A Good Translator Should Be Passionate About His or Her Job

It is widely thought that speaking a foreign language gives you the ability to be a translator, but this job is not as easy as it seems. We gathered a list of qualities that a good translator should have, as well as a story from one of our personnel who created the meaning of a new word.

So, the question is: what are the characteristics of a good translator?

  1. 1. Passion and curiosity: Professional translators are passionate about what they do and try their best to deliver high-quality projects.
  2. 2. Skilled in linguistics and rich in vocabulary: Certified translators at Homeland Language Services have undergone extensive education and have considerable experience. Our professionals are constantly trained, gathering new knowledge to provide the best services.
  3. 3. Accuracy and honesty: Providing accurate information is essential for translations. The goal of professionals is to express the source text as clearly as possible without ambiguity.
  4. 4. Appreciation for other cultures: Diplomacy is their motto. They break down misconceptions, stigmas, and other language barriers, so as to prevent misunderstanding between different cultures.
  5. 5. Time management skills: Tight deadlines are part of the daily challenges; every minute can make a difference. Our certified translators cope with high-stakes situations when major projects need to be completed in a record time, which is usually in the medical and social industries.

 

At Homeland Language Services, we are proud of our translators, who possess these great qualities. Fortunately,  Ahmed Ali — one of our Arabic-English interpreters from Egypt— has shared with us the story about his translator experience:

“During my college days, I’ve had two major military translation projects. The first one was when my professor chose three of my colleagues —who had top scores in the exams— and myself to assist him with a military translation for a training project report between Saudi and American Air forces.

It was a challenging project, as it was a new field of translation for me and it was the first time I had a deadline to finish my share. Additionally, it was a classified document, so we could only work in our professor’s office with him.

The second project I’d worked on was my graduation project, where he asked us to translate a book in the military field that had not been translated before. I managed to find a book about Military siege tactics across history up to the modern ages.

One of the main challenges I have ever faced was a new word that was not found in any dictionary. After researching in vain, I informed my professor who advised me to fashion a new meaning out of the context. After he approved it, he decided to add it to his own Dictionary, which he was about to release.

Later on, I managed to put a glossary together after I finished translating the book. As a glossary was extra work and I was the only one who included it, my professor gave me the highest score and I managed to graduate with excellence.”

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Document Translation Service

Document Translation Services in Houston: Increasing Language Accessibility for Educators

Educators depend on academic document translation to make learning more accessible. For English Language Learners transition to the American school system will be easier with translated academic documents. Besides, it ensures meaningful communication with Limited English Proficiency parents and guardians.

Furthermore, regulations governing language accessibility in institutions in the US require schools and school districts to communicate with LEP families in the languages they understand. So all learners receive equal access to educational opportunities and equal chance for academic achievement. Again, translating report cards and handbooks can help students from non-English speaking families and backgrounds progress academically while learning English. Essentially, there is no better way to keep parents and guardians informed than by helping them understand their child’s academic progress and needs. Document translation services in Houston can bridge this communication gap.
Here are commonly requested academic documents that teachers and educators are translating to make education more comfortable for foreign students:

Report Cards

The student report card is perhaps the most valuable communication tool of academia. Professional translation of student report cards allows the message from the teacher to reach parents without the risk of miscommunication. More critically, professional translation is beneficial to come across with teacher’s comments that are an important part of the student’s report card.

Student and Parent Handbooks

These documents contain essential information for parents and guardians, such as valuable phone numbers, parenting tips, testing dates, crucial meeting dates, policies, and graduation requirements. Your finalized or updated handbooks need to be professionally translated so that they are accurate and culturally appropriate for your school’s community.

School Rules and Policies

School rules and policies require regular updates. For LEP students and parents to understand newly updated rules and expectations, you will want to have these translated with each update. Professional translation is key ensuring your message is consistent and effective in all the target languages.

Details about Language Assistance Programs

As you share particulars about language assistance programs, you will want this data available in the languages that your students and community speak, so that they know how to access these services. Availing this information in various languages and in multiple formats provides LEP parents and guardians with the school-related advice they need to make informed decisions and be helpful participants in their children’s education.

Safety Manuals

Safety manuals provide information to school employees about safety regulations and policies. When getting safety manuals translated, make sure you find the best document translation services in Houston. It will ensure your final translation is of the highest quality. Safety content is vital so you need it to be translated as accurately and precisely as possible.

At Homeland Language Services we speak your learner’s language. For many years, we have allied with schools and school districts, delivering customized translation for education. We parallel our linguists’ prowess to the specific needs of your school’s project.

