometer is so widely used in our society that everyone knows what thermometer is; so by writing “آلہ پیمائش حرارت  “you are making it more difficult to understand. Keep these things in your mind, hopefully you will be able to become a good translator.

About Author:

Muawiyah Haider is an expert article writer, works for professional translation services agency OLS.  For more information please visit our website: Professional translation.

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