Top notch translators are hard to come by. Providing high quality translation services takes real skill, requiring qualifications, experience, knowledge and a vast array of other key individual traits. If you’re thinking about applying for work with Transcription City, but aren’t sure if you’ve got what it takes or are considering a future career in translation, here’s some of the key skills that we believe make for a brilliant linguist!
Translation Services and Creativity
Being a professional linguist takes more than just knowledge and fluency in a language. Rewriting in a meaningful way is an art form and requires sound, creative writing skills. For those who think translation is something a machine can do, consider the French ‘pomme trottoir’, which a linguist would likely describe as an apple turnover, but software would translate as ‘Apple on the pavement’!
Translation Services and Understanding
Understanding is crucial when working with translations. In order to rewrite in a concise, accurate and meaningful way, the initial meaning has to be fully understood. Translation doesn’t work ‘word for word.’ A skilled linguist has to read and understand a meaning and then rewrite it, and not simply parrot back words and phrases like a machine (or translation software) would. The English language can contain double negatives, slang, jargon and homophones, and understanding and genuine intelligence is required to know what to keep, what to leave out, and what a speaker or writers’ intended meaning truly was.
Translation Services and Specialisms
Translation requires a high level of understanding, and generalizing translation as a writing skill does not credit the specializations required. Just think, for transcriptions, a legal typist will struggle to type a document of a medical nature. To give a German translator specializing in medical translation a financial document would be a big mistake. Different industries have specific jargon, terms and styles and translators need to be fully experienced and able to understand the material they are reading in order to translate it effectively.
Translation Services and Adaptability
At Transcription City we accept videos, audio files and documents in a range of formats, and our linguists are required to be both adaptable and flexible in order to work with these formats accordingly. We provide video translations for .mp4, .avi, .mov, .wmv and many more. We work with audio .wma, .mp3, .dss and more. On top of this, we translate direct from links to Vimeo, Vine and YouTube and specialize in subtitle translations in .ssa and .srt formats.
Translation Services and Reliability
Okay, so you have the best Greek linguist in the whole of Europe. They have 20 years’ experience and have more PhDs than you can shake a stick at, but you send them an urgent translation file and it doesn’t come back for two weeks! Businesses work with deadlines and a reliable linguist can be the difference between a brilliant translation or a pain in the butt!
So there you have it, the top 5 skills and traits required to be a top notch Transcription City translator. If you are interested in our translation services, transcription services, subtitling or captioning services or would like the opportunity to work for Transcription City, please don’t hesitate to contact us via email, telephone or online via our webchat.
