Frequently Asked Questions

1 How long does a translation take?

2 How will I get my translation back?

3 How will the price of my translation be determined?

4 Why should I choose you?

5 What forms of payment do you accept?

6 Do you charge extra for a rush job?

7 Can I hire you to just proofread a translation I have?

8 What languages do you work with?

9 Is there anything I can provide to you to help with my translation?

10 How does translation quality relate to price?

11 Can you translate legal documents such as marriage and birth certificates, passports, wills, and others.

12 What can I do to keep the price of my translation job lower?

13 Why shouldn't I just ask or hire someone I know who is bi-lingual to complete my translation?

14 What's wrong with using a computer translation software program for my translation?

15 What does it really mean to translate from one language to another?

16 How would you define a well done or "quality" translation?

17 What makes a translator and how does one become a translator?

Answer 15

The translation process, whether it be for translation or interpreting, can be described simply as:

1. Decoding the meaning of the source text, and
2. Re-encoding this meaning in the target language.

To decode the meaning of a text the translator must first identify its component "translation units", that is to say the segments of the text to be treated as a cognitive unit. A translation unit may be a word, a phrase or even one or more sentences.

Behind this seemingly simple procedure lies a complex cognitive operation. To decode the complete meaning of the source text, the translator must consciously and methodically interpret and analyze all its features. This process requires thorough knowledge of the grammar, semantics, syntax, idioms and the like of the source language, as well as the culture of its speakers.

The translator needs the same in-depth knowledge to re-encode the meaning in the target language. In fact, often the translators' knowledge of the target language is more important, and needs to be deeper, than their knowledge of the source language. For this reason, most translators translate into a language of which they are native speakers.