Oftentimes, we at Monterey Language Services receive requests to have personal documents such as birth certificates or marriage licenses translated into other languages. Translating these kinds of documents is very important and should be handled with the utmost care since they are legal documents and can have a great effect on the specific functions that the customer plans to use these translated documents for. As a translator, there are several things that we will need to be careful of while doing so.

First, not every translator is able to translate these documents. By that, we do not particularly mean skill barrier that would prevent one from completing the translation, but there are certain certifications that are required to ensure that the translation can be used. For instance, in California, county clerks require court-certified or ATA certified translators to sign most translation certifications.

If you are a translator and are looking to expand your field of expertise, having these kinds of certifications will make you more attractive to potential clients. Monterey Language Services has an extensive network of court certified and ATA-certified interpreters as well as translators in many different languages whom we work with to ensure that we are always able to meet our clients’ needs.

One more thing to be careful of is the project’s timeline. Clients have different needs regarding timelines, and some might need urgent certified translations. While translating these kinds of documents in a short time might not be too difficult, the more concerning part is certifying the translation.

Most states or counties have their own forms that need to be filled out and notarized then submitted with the translation, but these forms need to be signed in-person, and the originals need to be given to the client. The client may expect to get everything in their hands in 24 hours. Unless we are 100% confident, otherwise we should give ourselves at least one extra day to ensure that any problems that come up do not affect the delivery of the files.

Being entrusted to help someone with the translation of their legal documents is an honor, but what’s what needs to be done and whether there is enough time to do it are important things to consider, so that we can avoid unexpected situations and deliver the project to the client on time.

As a translator, have you thought about changing your specialty? For translators, one of the most important things is to have a strong mastery of the language you are translating from as well as the language you are translating into. But it is also important to have your own specialty area that you are well familiar with—such as technical, medical, or legal fields.

Being a well-rounded translator is not a bad idea, but many translators have their own specialty that they have developed and focused on for their entire career. Sometimes though, translators and interpreters might want a change of pace, and break into different fields. While this isn’t easy, it’s also not impossible to start fresh in a new specialty field. So long as you have the determination and patience necessary to change your specialization, you can do it.

Depending on the field that you are switching to, what you will need to do will change. For example, if you want to go into a technical field such as information technology, you should focus on gaining knowledge of the field to be able to adequately translate or interpret the materials given to you. The best way to do this is to go back to school, or perhaps take a course at a community college. The latter choice would be a relatively inexpensive and an easy way to get the necessary knowledge of information technology. If there are any gaps in your expertise that need to be filled, you can try to contact experts and ask them to give you advice and answer any questions that you might have.

For everything else, there is the internet. For example, if you are trying to learn about the finance, there are many online resources such as investopedia that highlight the intricacies of financial documents. Other fields such as technology—especially more specific fields that deal with things such as data centers, contact centers, cloud services, and cyber security—have very specific terminology that translators who do not specialize in the field might have trouble translating correctly. For these, it might take you some time to read and research online.

For legal and medical matters, it is not as easy as just going back to school. You also need to take required training and have enough experience to satisfactorily translate or interpret matters of the law or medical fields. Experience is tricky to gain without having prior knowledge or specialization, but you can try working as an interpreter in training and begin trying to get your knowledge and experience that way. Try to expose yourself to opportunities and learn on the job, or go back to school and try to learn more about legal or medical terminology. Furthermore, do your best to build a portfolio of your work so that you can quickly show employers what you can bring to the table. Sometimes some work that you’ve done has elements that stand out in other work. With a portfolio, you can easily point to the work you’ve done and prove that you are capable of working in the field.

In our last post, we talked about Zoom’s useful interpretation function and how to use it. Other major video conferencing programs such as Microsoft Teams, Skype, and Google Meet have their own unique functions, but none that are integrated and allow for simultaneous interpretation. For the moment, Zoom is an option for using simultaneous remote interpretation. In this post, we will explore a little more about what features are available on Zoom as well as some entry-level lessons for Zoom use.

