Speaker 1: What does it take to be a good translator? Coming up. Hello and welcome back to the Freelance Verse. Today's video topic is what makes a good translator. As you guys know, translation is not a protected profession. So anyone that speaks more than two languages, let's say, can call themselves a translator realistically. So in a field that has such a low barrier to enter, it's really important that you stand out, that you are one of the best ones, right? And how can you do that? What does this mean exactly, being a good translator? Does it really mean like having a degree that I sometimes talk about on the channel? Does it mean having five years of experience? Does it mean having five different language combinations, for example? All of these things, of course, they contribute, they can be reasons that someone is a good translator, but it is more about the soft skills, the specific skills that it takes that make you really stand out. And these are the skills that I want to talk about today. And just before we get into this week's video, I actually partnered with NordVPN, a huge milestone for the channel. As you guys know, we as freelancers, we like to work from all sorts of places, like cafes, trains, whatever, beach bars. And while this is one of the best parts of the job, it does come with inherent risk. And this is where NordVPN comes in. With just one click, you can benefit from their secure encrypted tunnel for your online traffic. So no one can steal their sensitive client data or your passwords. NordVPN is the best VPN if you're looking for a peace of mind when on public Wi-Fi. Protect now all your devices with their exclusive birthday deal. Go to nordvpn.com slash freelancerverse for more info and a 72% discount on a two-year plan. And they offer a 30-day money-back guarantee, so there's really no reason why not to try it out. Let's get on with the video. One thing that certainly helps is if you always had a passion for languages. So let's say back in school, when you were in primary school, secondary school, if all your math and science grades were always amazing and all your language and communication grades were shit, you're probably not determined to becoming a translator, which makes sense. But if it was the same as for me and for most of my colleagues, if all your language grades were always much better than your math and science grades, that's a good sign. It doesn't mean anything yet, but it's a good basis. But of course, a passion for language alone is by far not enough. What it really comes down to is a passion and an interest for cultures. And by cultures, I don't just mean different cultures of different countries. Of course, that's important. Like, it's important to know the cultural differences between countries. But what I mean, it goes even deeper. It's about subcultures. So different areas, different regions within the country, within a region itself, within a language group, for example, for German, if you look at the German language group of all these countries that speak German, there are many subtle differences, right? For another example, how is it to write a copy, a marketing copy for a South state in the US versus a North state, right? The copy should be vastly different in some cases. Of course, if you have a national campaign, you usually don't change the copy. But if you have a very local, very specific copy, it matters where you write from, especially in a huge country like the US. But by subcultures, I also don't only mean regional, geographical locations, right? It's also about subcultures in terms of communities. So think about like, how does the German hunting community, how do they speak? How do they communicate? What is the political affiliation in the French climate discourse, for example? All of these things, they matter a lot when you write for specific people. Extensive reading is one of the most important things you can do as a translator or as an aspiring translator. I say this all the time on my channel, read books, read magazines, read all you can. Also read translations, very good point. Read subtitles and just translations by others, translated books, et cetera. Because actual translation requires active knowledge, right? But evaluating and analyzing translations by someone else requires passive knowledge. And if you reinforce your passive knowledge over and over again as a student, then later on your active knowledge will be much stronger. Read different registers. So read magazines about some kind of weird celebrity gossip one day and then a very highly technical one the next day. Read marketing copy about a backpack, a school backpack for little kids. And then the next day, a marketing copy for a passenger airplane, for example. So that you become varied, you know the different registers. Of course, always in your specialization, more on that later, but make sure to cover all the registers. Of course, writing and just your native language is, I mean, you are in the end, you are a writer as a translator, right? Writing is your main skill. So your punctuation, your grammar, your tenses, they all need to be on top. Like there is no room for error. Of course, sometimes there is a debate, like some things are stylistic, some things are not mandatory. Certain commas are not mandatory, et cetera. But like the standard rules, they have to be ingrained in your brain. So all the grammar lessons that you have at uni as an aspiring translators, they may suck in the beginning and they are really hard to learn, but in the end, yeah, you need them. You really need them. I look up stuff all the time. Yeah, you don't need to know them by heart, but you know where, but you have to know where to look them up. Something called language intuition is really important when it comes to being a good translator. And that's an interesting one because it's not really something you can learn, right? That's what I mentioned in the beginning by having good grades as a student. It's probably something we are born with and there's probably not, I don't think you can learn this from scratch. You can definitely, once you're born with it and then you follow it, you can hone the craft. You can become much better in language intuition. Also, if you immerse yourself in the countries of your source language. So it's definitely not acquired in a vacuum. You need to get out there and you need to voluntarily improve your language intuition. And that's very important to be a good translator. Between acquiring all these skills and the actual translation part, there is one