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Competences for Translation
reading competence
You should be able to read and understand textual content if you want to create instructions yourself. This would be trivial but turns out to be very important for text in a foreign language. What are the various meanings of a fundamental declarative word? Is it used with its basic meaning, or does the author employ a pictorial language and utilizes metaphors? Is it important to work out details in the differences of words with similar meanings? Translation can not always be literally, in particular when dealing with idioms or collocations.
textual competence
Text normally comprises several paragraphs. In particular with foreign-language text it is important to maintain consistency in the whole text by alignment of the style of speech and diction in each paragraph. In this respect, a continuous nomenclature is mandatory. Besides text must be fluently readable in the target language, so the reader will not lose the thread.
language competence
Language is no static condition kept free of changing. Language is evolving and adapts itself to its users’ needs. Even if a technical document has to impart factual information at first, linguistic aspects should be taken into account as it is common with novels or non-fictional literature. This inures to the benefit of the document’s readability, and it aids to avoid misunderstanding. Another feature is the correct handling of peculiarities in the written target language, such as special characters, number and date formatting and other anomalies that should be regarded carefully.
subject competence
In a translated text it is very easy to discover if the translator is well versed in the matter that it is about. If not, then the reader loses faith in the document. Hence it is beneficial if a translator has professional experience in the industry he or she is translating a text for. A risk might be that the he or she spins a tale of his or her experiences instead of translating correctly. But a good translator always will be interested in sticking as close to the original text as possible.
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