Ccaps Blog

It may sound a bit obvious that a translator, having completed the translating process, carefully reviews the text he or she has just produced, right? Wrong.

From what I have seen in my work as a translator/reviewer, a considerable amount of translators doesn’t even bother to read attentively the final text, so as to, at the very least, detect typos and common mistakes resulting from a simple lack of attention.

The ideal scenario is when the translator first re-reads the final, translated text and compares it to the source. The aim here is to see whether there is a part that remained untranslated (unintentionally overlooked) or whether something was misinterpreted, resulting in mistranslations. In Portuguese, we call this “cotejar”, which roughly means to compare.

Next, the translator should do what we would call a final review: read once again the whole translation, setting the original aside for a while, so as to catch grammar mistakes, confusing structures, tone, word repetition, and so on. This ensures quality in the final text; it is quite similar to what we call Quality Assurance (QA) in localization.

Last, but not least, it is crucial that the translator places him or herself in the position of the reader, and decides whether the text “sounds like English”; in other words, whether it can be read as if it were produced by a native speaker, with adequate elements to that particular language. I believe that is precisely what makes the translation process a hard nut to crack. However, it is an essential aspect if we are to obtain a text with high quality – it determines whether the translation will be a fluid, easy-to-understand text, with structure and vocabulary choices compatible with the target language.

Sure, after lots and lots of research and “brain knots,” necessary to translate a more complex text, one can’t help but feel a bit lazy and decide not to read the whole thing and review it in every detail. In fact, when I was in college, my translation professor had to call my attention time and time again for having made silly mistakes, due to – yeah, you’ve guessed – lack of a good review. I was lazy myself when it came to reviewing my own translation. However, with the encouragement I was given to improve my text and my willing to produce perfect translations, I started to get used to reading what I wrote and became surprised with the amount of mistakes one can find with some good old review.

The result is that, today, besides using the MS Word spellchecker – a useful resource, often overlooked by translation students and even some experienced translators! – I have developed the habit of re-reading my text, at least once. And I must say that I always – I mean “always” and cannot emphasize that enough – find something that can be improved, changed or fixed.

This is my encouragement, then. Want to improve the quality of your translation and add value to yourself as a translator? Then, by all means, review your text!

I started using Babylon back in the days when I was a freelance translator. However, after opening Ccaps and dedicating my time to make sure its steady growth was achieved, I no longer (or hardly) needed the help of online translation tools and dictionaries.

Of course, every now and then I have to make use of these fantastic resources that made my old dictionaries on the shelf look like a museum piece (just like my Imperial and Hermes typewriters). Yet, for some reason, probably because the need for such tools was no longer as intensive, I somehow discontinued their use and Babylon became one of those pals of which you keep a good memory. 

Few weeks ago, talking to Miguel, our up and coming language expert, he told me that he was using this brilliant online free dictionary called… Babylon! That had been a recommendation of our senior project manager, Adriana, who can find these Internet pearls like no one in the office.

dictionary @ a click

But could this be the good old Babylon that had helped me so much when I struggled with some more complicated terms? Were they still there, after more than 10 years? Absolutely! There it was: the same old logo, improved resources and a much more complete dictionary to help me write eventually truncated messages to clients or have them deciphered.

Coincidentally or not (as I believe everything has a purpose), we have been recently approached by lovely Ursula Ron, from the Babylon content management department. She made a proposal to have their name listed on the Ccaps Blog in exchange for some licenses of the full software version. Yet Babylon is such a nice tool and can be so helpful to fellow translators and company owners that I would have recommended it here regardless of her offer. Do you know why? Babylon 7 features include:

• Automatic Spell check of your online text entries
• Smart dictionary to and from any language
• Auto completion of your query terms.

Babylon’s online translation and dictionary software offers results from a database of 1,300 sources in 75 languages. The database includes 25 professional dictionaries in 14 different languages developed by Babylon’s team: English, French, German, Spanish, Italian, Portuguese, Japanese, Hebrew, Chinese (Traditional), Chinese (Simplified), Dutch, Russian, Korean and Swedish.

In addition, Babylon offers add-on premium content from world-renowned dictionary publishers, including Oxford University Press, Britannica, Merriam-Webster, Larousse, Vox, Langenscheidt, Pons, Van Dale, Melhoramentos and Taishukan.  

So why don’t you try it yourself?

Official homepage: Babylon Dictionary and Translation Software.

And if you contact Babylon, tell them you heard about the tool after reading this post. I am sure they will like it…

July – a month traditionally associated with vacations is also a month that brings working mothers like us a problem: who is to take care of our children?

This is not just a problem for the ones who work in an office. Those who work as freelancers also need to manage the contracting work and the art of motherhood. However, with a great deal of patience and flexibility, we manage to fulfill our tasks and still find some time to catch a movie.

Enjoy your holidays!