Let’s start with the basics. To connect to a Zoom meeting, you will first need to have Zoom downloaded to your computer or device and installed. Then, you will need the host to send you one of two things— either a link to the meeting or the meeting ID and the password. Some meetings do not have passwords though, but it’s good practice to ask for a password regardless when agreeing to the meeting. Meeting IDs typically follow this format, 000 0000 0000, with a total of eleven numbers. If the client sends you a meeting ID that does not consist of eleven numbers, you should check with them to confirm. Alternatively, if you do not want to connect through the computer or just want audio only, most Zoom meetings come with a phone number with which you can call into as well.

When you connect, there are several things that might happen depending on both your settings and how the host set up the meeting. If it is a large meeting with many people, then it’s possible that the host will have the meeting set up so that they will have to manually let participants into the meeting. This means that when you connect, you will not go directly into the call. Instead, you will see a screen that says that the host will let you into the meeting. When you get into the meeting, depending on your settings, you might join with your camera on and microphone on, or maybe both of them off, or a combination of the two. Be wary of that if you need a minute or two to get settled and do not want to have your microphone or video on when you connect. You can change this before you connect in the settings of Zoom.

When you are in the meeting, you will notice that there are different buttons at the bottom. As an interpreter you most likely will only need to use the buttons to toggle your microphone and video, the interpretation button if the client has it enabled, and of course the end call button when the meeting ends. Moreover, Zoom has a recording function and a function where the program can transcribe what was said during a recording in the target language. This will only work for the target language, which is English by default depending on what language the host has their program in. The transcription is fairly accurate and can be useful if you want to review what was said or translate the questions into a different language.

For an interpreter working remotely through this pandemic, you more than likely have used Zoom to provide your services. Like Google Meet, Zoom is one of the most used video conferencing tools. It is easy to use and comes with many features that make video conferencing more convenient. One of these features is its interpretation feature. This post will help you learn more about this feature and how to best use it.

First, the host should not be using a free account. The free account comes with many features, but it does not come with the interpretation feature enabled. The easiest way to do this is to upgrade to a business account. Along with a variety of features, the interpretation function is enabled on student and business accounts. Also, be sure to have Zoom updated to its latest version. The interpretation function did not come to the program until later versions, so older versions will not be able to use it. There are many clients who do not realize this and are confused as to why they cannot use interpretation despite perfectly following the instructions.

The next step is to make sure that the interpretation function is enabled. To do this, the host will need to go into the web portal for Zoom and sign into their account. From there, they will need to go into Settings and then go to In Meeting (Advanced). If there is no option for this, you will need to contact Zoom support to have it enabled. After you go into In Meeting (Advanced), all you need to do is scroll down to Language Interpretation and add the languages you need. Just note that you can add as many languages you want to the list of languages, but in a meeting, you can only set up a maximum of five at once.

After enabling the interpreter function and adding the desired languages, it is time to add the interpreters. While still in the web portal, navigate to Schedule a Meeting, and after setting up the meeting as you like, then scroll down to Interpretation and check the box for Enable Language Interpretation. In that same section, there should be a box where you can add an interpreter by their email address, and you can add what language they will be speaking. When you do this, be sure that the interpreter is using a Zoom account that is linked to the email that you put in. If they use a different account, then be sure to ask them for that email address so that you can add them.

Finally, you can launch the meeting. After the meeting is launched, have the interpreter(s) join, and then in the meeting controls, you should see Interpretation. Click on that and you will be able to add and remove interpreters as necessary. If the interpreters are not appearing, make sure that they are properly added, on the right account, and that you have the latest version of Zoom. If you follow all these instructions, then you will be on the way to a successful Zoom interpretation session!

The spread of COVID-19 has affected every part of the modern world, but there is light at the end of the tunnel. The collaborative efforts of scientists across the globe helped to come up with various vaccines that have proven to be effective against the virus. But not all people have been convinced to get the vaccine for different reasons. One of them is that there are patients who do not trust the vaccine because they have not received enough information in their native language, so they are unable to make an informed decision.

