Translation is often misjudged as a line of work and even disregarded by the general public. Translating isn’t limited to replacing one word with another. It isn’t simply about calling upon individuals who have a good understanding of English or German, who are bilingual or, even worse, using online and automatic translation tools. Translation isn’t a skill you can just pick up, it is a real craft, some may even say it is an art form!
The golden rule to be complied with in this field is the following: high-quality translations can only be produced by professionals translating into their mother tongue. Native French speakers therefore translate into French, from whichever source language they are qualified in: English, Spanish, Italian, Chinese, etc. Breaking from this rule poses a number of risks, in particular that of missing certain subtleties and of “offending” one’s readers and counterparts. Professional native translators have perfect understanding of grammatical, terminological and cultural subtleties as well as mastering localisation techniques, and deliver reliable and successful translations.
Translation: true precision work at the service of the French language
Being a translator requires great intellectual and literary abilities, experience and a good dose of patience, not to mention good analytical and research skills. Working as real linguistic artists and craftsmen, professional translators analyse texts, carry out extensive research and select precise and perfectly suited expressions.
In this sense, they are there to guarantee the meaning and the various ideas put forth in a document, and consequentially, the quality of their own translation projects. A good translator is in fact a real author: the fruit of their labour must be at once perfectly understandable, fluent and even elegant in the case of editorial or literary work. They bridge the gap between two dialects, rendering the essence of the original message thanks to their know-how and their linguistic, terminological, stylistic and spelling skills.
Multi-lingual adaptation to the many areas of specialisation in the translation world
Being a translator doesn’t necessarily mean being in a position to translate all types of texts. Each professional translator takes on projects in line with their field of expertise. Technical documents are also a challenge: they require extreme terminological accuracy and do not allow for the slightest imprecision. This is also one of the reasons why at Tradissima, we favour a constant dialogue with our clients from France and elsewhere, so as to be in a position to rely on glossaries, terminology bases and reference documents.
Drawing on our ten-year experience in the business, we will support you throughout a wide range of services and areas of specialisation, from marketing to industry, from insurance to the medical field, not to mention tourism, art and sports. By carefully choosing our fields of work, we are investing in our passion for linguistics to increase our level of precision and efficiency even further.
Skills and attributes of a good translator
The number one ingredient: a passion for languages and terminology. Being fluent in a language isn’t enough. It’s essential to master all of its subtleties! Wordplay, idioms, sayings, humorous particularities can be real headaches to translate. The more passionate a translator is, the higher their commitment to the task and the more the excellence of their translation will shine through.
When you make the decision to become a professional translator, curiosity is far from being a flaw, on the contrary! In fact, it is a prerequisite: linguists need extensive general knowledge and must add to it continuously through reading, keeping up-to-date with the news as well as the most diverse subjects.
Moreover, professional linguists must show rigour and patience. Rigour, because they need to correctly analyse the source text in order to step away from it and render the message in the target language precisely and skilfully, while adapting to the target audience. Patience, because some projects are extremely involved, because text layouts can be complex, and because understanding a text that is badly written or deciphering the author’s intent can be challenging. In these cases, the translator must carry out in-depth research.
Good translators, in particular freelance translators, need to be both flexible and extremely punctual. A lot of the time, they have little visibility in terms of work bandwidth, with projects potentially presenting themselves out of the blue. This is why they tend to forfeit “standard” working hours in order to be able to meet these various translation challenges. However, they do have to combine this great ability to adjust with an always timely delivery. At Tradissima, we commit to being quick to react and punctual. We see these elements as a token of professionalism and confidence for our customers, whether they are in France or elsewhere.
Finally, translation inherently implies an excellent ability to engage and communicate. The more a translator exchanges with their client, the better they will understand the company as well as its goals, products and needs. This, in turn, will improve the quality of their translations even further. That is why, at Tradissima, we strive to establish close relationships with our clients from the get-go, based on trust, dialogue, feedback and our experience translating a wide range of content.