{"id":141,"date":"2011-05-08T03:37:51","date_gmt":"2011-05-08T10:37:51","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/copywriter-translator.ibabbleon.com\/?p=141"},"modified":"2012-02-21T09:41:38","modified_gmt":"2012-02-21T17:41:38","slug":"do-translators-use-dictionaries","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.ibabbleon.com\/copywriter-translator\/2011\/05\/do-translators-use-dictionaries\/","title":{"rendered":"Do translators use dictionaries?"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Translators use dictionaries in the same way that doctors use the PDF (Physicians&#8217; Desk Reference) and lawyers consult law libraries. There is always more information available than what is stored in the human brain. Sometimes you even just need a gentle reminder. \ud83d\ude42<\/p>\n<p>A translator fluent in two languages may never need to consult a dictionary to translate a simple text: a letter, a web page, etc. However, most good translators will ponder and rethink a few words on the page, especially key words and adjectives that appear in a text, in order to get the &#8220;best&#8221; choice. Interestingly, translators consult the thesaurus almost as much as the dictionary. Often we know what a word means, but we&#8217;re looking for just the right connotation in the target language. A thesaurus, in this case, can be even more invaluable than a dictionary. After all, which word would you choose to describe a sunset? <strong>Wonderful, magnificent, delightful, pleasing, brilliant, superb, fantastic, marvelous<\/strong>? Sometimes it&#8217;s helpful to consider your options for those final touches to convey the author&#8217;s style and intention more than relying solely on dictionary definition number one.<\/p>\n<p>There are other tools that modern translators use. These include &#8220;translation memories&#8221; \u00e2\u20ac\u201d glossaries built upon previous translations, as well as online sources. Modern translators tend to be &#8220;plugged in&#8221; to the Internet. There are websites such as proz.com and wordreference.com where translators discuss difficult or country-specific terminology. The sum of all these discussions is an invaluable treasure trove of language information that is often more useful than a standardized dictionary.<\/p>\n<p>I am fond of saying that a good translator knows what he or she doesn&#8217;t know. You need to be able to spot phrases that might have a double meaning or an idiomatic reference so that you can consult the dictionary, the Internet and native speakers in order to find just the right meaning.<\/p>\n<p>If you see a dictionary in a translator&#8217;s hand, it doesn&#8217;t mean trouble. It means the translation is about to get one step closer to success.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Translators use dictionaries in the same way that doctors use the PDF (Physicians&#8217; Desk Reference) and lawyers consult law libraries. There is always more information available than what is s","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"sfsi_plus_gutenberg_text_before_share":"","sfsi_plus_gutenberg_show_text_before_share":"","sfsi_plus_gutenberg_icon_type":"","sfsi_plus_gutenberg_icon_alignemt":"","sfsi_plus_gutenburg_max_per_row":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[34,35,36],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ibabbleon.com\/copywriter-translator\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/141"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ibabbleon.com\/copywriter-translator\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ibabbleon.com\/copywriter-translator\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ibabbleon.com\/copywriter-translator\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ibabbleon.com\/copywriter-translator\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=141"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/www.ibabbleon.com\/copywriter-translator\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/141\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":244,"href":"https:\/\/www.ibabbleon.com\/copywriter-translator\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/141\/revisions\/244"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ibabbleon.com\/copywriter-translator\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=141"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ibabbleon.com\/copywriter-translator\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=141"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ibabbleon.com\/copywriter-translator\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=141"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}