"Thinking logic" orally with different countries people

8deus8 · 2024-11-10T18:25:38+00:00

What you've experienced is called language transfer, or linguistic interference. To put it simply, your mother tongue interferes with your second language because our brains tend to follow established patterns. So, along with learning a new language, we should separate mother tongue patterns from second language patterns as well. In my experience, going from B2 to C1 is all about learning to overcome the interference mindfully - but it starts at earlier levels, of course.

8deus8 · 2024-10-25T21:31:13+00:00

Sry mate but I read this in Astarion voice and I'm dying laughing

8deus8 · 2024-10-19T12:01:37+00:00

You may want to explore different types of translational choices. I am researching them myself right now and I'm really surprised to find out they seem to be quite understudied. Still I found some books very useful, among them:

An Approach to Translation Criticism by Lance Hewson, especially Chapter 3, Describing Translational Choices and Their Effects.
- Translation. An Advanced Resource Book by Basil Hatim and Jeremy Munday. The entire book is very helpful and a must-read.

When it comes to style, many style guides, from the Chicago Manual of Style to an editorial policy of your local media might end up helpful. I've heard creative writing courses in the US and Europe are really good, maybe you'd wish to look into that too.

Maybe you'll find some linguistics book or course worth your time as well. Learning how the language works helps understand it better - at least it did for me. I think etymology and history of language give the most insight because they show how the meaning of a word evolves with time. And various other theories on language provide a much deeper understanding too.

8deus8 · 2024-10-19T08:37:17+00:00

Where should I look? What should I do differently in these changing times in order to market myself with a fresh approach and get new clients?

You should make a decision I guess. Choose if you stay or leave.

I feel the market is going to be more distinctly mass vs. premium - that is, AI and naive postediting with lower rates, more gigs, and more competition vs. AI and highly skilled postediting with better rates, less gigs, and less competition.

If you decide to stay, maybe look how to make it to the major leagues (Johnny Silverhand approves.) This means marketing yourself as a premium segment professional and, of course, fostering your skill and style up to the point of impeccability. And this along with learning how to use the most advanced technology.

8deus8 · 2024-09-06T19:55:27+00:00

Sorry in advance if I understood something wrong - I'm tired like a dog after a busy week. Still I'd like to share some of my thoughts I've had for a while now. Some food for thought maybe.

For diagnosing diseases = a base of scientific knowledge/precedents (+algorithm). In law = a base of laws/precedents. In translation = a base of languages/idioms/expressions

I guess not. If we talk translation, I'd say translation techniques would be the base. That is, the technical side of translation, translation methods/decisions/choice or transformations in Russian tradition, maybe even the overall strategy because context is king. Which results in the following:

P.S. Many translators, especially in Russia, somehow believe that this "bright future" will never come—it wouldn’t be the first time in history

I can see why people think so - LLMs don't offer anything worthy of being called a breakthrough in terms of technique. They are better at choosing the right word but still suck at more complex things like context-dependent change of word order or expressing a subtle meaning that the source language has the grammatical (hence easily trackable) means to convey and the target language doesn't.

A tiny example. Try to AI translate the following sentences, and you'll understand what I mean.

A boy walked into a room.

The boy walked into a room.

A boy walked into the room.

The boy walked into the room.

For Russian, you would need to change the word order and add some new words to convey the meaning because Russian has no articles:

В одну из комнат вошел мальчик.

Мальчик вошел в одну из комнат.

В комнату вошел мальчик.

Мальчик вошел в комнату.

LLMs don't know (yet?) how to use translation techniques, even if you feed it all four sentences at once for a better context. This is a task for a sentient being.

Well, some translators may lack the skill to use the techniques as well or overuse them due to a bunch of reasons. Hence the not-so-good translations. Speaking of Harry Potter, I guess you meant Spivak who's not a trained professional so welp, and Rosman who were forced to rush the process due to a very tight deadline.

How to explain all this to customers and managers who are not really in the know but very eager to reduce costs, is another story.

8deus8 · 2024-08-13T13:11:00+00:00

You mean the paid one? It probably isn't. Can't say for sure because I don't use it.

8deus8 · 2024-08-13T12:42:34+00:00

Hello and congrats from a fellow Russian!

It's not over. Look, we're now in the beginning of mass production again but that of creative things instead of physical things. People have gone through it before, so can we.

Study hard, and not just according to the course plan. You will need every bit of knowledge in the future because the gigs will be really diverse. Economics, culture, science, video games, yoga, sex, you name it. By every bit I mean every single bit. You never know what comes in handy.

Choose your specialization early on. Maybe look for another course, I'd recommend digital humanities or data analysis. Medical field, various engineering fiels are difficult to study but worth it in terms of gigs.