As an interpreter, there are many ways you can do community outreach and help more people get vaccinated. There are resources in other languages that speak to different information about the pandemic and vaccines, such as WHOs website, Boston Medical Center, Washington State Health Department, or even Orange County’s NC Health Department. Helping others to understand the vaccine and then help them get it is a very important service to the community and one that you can help with.

For an interpreter, first, the most obvious thing to do is set up an appointment to get your vaccine if you haven’t already. To do so, you will be able to be allowed into more places, and you will overall be more comfortable being outside. Though many businesses and areas are beginning to open up again, some places will only let you be present if you are fully vaccinated. By being fully vaccinated, you will be able to be anywhere you need to be. The other advantage is that you will have the experience of being vaccinated so that you feel more comfortable in conveying messages to the patient you are interpreting for. Your confidence might even be able to ease some of their anxiety.

After, you are vaccinated, you can help interpret at clinics, pharmacies, hospitals, or at vaccination areas that are set up outside of hospitals. The places that most likely will need the majority of help are the areas that are set up outside of hospitals. Depending on the population of the area that you are in, there might be a different concentration of non-native English speakers. For example, in California, there is a significant amount of Hispanic people, so there is a great demand for Spanish interpreters. If you are interested in helping as a volunteer interpreter, you can try looking on the internet for places that need interpreters. You could also join a medical hotline that hospitals use when they need an interpreter.

However, you should be careful of scams that might take advantage of you. You can find out if something is legitimate or not by searching it online or by looking at the various resources on the FCC, FTC, or US National Cyber Awareness System. If you do happen to come across a scam, you can report it to the FTC so that they can investigate it and hopefully shut it down so that no one else is affected by it.

In part 2 of this blog series, we will talk about some different tools that translators use to improve their translation experience.

One of the most popular tools is those that allow you to do PEMT (post-edited machine translation). If you receive a long document and are on a short deadline, then one of the best things to do is to run it through machine translation first and then work on it from there. The most recognized and possibly used machine translation program is SDL Trados. One reason is that SDL Trados has a vast amount of features and functions.

With all the features and functions that SDL Trados comes with, naturally it is much more complex and difficult to learn to use than other, simpler machine translation programs such as Memsource, Wordfast, or Google Translator’s Toolkit. There are also programs such as MemoQ who have been gaining their own following of people who would prefer them to SDL Trados due to certain features or ease of use. However, if you have the time to learn SDL Trados and become able to use it effectively, then it can open a lot of doors for you to do many things.

Aside from machine translation, translators of websites can also rest assured that there are easy ways for them to translate webpages for clients. For instance, if a website is WordPress based, you can ask the client to install a plugin such as WPML. With WPML, all they will have to do is export the target page or post that they want to have translated as an xliff and send it to you, the translator. Once you receive it, you can open it in one of the machine translation programs that were discussed above and insert your translations as if it was a bi-column word file. Then after you are done, you can just send the client back the xliff file and they can import it back into their websites and the translations will be there as if by magic. The great thing about most of these kinds of plugins is that they are simple to learn and once you do learn them, they will save you a lot of time. If the website is not WordPress, there are other programs that you can explore and some webhosts even come with their own built-in language support.

There are many different types of specialized tools that will best fit the kind of translation job that you are working. Therefore, it is important for us as translators to stay updated and in the loop of technology that is being updated or developed regarding what we can take advantage of as translators. This way we can rest assured to do better work and help more people in need of translation.

In modern times, there are many different tools at translators’ disposal that can be used to speed up translation and even make it faster. Of course, what tools you will end up prefer working with will depend on you as a translator and how you like to work. For example, if you prefer just working with a word processor like Microsoft Word, there are certain tricks that you can use to speed up your work and make even the longest and most monotonous translations easy.

In Word, there are many different functions that can be used to speed up translations. Macros, for example, are a great way of simplifying and standardizing repetitive phrases or formatting. Macros take some knowledge to implement, but they are very useful for all translators. For instance, if there is a specific phrase that is continuously used over the document, then you can create a macro so that you can just press a button every time you need to insert that word or phrase. Imagine the amount of time you can save by instead of typing out a full word every time, you just press a button and the entire word or phrase comes out.

