Some notes stay with us forever—they are real, heartfelt, and mean a lot to us. One such note from Central Coast Community Energy inspired us to create a short piano piece, celebrating the genuine connection we share with our clients.

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Major Testimonials

★ Government

California Department of Health Care Services (DHCS) — Corinne Chavez, Health Program Manager II

“Monterey Language Services’ collaboration and insights improved care for Medi-Cal members with Limited English Proficiency. Thank you for participating in the Medical Interpreter Pilot Project (MIPP)!”

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★ Healthcare

Natividad Medical Center — Victor Sosa, M.Ed., CMI

“Monterey Language Services provides interpreters with subject expertise for all our language needs. They’ve done an excellent job for us!”

★ Education

Monterey Peninsula College — Jeannie Kim-McPherson, Dean of Instruction

“Thank you for the quick turnaround. Working with your team has been seamless and positive.”

★ Community

Central Coast Community Energy — Peter Berridge, Manager of Communications

“We’ve truly enjoyed working with Monterey Language Services. Their professionalism and warmth make our collaboration meaningful.”

Client Voices — Moments That Stay with Us

• “I love it when good people come together to do great things!”
• “We are thankful for your help in untangling the mess—it made a difference.”
• “Your team is the most professional interpreter staff we’ve ever worked with.”
• “Some notes stay with us forever—they mean a lot to us.”
• “We are grateful for the expertise and care your team provides every day.”
• “Your service and team are outstanding.”
• “Thank you for your quick turnaround and thoughtful attention to detail.”

Sometimes questions need to be clarified or potential problems need to be identified before we start work. For example, recently we had a client request a Spanish sign language interpreter. Spanish Sign Language (SSL) is different from American Sign Language (ASL), so we had to clarify: which Spanish country is the hard of hearing client from? Does he know American Sign Language at all? Will an ASL interpreter who could also interpret spoken Spanish work? We communicated back and forth with the client rather than making an assumption and potentially compromising the event. It was also a nice opportunity for both the client and for us to get exact information and serve the ultimate client in the most appropriate way!

There are some things we can do to ensure that communication remains smooth and clear. We evaluate all projects and requests when we receive them, identify any potential misunderstandings or lack of information, and speak with the client. This way, we will be able to give the most accurate quote possible. It also helps us determine if the project will run smoothly, rather than getting into the project and finding issues at a later project stage.

When questions do come up during the course of a project, it is important to be unafraid to clarify with clients. Some people might think asking questions makes ourselves look bad, but the opposite is true! Clients will appreciate our attention to detail and commitment to providing the highest quality product possible. It is our job to ask questions and make sure our team has correct information to carry out the project.

While communicating with clients is necessary and helpful, we must find a balance. We don’t want to send too many emails and overwhelm our client! To streamline critical communication, it is best to gather key questions or points of clarification first, send them all in a single (but still concise) email to the client. This makes it easy for the client to quickly answer everything, and is also a nice way to document everything in a logical way.

At Monterey Language Services, communicating with our clients is fulfilling and worthwhile. The feedback and collaboration we get from our clients keep us going stronger every day. We work hard to make sure that our communication with our clients is as smooth, understandable, and enjoyable as possible. This makes our clients happy, and if our clients are happy then we are happy too!

1. Read extensively

If you are a book lover, then you are half way there to being a good translator. Reading extensively is useful in that it helps to hone your writing skills and make you more sensitive to the subtle differences between similar words. As a translator in a specialized field (e.g. law, finance, medicine, etc.), reading parallel texts is even more crucial. Parallel texts make you familiarized with terms in a particular field and allow you to familiarize yourself with the field. As a result, your translation won’t look like it’s written by an outsider with no knowledge of the subject. For example, let’s say you’re translating a warranty from Chinese into English. If you find an English-language warranty and compare it with the original text, you’ll see how a warranty is formulated in English and you can use that reference as a guide for your own translation.

