Translation
Translation is carrying meaning across to someone who reads another language, and today a machine writes most of the first draft. What the machine does not write is judgement: which equivalent is right, where the tone shifted without permission, and what should not be translated at all.
- 6 lessons
- Free, no signup
Where a translation that gets published is made
The overlap of two things, and neither of them on its own.
Command of both languages
- You read the source at sentence level without a dictionary
- You write in the target language rather than translating into it
- You hear the difference between a formal and a spoken register
A translation that gets published
- The terms are right and the sentences read well
- The reader does not notice they are reading a translation
Knowledge of the field
- You know the settled term the field actually uses
- You notice when the source sentence itself is wrong
- You know what the reader of this text already knows
Language command alone produces a text that reads well and gets the terms wrong. Subject knowledge alone produces a text that is correct and nobody finishes. This is also the hardest part of the path: language can be practised, but a field has to be worked in.
The path, step by step
Lessons are ordered so each stands on the previous one. You can also jump in anywhere.
- 1What professional translation is, and how it differs from word for wordProfessional translation means the reader of the target language gets what the reader of the original got: the same meaning, the same tone, the same register and the same function. Swapping word for word delivers only one of those four and drops the rest on the way.Beginner
- 2How machine translation works, from Google Translate to language modelsMachine translation means software turning text from one language into another with no human involved at the moment of translation. Four generations have followed one another, and the important difference with the latest is not that it translates better but that its errors no longer look like machine errors.Beginner
- 3The AI translation workflow, from glossary to deliveryThe professional translation workflow today has three parts: a glossary closed before any translating starts, a machine pass constrained by that glossary, and human post-editing, which is the only place anything is decided. The order matters more than the choice of model, because a glossary built after the translation is not a glossary, it is a list of things you have to go back and change.Intermediate
- 4What specialized translation is, and why domain knowledge beats language skillSpecialized translation means a text where one wrong term of art ruins the whole thing, no matter how fluent the sentence is. In these texts a fluent translation with the wrong term is worse than a stiff one with the right term, and that single sentence is the entire difference between specialized work and general work.Intermediate
- 5Subtitle translation: what has to fit inside the speaker's timeSubtitle translation means a translation that has to be read in the same time the speaker took, and that single constraint is what separates it from translating text. A sentence that is correct but cannot be read in that time is, in a subtitle, the wrong sentence.Intermediate
- 6Translation quality control: what can be counted and what has to be readTranslation quality control means separating two questions that are always asked together: does this text say what the source said, and is this text a good text in the target language. Each has its own instrument, and asking them at the same time is exactly how errors get through.Intermediate
Something real changed in this trade and most courses still teach as if it had not. The work that got paid ten years ago was producing the first draft; a machine does that part now and nobody pays for it. The paid work moved one step up: deciding about the text the machine produced. This path is written for that step, which is why its second lesson is the history of machine translation rather than a decorative chapter at the end.
The border with the content writing path is simple: there you write your own point, here you carry someone else's point across and you are not allowed to change it. That constraint is what makes translation hard. A writer whose sentence will not come out rewrites it; a translator cannot, because the sentence is not theirs.
One expectation is worth setting straight now. This path will not make you a sworn translator. Certified translation is the business of a licensed office whose translator holds a permit and whose seal carries legal weight; that weight comes from the licence and not from the skill, and no amount of learning produces it. What you learn here is translation that gets published, read, and judged by a reviewer.
Real follow-up questions
With machine translation around, is learning translation still worth it?
It is, but not for the work that was worth it ten years ago. Producing a first draft is no longer a scarce skill and the market shows it. What stayed scarce is recognition: seeing where the translation in front of you is fluent and wrong, and only someone who can translate sees that.
How well do I need to know the second language to start?
You need to understand the source at sentence level without a dictionary; if every sentence sends you looking up words, it is not translation time yet. Direction matters more than level, though: you write into the language you are strongest in and read from the language you are merely competent in, not the other way round. Most bad translations come from someone writing into a language they only understand.
Does this path cover sworn translation?
No, and that is deliberate. Sworn translation is not a skill but a permit: a licensed translator stamps the document and it is the stamp that makes it valid in front of an office or an embassy. No lesson can hand that over. If you have an official document, go to a licensed office rather than to this page.
This path is written for someone who translates it themselves. If the text in front of you is one where a wrong term gets expensive and you have no time to learn, see the translation service page