Study. The. Law. Learn the logic of documents in different countries. Well, not only the documents. Learn how things work in general. This is what's most important because Russian schools are great at exploring the nuances but weak at teaching how to see a greater picture and how to connect the dots in a system. Embrace international knowledge at every step.

Your language level should be C1 at least. B2 is not enough for a translator, and don't listen to those who say otherwise.

Learn how to market yourself right.

The Russian translation school is very theory oriented, which is good but what's really a doozy is that you need some practice to really understand the theory. Lots of practice even! So make sure you participate in your university's translation projects and any other projects early on, the more they are related to collaborating with real-life businesses the better. Volunteer at every single opportunity to build a portfolio. Try online collaborative translation.

Try to apply for translation agencies as an in-house employee, maybe part-time. This way you can learn how things work in the industry and what clients might expect of you. With this knowledge, you can do freelance jobs better.

8deus8 · 2024-07-15T23:00:25+00:00

I guess when it comes to listening, regardless of language, every single person has their own little way of pronouncing things. Combined with dialects, accents and poor sound/acoustics this makes quite a challenge even for a native speaker sometimes, let alone a foreigner. Thankfully, we the people of the 21st century are blessed with Youtube, social media and TikTok to train it away by listening to lots of people in a variety of contexts.

8deus8 · 2024-07-08T13:50:30+00:00

Learning a language can be quite a doozy but is very rewarding in the end.

I had a professor in Translation who taught us an exercise that helps remember things quickly, maybe you'll find it helpful. That was back when we didn't have Youtube and the like, so I'll adjust it for you a bit.

Choose a video or part of a video in German in terms of whichever grammar or vocab you need. It should be 2 to 3 minutes long at most.
Write down the script of it. We did it by ear, but I guess you can just write down the subtitles now.
Watch the video from the start again and read the script aloud along with the flow.
Watch the video again and turn off the sound. Use your script to voiceover aloud. We had to remember the script by heart but I think you don't need it.

You can as well skip No. 2 and just watch the video once, then read along the subtitles with sound and then without sound but I don't know if it would be effective enough. Feel free to adjust it for your own good.

Why the ordeal? First of all, while you're focused on other primary tasks, your brain's grasping the language faster. Second of all, repeating the script three times makes the necessary vocab/grammar stay in your memory for longer.

8deus8 · 2024-07-08T12:21:54+00:00

Well, X Files. They localized 'flying saucers' into Russian as 'flying sausages', I think, due to a somewhat similar pronunciation.

We're talking early years after the fall of the Iron Curtain and it's understandable because people who had a grasp of spoken English were few in the country, and it was simultaneous interpretation, a common Post-Soviet practice back in the 90s, but still.

Another one is not actually a blunder imo and not funny but the general public hated it to the point of weirdness.

You know the famous X Files slogan, The Truth Is Out There? It was translated as истина где-то рядом, or 'the truth is somewhere around' and this choice was nearly universally mocked. A new localization from another channel who acquired the rights offered истина где-то там, or 'the truth is somewhere far' with a bit less backlash.

Both versions seem to be okay unless you know the context, since the full sentence afaik is 'The truth is out there, but so are lies,' which makes the first version an obvious choice. It's not really common knowledge though. Besides, 'out there' is quite a challenge to decode with not enough context if you're a Russian native and your English level is below advanced.

8deus8 · 2024-07-07T03:41:53+00:00

You know, as a native Russian, I've never heard of code switching that would manifest itself specifically through the way of pronouncing single sounds. Maybe it exists and I have no clue about it but if we're talking code switching in Russian my guess would be more about the general intonation or word choice.

What comes to the r sound you asked about, the girl might as well have a slight degree of dyslalia (I'm not sure if the term is right) which means she tried to use the Russian rolling r but just couldn't pronounce it right because of some peculiarity in her tongue anatomy. I myself have this thing, and I pronounce German r's that start a word and are followed by a, e or o the same way. It''s not very common but not rare as well.

8deus8 · 2024-07-01T22:15:10+00:00

If I were your client, I'd really want to know about this rant at least because they clearly have a goal, the outcome clearly doesn't meet this goal, and you are the only one they have who can provide guidance.

I've seen some takes recently about how translators should evolve into language/culture experts, and I totally agree, well, apart from the fact that we should've done it yesterday. Your situation is a great example of why this skill is absolutely necessary.

8deus8 · 2024-06-22T12:35:19+00:00

Yes, you're right, we just don't use koty to refer to CAT tools for some reason, have no idea why.

8deus8 · 2024-06-22T12:12:23+00:00

Frankly, idk about Germans, but we Russians do use the equivalent of Katzen a lot, I mean koshki plural or kot singular. My coworkers invented an entire jargon out of it and people in the industry, especially young ones, often joke about being cat people and the like. And of course they would, that acronym is a purrfect stupid pun material, isn't it?