2. Write well

Being an excellent writer is essential to success in translation. Writing well means writing clearly, which is as necessary for communicating the source message in a translation as it is for making sense in any kind of written work. Don’t get confused – translation may be an art in its own right, but here writing well doesn’t refer to being a good creative writer; many translators may write impeccably, but that doesn’t necessarily mean they have the creativity to write the next great novel from scratch. Writing is also a largely mechanical skill that can be learned. It means, in part, being familiar with the conventions and preferences of the often very different writing styles that are used in various fields – something which the previous tip can help you with.

3. Be patient and pay attention to detail

Unlike interpretation which is done within seconds, translation is an extended process and your finished texts will be there for all to see long after your work is done. Of course, there are both pros and cons to this: one good thing is that translators don’t have to work under quite the same pressure as interpreters, and they can afford to spend time choosing the most suitable word for any given context. One of the negative sides is that your work will likely be subject to greater scrutiny than many interpretations, since, especially in the digital age, a document can essentially exist indefinitely, whereas the average interpretation is gone forever after it’s been completed. In general, translation demands patience and extreme attention to detail. Translators need to be very careful in editing and proofreading their work in order to avoid mistakes before it is published or presented to others.

4. Learn how to do research

As a translator, you’re bound at some point to encounter a word or phrase you don’t know. Be it an idiom, the name of an organization, someone’s title, or even their name, translators need to have the ability to do extensive research using whatever tools are at their disposal. A translator’s research isn’t limited to looking for difficult to render words, either: they should know how and where to look for reference material – those parallel texts that were mentioned before, and other materials that will make translation much easier. Thanks to modern technology, translators today have incredible access to potential sources of research, starting with everyone’s favorite, Google, which can let you quickly check whether or not your translation is idiomatic in the target language. Frequently translators have to go much deeper than just a Google search, though, accessing various corpora, specialized dictionaries, trade publications, and so on. The internet even makes it possible to reach out to the author of a text to ask for clarification or explanation when a translator encounters difficulty understanding the source. As wonderful as the internet is, a translator shouldn’t rely on it to the total exclusion of good old-fashioned books and other printed material. You never know when you’ll be without internet access, and the sheer volume of information on the Web can make it difficult to know what’s correct, whereas a specialized Spanish-English medical dictionary has been compiled by an expert.

5. Use CAT tools

Recent years have witnessed the nearly universal application and rapid development of computer assisted translation tools, such as Trados, MemoQ, Wordfast, etc. These CAT tools have effectively become the industry standard and can help improve translation efficiency and save time and energy. CAT tools can cut down your time spent and simplify any number of situations, for example handling a large translation project that involves multiple languages. While some of these tools are both powerful and fairly user-friendly, it can be difficult to intuitively navigate and manage some CAT programs with all their features and options. Fortunately, there is no shortage of online tutorials and other CAT tool guides available, but whether you decide to make use of them or explore your CAT tool of choice independently, one thing is for sure: the sooner you learn how to use CAT tools effectively, the better.

These are just a few tips to help you become a better translator. There is one other thing which shouldn’t be overlooked: be passionate about translation! Great translators are “doing their job” all the time, always translating (at least mentally) whatever they see and hear around themselves, be it a sign at the park or an advertising slogan on TV. Enjoying what you do and making it into an everyday, fun activity may be the most important key to becoming a better translator.

Monterey Language Services is committed to bridging the world’s languages by providing quality, professional and efficient translation & interpretation services in over 175 languages.

A friend once asked me if I believed that my career was in danger of being outsourced to translation technology. In other words, he wondered if I felt that my profession was threatened by advances in machine translation, whereby potential clients can simply enter their text in a computer and  – voila! – an instant translation appears before them.

I told him that while technology certainly has its merits, true quality in translations can only be achieved through human attention to detail, human patience, and human passion. After all, how can a computer possibly convey the subtleties and feeling contained in a text produced by a human being, whose very essence is manifested in the words that he or she has written?

So no, I am not worried that my profession – and moreover my passion – is in danger of being made obsolete. On the contrary, I believe that every time a client of mine receives one of my translations, he or she will understand that my work, like that of an artisan whose livelihood could never be replicated in a factory, exudes the quality that can only come from the hands of a human being.

These thoughts on quality brought to you by our translator Mac Layne.