Technical translation services in Kazakhstan
May 12th, 2009I’ve recently come back from Germany where I have studied for 6 months as an exchange language student.
Had I barely come through culture shock when a representative of a consulting company contacted me regarding remote translation services. Next day I got a document which consisted of 106 pages. The topic is technical and it concerns the reconstruction of the power plant in Southern Kazakhstan.
First I was a bit scared because I had never dealt with technical wording like “impeller”, “rotary-blade system”, “hydraulic unit” and so on. So I had to consult some handbooks and dictionaries. The more I was workin on this translation the more confident I was getting. Also the same words were repeated several times so I got to learn those words without puttting any effords into it.
There was a problem I tackled- from a synonymic set of terms I had to pick up the right one. It’s a bit difficult when one isn’t very good at this specific field of knowledge.
When translating the document I realised how important it was for a translator to be a specialist not only in grammar, syntax or vocabulary but also in the various fields of knowledge he or she has to deal with.