Some translators also prefer to use voice to text programs to do their translations. The advantage of voice to text is that it is overall faster than typing. If you have a long document, you can get through it faster than if you were typing. Voice to text does come with some disadvantages though. You will need to make sure that you have a good microphone so that it can clearly pick up on your voice. You will also need to make sure that you speak clearly so that it does not mistake any of your words. You will also have to get used to the voice controls and customize it so that it fits your work habits. However, there are some programs that you can use to help fine tune the listening so that it captures exactly what you’re saying even if you aren’t speaking clearly.

In terms of programs that can be used, if you are not looking to spend too much money, there are free options like Google Docs that have a decent voice recognition system. Microsoft Word also has a dictate function that its users can use to type out their translations with their voices. Then there are more premium options such as DRAG0N which have built in AI that can learn from your voice patterns, or can learn from your direct input. Many translators who use voice dictation and get used to it tend to not go back to just typing out their translations.

For Asian languages such as Japanese, there are also programs such as ATOK that can automatically convert the text you are writing into the appropriate characters. Instead of manually having to sift through characters, the program will learn and recognize when certain characters should be used rather than others and then enter them for you. It can save a lot of time for translators not having to take the time to look for the appropriate character every time they translate.

For interpreters, there are many skills that they need to develop outside their language skills. To be a successful interpreter, you need to be able to remember what is being said and be able to translate that in your head and output it in the target language in a way that stays close in meaning and tone to what was originally said. This can be especially tricky for consecutive interpreters who are sometimes made to listen to someone talk for a lengthy period before they are given a break to interpret in. Leaving everything up to memory is unreliable and a sure way to put unnecessary stress on you and make you forget details of what was said. This is where note taking comes into play. With note taking, interpreters can jot down certain points, words, or ideas that will help them piece together what was originally said and translate it. But it is not always as simple as just writing down what you hear.

The first thing you can do to improve your note taking for interpretation is simple—practice. You can listen to anything you want, ideally something in your industry, and then practice taking notes on what the speaker is saying. This might feel like an awkward exercise when you are interpreting for no one, but it is a very reliable way to improve your note taking skills because you are essentially simulating an interpreting job where you are listening to a speaker and then translating for an audience.

The next thing you can do is while practicing, think about symbols or shorter ways to write some words. This is especially important for medical contexts where words can be extremely lengthy and complicated. It is overall faster to quickly draw a symbol than it is to write out something really long like pneumonoultramicroscopicsilicovolcanoconiosis. Of course, it might be a little impossible to have a specific symbol for every single diagnosis or word out there. So that is where the next idea comes to play.

You can try to figure out abbreviations for words. With the previous example, pneumonoultramicroscopicsilicovolcanoconiosis was mentioned. How can this be shortened and abbreviated that it will be easy to write it quickly and recall what it is when you read it again later? Look at the word and try to split up. So for this, you could maybe do pne-mon-tr-mics-ilico-volc-niosis. The word has been shortened down by more than half and it is not that hard to recall when re-reading it. The way words will be abbreviated may vary between people, so just try to abbreviate words the way you feel you will remember them.

The next tip is to write out the words in a logical order for the language that you are interpreting to. If you are interpreting into English, try keeping everything in subject, verb, noun order. This will help to keep everything organized and make sure that you can keep track of how the sentence is structured. It will also help to make the interpreting a little faster because you will already have the sentence in the right order.

Interpreting is a very mentally taxing job that is not easily accomplished but tricks like note taking can really help to make the job a little easier to handle and less daunting a task. However, even note taking needs practice before it can be a completely reliable tool to assist interpretation. But following these tips will help you improve your note taking and really take you to the next level of interpreting.

When starting a professional career as a translator or interpreter, there is a very important choice you need to make regarding how you would like to work. The choice might depend on your current situation or job availability, but it also depends on how you want your work life to be structured. If you do not want to necessarily be bound to a contract or to rates that you can’t set yourself, then you would probably lean towards working as a freelancer. However, if you like more structure and having a contract, then you would most likely prefer working in-house. If you are still undecided or wondering about what the benefits are of working either as a freelancer or an in-house interpreter, then read on to find out what you can expect at each role.

