You might be asking yourself if you can work online as a translator but want to know if you’re skilled enough to make money online as a translator. If you ask a hundred people (or type the question into Google and visit most of the links) to see what makes a good translator, you will find many similar answers. Most websites (I checked lots of the links) will tell you it’s excellent language skills (at least two languages), expertise in the subject, experience, a degree, attention to detail, cultural awareness, timelines, integrity… Would you agree? Do you have what it takes? Read more to assess if you’re a good fit for working online translating.
A false premise
These are all great skills for a translator to possess, but these are all a consequence of being a good translator rather than a reason for being one. Aside from the language skills, naturally, those are an actual prerequisite. However, one must accrue experience and master subjects to become an expert, you should know how to separate important information from trivial information, know where to find follow-up information on the subject matter, and be relentless about the process to become a good translator. Not the other way.
If not these, then what?
Research skills. Among others, they include searching for information, note-taking, problem-solving, evaluating, summarizing, fact-checking, task definition, information-seeking strategies, and using the acquired information. Experience and expertise on any subject directly result from mastering all of these.
Improving research skills
Research skills are tricky since there is not much mainstream teaching on this subject.
However, there are a few tricks and tips for developing and improving research skills:
- Learn to prioritize information, start big, then work yourself towards the specifics of a topic
- Verify information from multiple sources
- Learn how to properly use search engines to get optimal results, such as:
- Use quotations (” “) to search for the exact phrase
- Add a tilde (~) in front of a word to find a synonym or exclude terms with a minus (-) symbol
- Search a single website by using site:
- Search file types by using filetype:
- Search related websites by using related:
- Use advanced searches
- Use the reverse image search option
- Learn to compile, evaluate, and interpret information, extrapolate the important bits, and skip the unnecessary parts
- Do not underestimate the importance of planning and recording data – these are essential research skills for any expert
- Get used to taking notes
- Time-management is important
Where to apply these skills?
Once you master these fundamentals, let’s see where you can apply them. Well, the world wide web. The internet is a treasure trove of useful information.
So, let’s take a good at a few good places to start:
- Online corpora and multilingual databases
- Online dictionaries and glossaries
- Online support platforms
Let’s break them down a bit.
- Online corpora and multilingual databases
Corpora are essentially just collections of texts that have been compiled on certain topics for a specific purpose. Multilingual ones contain texts that are aligned in multiple languages, making them a fantastic resource.
Some typical would be:
- Glosbe, EUR-LEX Corpus, Termsearch, Europarl corpus, Linguee, Cambridge Learner Corpus, Unterm, IATE database, Freelang dictionary
Here’s a link to a ton more: https://www.clarin.eu/resource-families/parallel-corpora
2. Online dictionaries and glossaries
Dictionaries are unavoidable and crucial, so I will list some of the most important ones:
- Glosbe, EUR-LEX, Microsoft Terminology Dictionaries and Language Support, LEO Dictionary, Linguee, Beolingus, Logos dictionary, Acronym finder, PONs, thesaurus.com
3. Online support platforms
When we hit a snag and dictionaries do not provide us with any help, there is another place to ask for help – support platforms such as Facebook groups, forums, and Discord communities, the two most notable being ProZ and Translators Café. I am sure there are multiple such communities in your native language; you must search for them.
The answer
So, what is a good translator?
To be fair, this is a difficult question to answer because it is highly subjective, as no real true definition exists, despite multiple people trying. However, mine would go something like this:
A translator is the perfect blend of a linguist with the skills of a writer (these two professions overlap more often than you’d think) and a researcher with the deduction skills of a true grizzled detective.
And if you want to be good at this job, invest in developing both skill sets. You will need them.
This post was written by Petar Oletič, a translator who owns his own business translating online. He’s also written Why CATs are Awesome, Why do They Dislike Google Translate? And Which CATs are Awesome. Subscribe for more online business, sales and investing posts. Have a lovely day.
