Acknowledge you are not perfect
No one was born knowledgeable in any field. It takes years to become really good at what you have chosen to do for a living. The longer you put off professional development, the more difficult it will be for you to cope with competition, no matter which part of the world you happen to live in. The key to professional success is in the way you manage your time and the effort you are willing to make in order to improve.
You surely did not reach your full potential as a language speaker or translator the moment you got your certificate or landed your first job in the language field. Ongoing education is a necessary process, whoever you are, and a sine qua non condition to fulfil in order to become a true specialist. No one will ever know everything they need to, no matter how long they are likely to live. That is why, according to the required standards of your specialisation and the kind of learner that you are, you will have to devise a smart plan for your further professional development, preferably a quick and efficient one.
Is being bilingual enough?
Well, no. Even the few (and lucky) perfectly bilingual translators and interpreters with two mother tongues will still need practice, study and a well devised plan. What I am willing to explore in this article is the less fortunate group – translators and interpreters who operate with their mother tongue combined with one or more foreign languages that they studied at university or grasped by living in a different country.More.
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Великобритания
Local time: 18:28
английский => румынский
+ ...
Thank you for sharing our article.
Великобритания
Local time: 19:28
голландский => английский
+ ...
exactly our approach.
Dictionaries are a good help, but (at least in our language pairs), they are not satisfactory when it comes to more touchy-feely stuff.
Германия
Local time: 19:28
английский => албанский
+ ...
If you want to become better translator first you need to start learning your won language, your language's grammar and then start working in other language you want to become better translator.
Польша
Local time: 19:28
английский => польский
+ ...
Naturally, you can't afford to use a broken patois of a target language, either. There is no absolute need for you to be native or near-native, but you need to use competently whatever grammar and syntax you do know. A bit of austerity related t... See more
Naturally, you can't afford to use a broken patois of a target language, either. There is no absolute need for you to be native or near-native, but you need to use competently whatever grammar and syntax you do know. A bit of austerity related to being limited to B2 or even B1 isn't really that bad. Depending on the application, tiny mistakes or imperfections might not be the end of the world, either. However, ugly mistakes are something you can't afford in pretty much any situation.
Then, you need to be able to write. More importantly, however, you need some logical thinking. There are translators who just fail to understand or build a complex sentence. You don't want to be one of those translators.
Finally, everybody makes at least some proofreading mistakes without a double-check. Identify your issues and come up with your own QA checklist. Even if you aren't paid well enough to justify that, you're still better off putting in unpaid overtime than being exposed to reputational risks such as bad word of mouth or bad WWAs. Give yourself some serious proofreading or hire a proofreader and charge accordingly.
Avoid jobs that are so bothersome or unprofitable or both that your motivation will nose-dive and make you prone to botching the work. You're better off explaining your value than operating in the lowest price part of the market. ▲ Collapse
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