chunk missing that is so extremely important. I say this all the time on the channel, it's the research part, right? And even for this part alone, I would say it's worth to go to university to become a translator. Because I get this asked a lot and I always say, you don't need a degree. You can make it easily without, well, not easily, but you know what I mean. Like it's possible. And especially the translation part, you can learn this on your own, right? It's not a big deal. If you're good in writing, if you're good in languages, you should be able to learn this on your own. But the researching part, where to find references, what sources you can use, how to judge if a source is reliable, all the networking that you do, all the tools that you acquire at university. For all these factors, I definitely recommend doing a degree. It's not easy to know which dictionaries, which encyclopedia, I don't know how to say this word, to use. Do you use monolingual? Do you use bilingual ones? You know, do you actually use specific ones for your specialization? This also exists. Which one should you buy? Which one are free? Which one is okay to use with client data? Which one aren't? So, and such an important part that can really set you up for being much better than others if you know where to research. Because if someone translates a text with just, you know, staying on the first page of Google and does a very specific, I don't know, furniture text, let's say, with very specific design names for different wood, different metal, different combinations of materials, and you do actually a proper research with proper dictionaries for this specific area and you look up brochures of other manufacturers and stuff, then your translation will just be much more natural and much more, you know, flow much better. Experience in your subject matter definitely matters a lot. So your specialization, it's important that you niche down. It doesn't mean that you can only then take jobs in this specialization, not at all. Like I'm in IT and sports, but I do a lot of other stuff as well, right? You don't need to put yourself into the box and only accept these jobs. If it comes to that, great, that's fine. But I still enjoy sometimes doing something else because you never stop learning, right? If I do a lot of bachelor thesis and master thesis revisions and that's always a different topic, of course, and I love it, it's amazing. Attention to detail is a bit like a common phrase that you see in most job descriptions, right? But as a translator, it really matters because especially after full days of work and you are reading text, you do a revision of your translation and you just, the E and the I are switched around or the D and the B are switched around. These things at one point, you just don't see anymore. You really need to be trained to catch these little things. You need to find tricks. Some people do like a zoom in of the text so the letters are suddenly bigger and then your brain switches again. So that's a good tip, actually. You translate and maybe a font size 11 or 12 and then when you do a revision, put it to 15 or 16 because then your brain thinks it's another text, right? And then you actually pay attention again. Or you can print it out to do the revision. I do that sometimes as well. That helps a lot. Ability to take criticism is another one I wrote down here because translation is quite a subjective discipline, right? Where if you give the same text to 10 people, you will get 10 different texts and not every text suits the person that ordered it, right? So it happens a lot that I get bad feedback and they say, I ask, okay, please give me a reason why this is bad. And the client says, okay, this and this, we don't like this, but mostly it's stylistic changes, right? And then I say, okay, that's no problem. I can easily change that. Don't get offended when this happens. It's as objective. It's not like math and science when it's just correct, right? You do your best. And if your style of writing is not suitable to the client, then you learn from that. And next time you write in their style. And the last point that I always mention to be a good translator, you need to be business and tech savvy, especially tech savvy in the near future will be super important. If you want to keep up with all the technological advances and progress, it's important that you keep on top of that because the people that just turn a blind eye to it will just get swept away. So make sure you know what's going on in the scenes or you can stay afloat. You can stay on top of that. And then when it's time to take a leap and to change something in the business model, to still be relevant as a translator, you know exactly what to do. Same goes for business. Know that you are leading a business, that you're not just doing some kind of hobby on the side. Whatever you do online in real life, know that this reflects on your business, right? If you decide to be very outspoken and very personal on social media, that's fine, but then this is your brand, right? You need to realize that you can't be on LinkedIn very professional and then on YouTube or on Facebook, very easygoing and use swear words and et cetera that you wouldn't use on LinkedIn because it's all connected, right? You as a person, as a freelancer are a business. So make sure that everything you put out there, you want people to know in the name of your business. There you go. This is my take on what it takes to be a good translator. In the end, it also matters a lot what you think about yourself, right? It's a lot about self-worth. If you don't think you're good, then you will not be good. It needs to come from within and it can only come from within if you overcome imposter syndrome, which I made a video on. You can click here if you want to watch that next. I always think you kind of know yourself when you're ready and you can actually say, okay, now this is, you're never finished learning, right? You always continue learning and you learn new things. So you're never perfect, but at least you need to get to a point when you can say, okay, this is a service that I'm much better than the average person and I can make money. I can fairly and reasonably and confidently charge money for my services. There you go. Make sure to scroll down and subscribe to the channel. Like the video. We're still going strong. I still haven't missed a video this year. I want to keep this going until the summer break. So I'm excited for what's coming next. I see you next Monday with the next video. Bye-bye.