student's life

nick / translation student / 21 / infj

[cogniblr]

21.04.19

always remember to proofread your translations/essays/texts!

[cogniblr]

5.04.19

revising text in the Chinese language

[paralegal-activity]

When MultiTerm breaks down again

[cogniblr]

I went to the National Library, and it's so fresh and modern! I'll definitely go and study there more often :)

[paralegal-activity]

Do you have any resources for getting into translation work? I'm still a ways away before I'll be able to translate on a professional level but I just wanted to know where to start looking

Hello!

I’m not 100% sure if you mean learning how to translate or how to start out after you’ve finished your studies, so I’ll try to answer both questions, I hope you don’t mind!

If it’s the first thing, I’d really recommend studying translation at a university/vocational college, depending on how it’s taught in your country. Agencies require a degree from an institution like that (they often even require an MA) and so do a lot of private clients. You need some kind of qualification specifically in translation. That being said, it doesn’t mean you have to go back to first semester undergrad if you’ve already studied/are studying something else. That something can become very valuable as a specialism later. For example: a tutor at the university I went to studied pharmacy and then did an interpreting and translation MA on top of that and she’s a highly regarded pharmaceutical and medical interpreter and translator now. But yeah, I’d definitely recommend getting some sort of qualification in translation if you want to work as a translator. (You might already have one, in which case I’m just telling you what you already know, but maybe others are interested in that anyway). If you don’t want to do an MA, you can have a look if professional organizations offer any courses. The Chartered Institute of Linguists in the United Kingdom offers a course to become a public service interpreter, for example. I personally wouldn’t go for only a language course, because “just” knowing a language does not make you a qualified translator. Knowing a language is a prerequisite for being able to learn how to translate. Some language courses at university include translation modules, but I have no experience with courses like that, so I can’t say if they’re a good choice for future translators.

And if you’re looking for books on the topic of translation, you might like to check out these two posts:

No. of translators you need to change a lightbulb?

No. of translators you need to change a lightbulb?

Free-to-Read Translation Books wonderful-language-sounds: “ Until the 28th of February 2019, Routledge is giving free online access to rea

If it’s the second situation, aka you’ve got your degree and your trying to start out, well then I can only be of limited help, unfortunately (for now). I finished university last summer and now I’m a part-time in-house translator. I found that job like any other; searching job websites and sending my CV and stuff to the companies. Unfortunately, in-house translation jobs are rarer that a lot of other jobs, though (at least here in Germany); I went for a bit of a niche market and got lucky. So that would be my advice for finding in-house jobs: give the niche markets/jobs that sound boring at first a chance and don’t just go for big LSPs and translation agencies, but also look at SMEs, small law firms, etc. You might be more likely to find their job adverts on local job websites, rather than the big ones like LinkedIn, so it’s worth checking out these as well!

As for going freelance, I can’t be of much help at the moment, I’m sorry. It’s one of my goals to establish a freelance business on the side, but it’s proofing difficult at the moment for various, personal reasons. I know the theory; like online/social media marketing, joining professional associations etc. but I haven’t tried much of it myself. Professional associations are probably a good way to start anyways, though. Possible clients can find you in their lists, they probably have some ressources for beginners and maybe even mentoring programmes (if your country has various associations, it’s probably worth comparing where you’ll get most for your money). Otherwise, I’ve been told that ProZ is a good platform for getting freelance jobs and Crossmarket seems to be something similar, but I haven’t tried out any of those myself yet.

In case a more experienced freelancer sees this post, maybe they’d like to add some advice for both of us?

[cogniblr]

Language resources

As I’m studying Translation for a little while, I’ve thought that it would be nice to share with some resources with others. I’m studying english-russian-english translation, that’s why most of them will be associated with these langs.

Here we go!

Dictionaries

Multitran – that’s a Holy Grail for all language learners. A dictionary that supports many langs (eng-ru-eng, fr-ru-fr, sp-ru-sp, etc.) and also has many tematics you can browse words in

Context Reverso – a great tool that has a dictionary and shows results in the context. So, if you’re hesitating with the word choice, check some context examples and choose the best variant

Linguee – similarly to Context Reverso, the site provides lots of context examples, but Linguee is better with terms and sometimes gives examples from Wikipedia.