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Document Translation Services

The Need for Certified Document Translation Services During the Covid-19 Pandemic

During a pandemic, patients need quality healthcare, which involves the provision of timely and accurate communication with doctors and medical insurance providers. More importantly, caring for Limited English Proficient (LEP) people can be complex due to language barriers. Therefore, in order to improve patient outcomes especially in this case, it is essential to provide the healthcare content and pertinent medical documents in the languages that the patients speak. As such, making your medical and healthcare documents multilingual is a requirement you must meet nowadays. Here are four fundamental types of healthcare content you should translate during a pandemic.

Critical Medical Documents

Translation of medical documents can become an obstacle in the organization’s flow involving extra costs. In order to be eligible for federal financial assistance, you need to make critical medical documents available in the most common languages spoken by the patients. Additionally, you need to translate your medical documents for compliance with federal regulations. Critical medical data that require certified document translation services includes complaint forms, discharge instructions, intake forms, informed consent documents, notices of eligibility criteria for services, and notices of free language assistance.

Emergency Notifications

It is especially important during a pandemic to inform all people that visit your healthcare facility of current health-related protocols. Such information includes lifesaving emergency information on the ongoing pandemic, hand washing and sanitizing diagrams, rules for visitors. It is vital to have these emergency notifications in all relevant languages in areas where there is high traffic such as entrance points, waiting areas. In the case there are digital monitors and displays throughout your facility, you can make the information available in different languages with the help of subtitles. Having your emergency information available in various languages will ensure that all your patients, even foreigners, can access critical information during the pandemic.

Digital Multilingual Emergency Communications

Communicating on social media, your website, text messages, and emails are the best methods to quickly dispatch pertinent information for communities and patients you serve during the pandemic. As a healthcare provider, you need to spread emergency information covering various important issues regarding the Covid-19 virus in order to mitigate risks. To be effective, you need to make these communications available in multiple languages.

Printed Multilingual Emergency Communications

A big part of the community you serve, for example, senior citizens and people with disabilities, can’t use online technologies such as social media and email. Therefore, direct mail with printed documents is a way to communicate with this segment of the population. After preparing your documents in plain language, it is important to order certified document translation services to localize them for you. This will guarantee that your papers are high-quality, accurate and culturally appropriate so it makes sense to your target language speakers.

Partnering with Homeland Language Services ensures that your medical and healthcare content reaches the highest quality of translation. This will provide assurance to you that all the time, especially during Covid-19 pandemic, that you are communicating the right information to the right people at the right time.

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video remote interpreting

Consideration for Document Translation Services Houston

Document translation services help in converting a document from a different source language to a target language. From history books, the first work of translation was in religious texts. Today, document translation services Houston helps cover different industry niches and topics. The translation services are essential as it promotes understanding of written contents and proper communication delivery to people with other languages in Houston or limited English speaking people. Translation services impact all aspects of society from day to day activities, economies, private and public governance, etc.

Many people outside language and communication services tend to find it hard to understand the procedure for document translation and the process involved. In the real sense, document translation involves quite a lot than just replacing the text into another language from the source text. To help you get the right document translation services in Houston, the following clarifications will assist in knowing the importance of translation service and the process it takes.

  1. Adequate Preparation

A beginner translator should have a good understanding of the translation process. Every other translator must accept that it can be challenging to provide accurate document translation, but the process should be near perfect. There are other constraints that a document translator should be aware of, such as the subject or theme and also the target audience. A well-equipped translator will spend less effort during the translation process and will deliver near-perfect content as the source language.

  1. Niche Specialty or Subject Knowledge

Different industries and niches require different translators. Some document translators can handle general subjects while some document translators can only deal with specific topics like financial, legal, educational, medical, or business translations. And also, some document translators are bilingual; therefore, they can handle several languages, while some only specialize in a specific language.

Even though a document translator specializes in a specific niche and language, they have to prepare beforehand before the translation process begins. Many specialized document translation services in Houston are near perfect as the translators go over the contents before translation to get an overview. The translators will research terms as well as ask the target audience and source clients for terms and their meaning to provide a consistent and accurate translation. The tone used from the source language, a document translator, should maintain it through the target language for consistency and clarifications.

  1. Delivery Time

Many clients have deadlines to meet, and therefore a document translator should be speedy and provide on-time delivery. This will help if the client has many other projects in waiting and needs to communicate or deliver information to the target audience language on time. A fast work rate is important, but a good translator should have a fast turnaround without compromising the quality.

  1. Target Audience

Cultural interchange occurs in many ways, and the key part that promotes it is document translation services. A document translator should have a better and clear understanding of the target audience and their culture. Many people from different languages enjoy films, literature, and many other forms of art through document translation. A translator should tail the written content from the source language perfectly over to the target language smoothly without loss of content. Document translation services Houston convey news, boost tourism, and better international diplomacy by delivering information from the original language to different languages. Therefore, this ensures an understanding of the information regardless of the language spoken.

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