Let’s start with freelancers. Why would someone want to work as a freelancer rather than an in-house translator? One of the main attractions to being a freelancer is the ability to be your own boss. You can decline the jobs that you don’t like while accepting the ones you do. You are able to set your own rates and your own hours. You have more flexibility to arrange your schedule around your needs versus regular employees who are expected to work a scheduled amount of time each day. In general, freelancers have the potential to make more money than in-house translators as well, so it is a very attractive path for many.

So why would someone not want to be a freelancer? The freedom sounds like it would be enough, not to mention the potential amount of money that you can make. One of the main reasons that some people prefer working in-house over freelance is because of the variance in the work. The frequency of work that you receive is not always guaranteed even if you have repeat clients. You are reliant on people offering you work rather than just having a steady stream of guaranteed work. Also, you need to be able to market yourself and compete with other freelancers for work. If you are unable to set yourself apart from the other translators out there, then you will have difficulty finding work because you will just be blending in and not showing off your skills.

What makes working in-house so great then? One of the biggest draws to working in-house is having structure. If you are hired as a translator or interpreter for a company, you will only have to worry about the work that they give you. You will have a schedule for your work hours, you will have a team to work with, you will have a steady salary, and you will have company benefits. You might even receive training that will help you improve your skills or work better in the company. There will also be opportunities to use new technology or receive benefits that you would have otherwise have had to pay for on your own if you were a freelancer.

The downside of working in-house though is the fact that you are working for a company and have to play by their rules. You have to make sure that you conform to their company culture and values, so that could mean that you lose a lot of your individuality and uniqueness. The translation or interpretation styles that you had in the past might not work at the company anymore. You also have no ability to choose the work you do. If your employer gives you the same kind of work over and over again, then you have no choice but to do it.

Are you working as a transcriptionist? Even if you aren’t, as a translator or an interpreter, there may be times that you are asked to do transcription. As you might find out while doing transcription work, it can be very time consuming if you aren’t very experienced and know ways to make things easier. But there are a few simple things to make sure that you are making the most of your time without sacrificing quality.

First, this might seem very obvious, but make sure to use good headphones. You don’t have to splurge on headphones that people in the music industry might use, but a good pair of headphones can make all the difference even if you are not an audiophile. The types of audio files you will receive from your client will differ in quality. Sometimes they will be pristine quality, but sometimes you will have trouble hearing what some people are saying. This is where having a good pair of headphones will come in handy. The extra money you pay for headphones can be the difference between you trying to listen to a part over and over again and make out what is being said.

Next, make sure that you are in a comfortable environment where you will not be easily distracted or hear any kind of extra sounds. If you buy a pair of noise cancelling headphones, you might not have to worry about extra sounds bothering you, but it is still advisable to work in a place where you will not be disturbed.

You can also try to automate the job. While in the past, this might have not been a viable option, in the present day, there are a variety of tools out there that you can use to automatically catch the words for you and write them down. Of course, these kinds of programs are not without their flaws. There are tools like Zoom that can automatically transcribe meetings as long as you tell it to while the meeting is happening and other tools like Express Scribe that help you to ensure that the job gets done with integrated controls that help you control the recording while still typing.

Also be sure to sample the audio before you begin. This will help you figure out what you are dealing with as well as let you gauge how easy or difficult it will be to get through the audio. If you have to tweak the audio on your side so that you can make out what people are saying, then be sure to let the client know that it will take you about 1 hour to transcribe fifteen minutes. Both you and your client will be grateful if you take the time to go through the audio and make sure that you have an accurate assessment of how long it will take.

Overall, transcription can be a lengthy job that takes specific skills to do well. But this doesn’t mean that you will not be able to do the job well. As long as you have the right equipment and the enthusiasm, you will be able to get transcription done to a level that will be satisfactory to both you and your client.