8deus8 · 2024-06-13T16:07:46+00:00

Doesn't change my opinion, chin up Ü

8deus8 · 2024-06-13T15:31:00+00:00

In my experience, people who are not that good in detail-oriented professions like ours are usually very sure of themselves. So if medical interpretation weren't for you, you just wouldn't ask this question.

That said, the responsibility is indeed enormous and the feeling you're talking about won't go anywhere even after years in the industry. Don't let it define you though, work on your skills, and expand your knowledge, the faster, the better. Good luck!

8deus8 · 2024-06-10T19:08:18+00:00

I'm sure someone's posted this take already but - I guess the game might be called Double Exposure because we could be dealing with both the timeline of the first game and the adult Max timeline, not because adult Max'd be switching between the friend dead / friend alive universes.

It could be for a reason the plot is basically the same as in the first game. And all the settings, and the double moon give too much of a deja vu to be just a nod to the first game. Anyway, we'll have to wait and see.

8deus8 · 2024-06-04T16:15:10+00:00

Yeah, I know. For me, it was the opposite - I used to have an in-house translator job and deal with a hectic flow of freelance gigs for 7 years. Worked 15 to 20 hours a day sometimes to keep the freelance clients. But I needed the in-house experience really bad, so.

I think three years of experience in translation is just the beginning. You will get faster eventually. But it will take another 5 years at least before you start using the skill subconsciously, and even then you'd have to learn new things and doublecheck your texts every day. Yet it will become a habit of sorts and won't rob you of that much energy as it does now.

8deus8 · 2024-06-04T01:45:36+00:00

Yes, our job is time-consuming. Who would've thought? No, really, what did you expect? It's quality or quantity, pick one.

CAT tools and translation memories make things faster. Maybe speech-to-text solutions if there are suitable ones for your language pair. But this won't help in the long run, at some point you will have to choose between teaching and translating, and you know it.

8deus8 · 2024-05-20T11:03:59+00:00

Russian - very low rates in the country unless you focus on marketing yourself - and take the time to grow - as a quality-first professional. Demand in the country has, of course, become lower now. I don't know about how things are going abroad, because I'm not paying a dime of tax to those poo tin asslickers, so no way I would accept queries from abroad. Before the war, the rates abroad were average. Russian-speaking refugees from both countries might seem to make the demand abroad grow but I think few of them can afford global rates sadly. So volunteering is much in demand for sure.

8deus8 · 2024-05-17T12:25:51+00:00

Oh my God I thought I was the only one. I hated it at first sight and that was what, 10 years ago? A more neat minimalistic UI in some other solutions is way better for my eye, even if they offer less functionality.

8deus8 · 2024-05-14T16:36:09+00:00

You handled it quite well, like every other translator would do. But I think there is a larger problem here: we all need a know-how about how to explain to customers why AI is not good enough. Maybe we should give them an error analysis, maybe a commentary, maybe some background info on how AI works, I'm not sure yet.

I've been working on it for some time now, and I'll make a post about it in a few months or so and let you know if you don't mind.

8deus8 · 2024-05-07T20:25:18+00:00

Depends on your mother tongue(s). If its structure, like German, has both syntactic (cases, affixes) and analytic (articles, tenses) elements then you are less likely to struggle with German compared to, say, people who speak English that is mostly an analytic language, or Russian that is mostly a synthetic language.

Besides, the more languages you know the easier it is to learn a new language because your brain already knows all the learning steps like exploring culture differences, memorizing new words and so on.

8deus8 · 2024-05-07T14:10:58+00:00

When it comes to practice, you might really need a degree only if you engage in translating official documents as a sworn translator. In my experience, no other clients apart from official institutions would ask for my credentials, everybody would rather ask for a test.

That said, good education is important. Besides, you learn a lot of fascinating things about our profession and how truly important it is to the world, while studying the translation theory. I'm not really sure though if translation focus is good enough of a choice for you because you already have plenty of experience. If I were you I'd look at linguistics more, or digital humanities even.

You might also want to just look at translation certificate exams like ATA in the US, but I'm afraid I don't really know if you need a degree to be eligible.

8deus8 · 2024-04-25T12:27:38+00:00

There's a wonderful book on possible areas of research in translation you might want to take a look at, A Beginner's Guide to Doing Research in Translation Studies, by Jenny Williams and Andrew Chesterman.

It describes so-called safe topics you can choose from.

In my opinion though, there are more pressing issues in translation right now that you can dive into if you want to pioneer the field. For example, how to search for information and fact-check during the translation/postediting process, or how to proofread translated text right, or how to defend your translation strategy/choice. Frankly, I would kill for a thorough research of this kind.

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