SpanishDict – the best dictionary (imo) for Spanish learners. It also provides a little grammatical reference (it has all of the irregular verbs’ conjugations). Languages: Spanish-English-Spanish

Collins Dictionary – English dictionary + thesaurus; translates other languages as well (good for the terms)

MDBG – Chinese dictionary (in English)

BKRS – Chinese dictionary (in Russian); has a forum

Term banks

ETB – looks up terms and translation; gathers 133 resources

IATE – the EU’s terminology database. Useful for the texts connected to EU (obviously)

Text editing tools

Grammarly – checks the text, looks for grammatical, punctuation and stylistic mistakes and is very simple to use. I use it for every text i translate, because it has never let me down. 10/10

Text.ru – the same as Grammarly, but for Russian language

Spanish Checker – the same for Spanish language

Miscellaneous

English-corpora – I use corpora (large collection of written or spoken texts that is used for language research) for checking context or to become sure that I use the right word

MyMemory – translation memory that gathers TMs from the EU and UN and specific multilingual websites.

EU Speech Repository – the bank of EU speeches on different topics. Has options of languages (EU) and levels of language. Good for improving listening and interpreting skills.

[sumrsgirl]

how to self teach a new language 

have contact with this language by hearing it on movies, tv shows and music. this will help you with your pronunciation skills and with your vocabulary

learn vocabulary and grammar at the same time

read kids books and translate what you don’t know. it might be hard at the beginning, but keep trying 

speak to yourself will help you like crazy. I like to pretend that I’m acting or that someone is interviewing me hahah see the magic happens 

READ AND WRITE. this is as important as speaking. It used to be so hard for me to write in English and I felt awful because I could actually speak very well. But my writing skills were just a lower level than my speaking level. Thankfully it’s getting better with practice. 

try to study a little everyday. if you don’t have time to do so, watch a movie or something, but have this contact with the new language at least once a day

be persistent because the processes of learning a new language can really piss you off. sometimes you will understand nothing and that will drag you down. the difference is to keep pushing until it doesn’t bother you anymore! 

[studywiththecurls]

09/02/2019

This is my first post in a while, sorry about that! Between internship, thesis and the amount of house work I have to do in the weekends, I couldn’t find time. Internship is fine, not bad not good I would say. I have been sitting for the majority of the time because they literally have no idea what work to give me and I have been asking non stop what I can do for them… I am fine with it but I’m just a little nervous about what I am going to write in my internship report. Also let me just say I hate to work as an intern because you don’t really know what you are allowed to do or not, there is no clear definition of the work you should be doing and you are not really part of the group and so on. 6 more weeks to go then 11 days in İstanbul. God, how I miss that city!

[mrinterpreter-deactivated202212]

A preposition is a fine thing to end a sentence with.

[diarygirls]

me writing my essay in google docs arial: this is absolute rubbish. completely incoherent. it would be embarrassing beyond measure for me to ever submit this drivel for a grade

me, after making the entire document Times New Roman 12 Point Font: pure intellect flows from my mind like nectar. my professors will surely weep when they encounter my flawlessly reasoned arguments. academia is my oyster and this essay is the shining pearl of wisdom inside it

[cogniblr]

me after finishing the translation full of academical nonsense ™

[rob-walks-deactivated20210614]

[allthingslinguistic]

New favourite example of Latin morphology being semi-transparent to English speakers. 

[cogniblr]

I've had a long study session today in a cafe which I like very much

Translating text on technologies and doing some tasks for Academic writing class

[neeetsocks-deactivated20191026]

no language should be mocked other than french

[gareauxtrains]

Birds is “oiseaux” in French.

No letter is pronunced the way it should.

And there are seven of them.

[teaboot]

ITS PRONOUNCED “WAZO” AND YES, I WILL DIE MAD ABOUT IT

[a-zzurra-deactivated20180518]

boys complimenting me:

me: :// 

my teacher leaving an ‘excellent work!!!’ on my essay: 

me, holding a wall for support: bro i’m just…..bro i’m just really teary i’m ghjdgfsdhjfjsdhf i’m hgjggjkhfkdjgj wow thank you idk what to say….bro idk why i’m fjhdsfkjdfg crying right now 

[alexm--studies-blog]

 Hi everyone!

I’ve been a long time studyblr lurker. I finally got a phone that takes decent pictures so I’m ready to post my own content! A little about me…

My plan is to get my Master’s in Library & Information Science

I am 21 years old & from the Midwest

I have my Associate’s degree

I am currently working on my BA in English with Honors

I work at a public library and I love to read!

Feel free to reach out!

[cogniblr]

We worked with our termbases today, and I got so tired 😩

At least this will help me with translating difficult text on economics in future

I guess :)

[sissilien]

// Currently completing my final biology course and feeling nostalgic. I’m gonna miss the teacher and her weird assignments.