One way is automating it. Some of the simplest mistakes that translators make involve mixing up numbers, conversions, or names. The easiest way to make sure that you have correctly reflected every instance mentioned in the source in the translation is to use a text compare. Of course, your translation will be flagged as being vastly different from the source, but it will let you know if the numbers, company names, and other words or numbers that have to be the same in the target as they are in the source are the same or not. It also takes virtually no time too. All you have to do is copy and paste then press a button. It shouldn’t take you more than five minutes to go through everything depending on the length of your project.

Another way is to make it hard to make any mistakes from the very start. If you are translating into a new, blank document, instead try translating into the target document itself. You could even enter the strings into a machine translation so that you can see the translation and the source side by side. Doing this makes it much harder for you to make any typing errors when copying whatever needs to be the same in the target as in the source. If the document you have is not easily copied such as a pdf, you can use OCR to help make the text selectable and then copy it into a word document.

The next tip is the simplest and possibly the most obvious solution. Whenever you see something that has to stay the same between the source and target, just copy it from the source to the target. So for example, if you have a number like 1,000,231, then just copy it into the target. If you want to take this a step further, then you should highlight every instance of numbers or text that need to be the same between the two files and then you will be able to quickly identify the places that need to be checked before delivery.

Quality Assurance is a necessary part of the translation process but often not something that is effectively done due to time constraints or other factors. Hopefully with this post, you have learned a few tips about how you can make the process shorter, but without sacrificing any quality. If you are able to submit a translation that avoids minor mistakes can really help your reputation and make you stand out as a translator who can be relied on.

The first one is how to search for an exact phrase. While a dictionary can provide the exact word you want, there are often times where the word might not be used the way you think it should be, or there might be specific contexts in which it can be used or it might just be an outdated term altogether. To find out if a word or phrase you want to use can be used the way you want it to be, you can perform a Google search and put the term or phrase in quotation marks. So, for example, if you wanted to search for only the phrase raining cats and dogs, you could put it in quotation marks, “raining cats and dogs,” and then every single result will be websites that have the words in that exact order. You can also use the “verbatim” search function to search for only the word that you enter.

Next, if you want to find alternatives to words in phrases, you can use Google to search for alternatives. For example, if you wanted to search for different types of machine translation in one search, you could search like this: neural OR statistical OR rule-based machine translation. When you do that, Google will generate search results for machine translation that includes the words neural, statistical, and rule-based. This is handy if what you are searching for has numerous variations to it, but you only need a few alternatives as opposed to all of them.

On the flip side, there is a way to exclude search results from appearing. So in the case that you want all the different variations of a phrase but not something else, then you can use the minus sign to exclude the results that you don’t want. So if you want all the different kinds of machine translation, but don’t want statistical machine translation, then you can search –statistical machine translation and it will exclude all mentions of statistical machine translation. This is great if you know that you don’t want a search result to appear and are looking for other things instead.

One of the simpler tricks that does not require any special input is just comparing the amount of results that one version of a phrase generates versus another. So if you were wondering which spelling of versus is more commonly used, you could search for “vs” first and see how many hits are generated and then search “versus” and then see how many hits are generated. After comparing which one generates more, you can more confidently say that the one with more hits is the more commonly used word and therefore, safer to use in your translation.

The last trick is searching within a specific website for a specific phrase. If you wanted to look for the phrase “machine translation” on SDL’s website for example, you could search it as follows, site:sdl.com “machine translation” and then Google will generate all the instances of machine translation being mentioned on SDL’s website.

However, by industry standards, they also have their own distinct professional traits. What do interpreters do that translators don’t? What does a translator need that an interpreter can do without? How different are they really on the job? Here are just a few of the things that set translators and interpreters apart from each other.

1. Work Mode
Professional translators and interpreters sometimes forget that many people outside of the industry often don’t even realize that these are two different professions. To put it as simply as possible, translators write while interpreters speak. A translator takes a text in one language and rewrites it in another language. Interpreters, on the other hand, listen to what someone says in one language and then convey it by speaking in another language.

The fundamental difference in their respective lines of work is this: a translator usually does not speak at a job, but must have excellent writing skills, with all the things this implies: perfect punctuation, spelling, grammar. A successful interpreter needs all the skills required of a good public speaker, delivering messages clearly by speaking.

Translators in general enjoy the luxury of having more time, but that also means they have to be skilled at personal time management and able to focus deeply on one thing for an extended period, whereas interpreters must be quicker on their feet, able to tune out distractions, and have strong multi-tasking skills.

2. Working Environment
Translators and interpreters have different tools in their arsenals, and work in different environments.

A modern translator is computer savvy and skilled with the leading translation software (MemoQ, Trados, Wordfast, Déjà Vu, etc). Translators often have more freedom in terms of where they can do their work, and since translation requires a great deal of focus and time, this means a comfortable space free from distraction, whether it be a home office or a space at the agency or company a translator works for.

Interpreters, by contrast, have much less personalized work areas, since they generally work in spaces that are not their own, although there are interpreters who work over the phone or through video calls from home. Interpreters in many cases also don’t own the equipment they work with: simultaneous interpretation requires microphones, audio transmission equipment, receivers, and headphones, but these are generally provided by the translation company or the client. Interpreters working in the consecutive mode have a more modest toolbox which usually includes just a pen and a notebook. Recently, tablets and digital pens with special features have been making their way into consecutive interpreters’ kits, but are not yet widespread.

3. Dealing With Pressure
Interpreters work under great pressure because what’s being said needs to be interpreted immediately, which doesn’t leave much time to think. For interpreters, time is very precious. If they spend too much time on a certain sentence or word, they run the risk of missing important information that follows.

By comparison, translators are not under immediate pressure but incremental pressure. They spend a long time refining their work and even invite others to edit and proofread it in order to ensure that the final product is as flawless as possible.