Translation is the communication of the meaning of a source-language text by means of an equivalent target-language text. The English word “translation” derives from the Latin word translation which comes from trans, “across” + ferre, “to carry” or “to bring” (-latio in turn coming from latus, the past participle of ferre). Thus translatio is “a carrying across” or “a bringing across”: in this case, of a text from one language to another.
Back Translation
A “back-translation” is a translation of a translated text back into the language of the original text, made without reference to the original text. Comparison of a back-translation with the original text is sometimes used as a check on the accuracy of the original translation, much as the accuracy of a mathematical operation is sometimes checked by reversing the operation. But the results of such reverse-translation operations, while useful as approximate checks, are not always precisely reliable. Back-translation must in general be less accurate than back-calculation because linguistic symbols (words) are often ambiguous, whereas mathematical symbols are intentionally unequivocal.
Traits of a Good translator
The translator’s role in relation to a text has been compared to that of an artist, e.g., a musician or actor, who interprets a work of art. Translation, like other human activities, entails making choices, and choice implies interpretation. Consider this thought: “A good translation offers not a reproduction of the work but an interpretation, a re-representation, just as the performance of a play or a sonata is a representation of the script or the score, one among many possible representations.” Competent translators show the following attributes: • a very good knowledge of the language, written and spoken, from which they are translating (the source language); • an excellent command of the language into which they are translating (the target language); • familiarity with the subject matter of the text being translated; • a profound understanding of the etymological and idiomatic correlates between the two languages, including sociolinguistic register when appropriate; and
Types of Translation Services
Over the years our strong network of native translators who are experts in different language domains has enabled Translation Light to take up projects pertaining to a wide range of industries in Indian and foreign languages. In addition to the linguist’s expertise, our team always strives to satisfy the clients with the best of our capabilities and following the major domains that we have been catering to:
Medical
Translation of medical documents can also be very tricky as the requirements of translation can differ from country to country; a translator or company specialized in medical documents would be your best bet, as they would be familiar with the intricacies of all the different requirements.
Automobiles
Translating User manuals and Product catalogues used in the Automobile industry takes the outreach to a much larger clientele.
Legal
This is one of the most complex translations, and involves birth certificate translations and marriage certificate translations, translating contracts, agreements, treaties, memorandums, wills, and so on. A good translator needs to understand the various underlying contexts of the documents and that of the two regions or countries for which the documents are intended – the socio-cultural aspects, and the politico-legal aspects as well.
Finance
Financial documents like bank records, statements, account statements and more – sometimes need to be translated to make it easier for the target audience to comprehend. Here the actual content that you need to translate may be lesser, but it has to be done precisely; you may also be required to change the currencies – in which case, you would need to also convert the figures.
Press & Media
Various online based news agencies need round the clock translation services to publish news and content on a real-time basis. The natural target audience for such companies is the entire nation, comprising of hundreds of different languages and interpretations.
Advertising, PR and Marketing
The basic law of marketing is, broader the outreach, better the results. What better way than to translate the marketing campaigns in the language of the target audience, so that they feel connected to the product/service offered?
Travel & Hospitality
Travel Brochures and hospitality advertisements and promotional vouchers need to be translated in the language of end user, who can be a tourist from any non-English speaking part of the world.
Machine Translation and precautions
Relying exclusively on unedited machine translation, however, ignores the fact that communication in human language is context-embedded and that it takes a person to comprehend the context of the original text with a reasonable degree of probability. It is certainly true that even purely humangenerated translations are prone to error; therefore, to ensure that a machine-generated translation will be useful to a human being and that publishable-quality translation is achieved, such translations must be reviewed and edited by a human. No matter how well you “train” a machine translation system, there’s always going to be an issue in that it is still a machine. Unless artificial intelligence progresses at lightning speed in the next decade, it’s unlikely that machine translation software will ever be able to understand, appreciate and use local nuances, peculiarities and idiosyncrasies present in all of the world’s languages. And what about emotions like humor, sarcasm, satire? Although one of the most prominent tools used by general public for their daily translation needs, Google Translate, for example, uses similar technology as their search engine by chopping sentences into segments which are then searched for automatically on the web and then used to piece together sentences in the required language. In addition to this algorithm, the system does not understand grammatical rules at all. In fact, it pretends that it does due to the segmentation rules it applies, often placing commas in weird and wonderful places within the text. Those who want to play it safe and aim for the highest quality outcome will pay a samll premium and turn to a top-echelon Translation company. While searching for best translation and localization agency in India, if you find an agency that stands out from the pack for its quality and sensitivity towards consumer needs, your work is done. An agency providing best translation services will not just be good on technical quality of the Translation but will also take care of cultural issues affecting how certain word choices work in specific national or regional markets.