Glossary and translation tips. Now, as I mentioned in the last lesson glossaries can be important and I definitely recommend keeping a glossary at the beginning. This glossary should be something that you keep for terms and expressions and acronyms that you come across. Technically, every time you have to look something up, you should insert it into the glossary, because if you have to look it up once, and the same term comes across your desk in a month or three months time, then chances are you'll have to look it up again. So it's a lot better if you have it in your glossary. That way it'll save you time in the future.

I keep my glossary on Excel. And I don't think you need anything more fancy than that, quite frankly, I have a glossary that I keep on Excel, it's very easy to sort it out alphabetically using data sort. And so that's what I do. And so if I need to look anything up, I can always check alphabetically, see if it's there, and if it is, I can use the translation that I've looked up before. For now, as I mentioned in the introduction to this course, you will find tips for everything in this course other than translation itself. This is due to the fact that translation tips per se are much easier to come across and tips for setting up a translation business and earning a living off of it.

And so this course does not concentrate on teaching you how to translate. Also, translation tips will obviously be extremely different for every different language. So it's impossible to include them all, or even a you know, a good percentage of them in one course. However, having said that, I would be remiss if I didn't include at least a few general guidelines to keep in mind. Okay, first of all, when you're translating between two languages, generally, for written translations, the target language should be your native tongue. There are two languages that you speak and presumably To speak both of them very well.

Or at least you can write in both of them very well and you can translate from one to the other. The target language, however, should be your native tongue should be the one you're most comfortable with. Because you need to provide text that is impeccable. Secondly, you'll notice that some expressions such as job titles can be interchangeable, like say, Secretary and an administrative assistant or CEO and president, etc. So feel free to ask your clients for past translation or documents if they have them. So you can get the terminology correct and see what they've been using in the past.

If they've been translating expressions in a certain way thus far, you might as well find out about it right away, rather than be corrected about it later on. So if you use SEO, but they've always used precedent, even if your usage of SEO is more precise, you still want to use what they've been using because they're the client. Also, keep in mind that acronyms are different in different languages such as For example, the UN in English will be Edu if you're speaking Italian or French, you know, and that's the only thing or also with the EU in many languages is you he usually these acronyms need to be translated as well, you cannot just leave EU as a you but you need to find out what it is in the target language, it's better to check them all the first time you come across them, and then include them in your personal glossary.

At least that's what I do. And so I have all the acronyms that I've come across in the glossary, so they're easy to look up. Also remember that numbers can be different. For example, in the US to say 2346 point 58. Use a comma to mark the thousands and point to mark the decimal point. However, in Italy, it's the opposite.

And you'll use a comma to indicate decimals while you use just a.to indicate thousands. So keep this in mind for your particular language. That the numbers can be different. All too often I've seen translators completely forget about numbers and neglect them. And this is a very easy thing to fix. And it can make clients very mad if you don't also become familiar with track changes.

This is a Microsoft Word and it's found under Tools. This is especially useful for editing proofreading, and for comparing translations. Also be comfortable with leaving comments which you can do under insert a new comment on Microsoft Word. I feel these can be valuable tools. If you want to just note something, say oh, I don't think this past translation was done correctly or I'm not sure what you mean here there, etc, etc. So track changes and leaving comments are quite important things that you should be familiar with.

Keep bookmarks of useful sites and sites you find yourself using for any translation. Chances are you'll want easy access to these at some point in the future. So you don't want to have to search for them again. Maybe you do many financial translations, and you found a great website for a glossary of financial terms in your target language or in both languages, etc. So bookmark that and keep your bookmarks that you use for translation all in one place. So they're easy to find.

And one extra tip, although it doesn't necessarily have to do with translation, per se, is to always reply to vendors. If someone contacts you and said, Hey, I need this translation done. We'll pay you very little and we needed done in two hours. And you You definitely totally will not do it. Still reply pretty much every single time that I reply, and I say sorry, I can't make it hopefully next time or sorry, I can't do it. This time.

I'm too busy. I always get an email back saying no problem. Thanks for letting us know. They always say thank you for letting us know. And I can say also having hired people, as long as you hear back from them, you really appreciate it because at least you know, you don't want to have to be waiting there wondering if someone else is going to get back to you like Should I accept this expensive translator when someone else might get back to me with something better, etc. So always reply and they will appreciate it.

And so it can go a long way in terms of goodwill. Even if you know you cannot work on the translation that time because you're just way too busy. still send a quick reply say sorry, I can't do it this time, hopefully next time, something like that and they will appreciate it.