The Most Common Mistakes in Translation

Why do we hire translators? It is because we rely on them to be the go-betweens to communicate with the entire world’s population. However, these translators are human beings, and to err is human.

With this in mind let’s take a look at the common mistakes that translators’ commit-

1. Doing Translation Verbatim

Translating a text word for word does not yield optimum results at all times. There are many instances when the translated version loses its conformity with the original text. Hence, whenever you are translating a text into other language, make sure that you translate it in the same style and manner as it was intended. You also need to understand that there are different syntactic rules for different languages and undertake translations with these differences in mind.

2. Exaggerating the Meaning of Words

It is a common practice that many translators tend to overdo translations and exaggerate the meaning of some words. But little do they realize that this effort is not appreciated by the corporate world.

Keep this in mind and make it a point that you translate a document effectively with zero exaggeration of technical words and complex sentences.

3. Using Wrong Words

Due to inexperience, many translators often use vocabularies in wrong context. This is especially true when they are dealing with words associated with religious and cultural processes such as “Holy Grail” and “Netilat Yadayim Shacharit” that cannot interpreted in context of other religions. The same is true while dealing with gender nouns such as “moon,” which is masculine in English and feminine in Spanish.

Make sure that understand these differences and get yourself familiarized with the subtleties of words to avoid the usage of wrong vocabularies.

4. Lacking the Communication Skills

Novice translators overlook the importance of effective communication and often end up making costly mistakes in their translations.

To get the right meaning across, it is essential for a translator to understand the context in which the customer is using particular words. And this demands deeper engagement with the customer at every level of the translation process. The only way to achieve this kind of engagement is with effective communication.

5. Not Translating in an Appropriate Style

Is the style and tone of a legal document same as the style and tone of an unrelated topic such as financial document? No, isn’t it. Rookie translators often fail to understand this and opt to interpret a document without paying enough attention to the style, and mostly end up with a botched work. Hence pay attention to styling in a script and opt to convey the real meaning of the document in the right tone.

All these mistakes can we avoided by delegating the task to a trusted translation service provider like outsourcing translation. We believe in zero tolerance process to mistakes and hence have set up a multi-level approach to reduce errors. Every piece of work has to go through all these levels in order to ensure that the tone, context and style is maintained. Another distinct advantage which our clients enjoy with us is our work model. It enables us to address to any time zone in the world.