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Aparna Arikarevula

6 Essential Skills of a Good Translator

Linguistic skills for providing translation service


What does truly take to be a good, more importantly, a sincere translator? After having established how important it is to correctly translate messages, so as to communicate with the right intent, here are a few of the most crucial skills employers look for in their potential translators.

  1. Active listening: The first step to good communication is good listening. Listening to understand and not to respond. Understanding what the party is saying takes you halfway through the process of translation.

  2. Research: Everyone does not know everything. Language is a vast area with people learning new terms of the language they’ve spoken for decades. Knowing how to research is one thing, but understanding what kind of research is required to rightly fulfill the task is another imperative and ball game altogether.

  3. Writing: Fluent grammar and linguistic understanding is one of the firsts. While catering to a new market, it is fundamental to know the language the people speak, and to know how to express it in written form.

  4. Perspective understanding: One sentence can be interpreted in numerous ways, based on the receiver. Being able to visualize every perspective and curating the message accordingly is another cardinal skill and is of paramount importance.

  5. Technological knowledge: Machine translation, though not cognitive and contextual, is another important component of translation. Understanding how CAT (Computer-assisted translation) works is required, so as to produce better results.

  6. Cultural understanding: Contextualization is the key differentiation factor between human and machine translation. Translating without an understanding of the local culture is baseless, just like a swimming pool without water, there’s no point.


Enhance communication clarity and foster growth


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