How Do You Increase Your Working Speed as a Translator?

Modern transformations demand better who quickly deliver above-average services, just as with every professional group. Wouldn’t you want to be your clients’ first choice, a translator an employee wouldn't want to lose again? Maybe you have customers who are very satisfied with you, but increasing your own speed will bring about many positive things.

Translating Faster

So what does it mean to increase translation speed? It certainly doesn't mean doing superficial work or being unsure that your work is free of the kind of mistakes that you can quickly fix!

There are some reasons why a translator may be slower than others producing work of a similar quality in an environment comparable to his or her own colleagues. You may, of course, not be in the right frame of mind that day, or you may be upset about something. Let's focus not on the temporary but the permanent reasons that may distinguish from others in finding solutions.

Extending Vocabulary

One primary reason for your slow speed may be unfamiliarity with the source or target languages. In any language, your vocabulary may not yet be at the level necessary for translation work, which is exactly what may push you to constantly stop and look up words in dictionaries. A simple solution to this could be to quickly specify unfamiliar words by scanning the entire text before starting its translation, matching various options for corresponding words that suit the context. This will help you stay on topic.

If you would like to know “How to Extend Your Vocabulary” you can request an article from us in this field.

Specializing in Translation

The text you are asked to translate varies from texts types or topics you have translated before. And because you will need to do a lot of research, you translate much slower than normal. This would not be the case if you work with a client or company aware of your specific qualities. So, my first piece of advice would be to better choose a place, or places, to work. But let’s say your current situation might not be like this. Then you should start today picking out an area where you feel best and happiest while translating. For example, you may be interested in technical or legal translations. After you choose this field, be sure to constantly find work in this area. And not just for translation. Read news from this field, research various types of text, learn the situations in which this field requires translation, and talk to experts. It would be beneficial if you were to have someone like this in your family.

While you integrate all this in your daily life, start introducing yourself and create glossaries in this field. Also archive these glossaries or term banks that correspond to the translation projects you have accepted. If you do this continuously, you will notice that you have enough knowledge to start explaining something to someone in your field and that your translating speed increases along with it.

If you would like to know “How to Specialize in Translation” you can request an article from us in this field.

Read a Lot to Learn a Lot

You improved yourself in a language pair, and now, you began to gain expertise in a specific field. Well, well! Now it's time to enrich your wealth of expression! The ability to expressing sentences differently is an essential characteristic of a translator. To do this, you must know synonyms for phrases and expressions and master the grammar rules of the languages that you translate. You must not get lost in long sentences but should consider dividing sentences into smaller, more easily understood pieces. As you develop these skills, you begin to play with expressions and more quickly discover better quality jobs.

Importance of Utilizing Technology in Translation

Something else you should do alongside individual development is follow technology and adapt yourself to it. The idea that technology is our enemy is gradually fading away from our field of view. And as time goes by, newly graduated translators are becoming people who have accepted technology since birth. Although this increases competition, it may be a good indicator that we will develop our sector together.

There are a few lessons you can learn about this. You should research the Computer-Assisted Translation (CAT) tools on the market and find out what they can provide you. Starting today, you should try to acquire the most preferred CAT tool. These online and offline computer programs may seem complicated at first, but when you move gradually, they will make your job considerably easier and, most importantly, faster.

If you would like to know “How to Utilize Technology in Translation” you can request an article from us in this field.

The Most Frequently Used Shortcuts by Translators

Everyone knows that the periods of typewriters and translations scrawled out on paper are behind us for good. What then is a translator’s greatest asset? When we exclude our intellect, the answer is a computer. You should know how to use your computer, and you shouldn’t be content just with this. Because computers have already entered our lives as tools that accelerate business, and you should learn to speed up your translations with them. You can do some things more quickly by pressing two or three keys at once: a keyboard shortcut. For example, you can more quickly navigate between pages, cut, copy, paste, and regularly save translations manually to avoid losing data and becoming frustrated.

Increasing your working speed will produce satisfying results in many ways. By doing so, you will increase both your profitability and happiness. Increasing your pleasure in your work always lead you to produce more fluent, smooth, and preferable translations. Good luck!

Author: Burcu Demirörs

Date of Publication: 02/07/2020

Target Audience: Students in the Department of Translation Studies, Beginners in Translation, Translators Looking for Ways to Improve Themselves