Translation has become an industry worth billions of dollars right now, and the demand for high-qualification translators is increasing to deal with the bigger volume of works worldwide. If you are preparing yourself for becoming a translator, you need to know first what is the job and how you need to prepare yourself. Getting to know about the types of translation and documents you will have in the future can be a soft start that will save your career later.
The main duty of a translator is basically to convert documents or text between two language pairs. It sounds easy but not as it is since you have to master both language pairs and also the technique to translate them. For the last one, there is a lot of knowledge you need to comprehend, but differentiating the types of documents can be basic for you before you hit further.
Basically, translation services can handle four types of most common documents or texts which are general, literary, professional, and technical translation.
A. General Translation
The general translation is the simplest form of translation which needs no specific format of translation. It may involve a general format that is not governed by certain rules attached to it. The basic requirement is only to maintain the information precisely from the source to the target langauge.
B. Literary Translation
The second type of translation, as its name, is about the translation of literary works or documents such as novels, poems, plays, and stories. This is considered as one of the hardest types of translation since it needs a deep understanding and comprehension of the literature area as well as the cultural background where the literature comes from.
The difficult part of translating the literary works is to find the equivalent context and background. For example, in some humorous plays or stories, a suitable translation is often impossible to make since every culture has its own background that does not work in other language cultures.
C. Professional Translation
Professional translation is a type of translation for any professional document such as medical and legal documents. While the rule is only to make an accurate translation without any misinterpretation that can cause implications, the professional translation also has strict rules and styles. It is a complex job in which you have to be very careful in using equal terms and jargon of the source and target language.
Besides the two above, the business document translation also belongs to this category. It is not as complex as the legal and medical translation but still needs careful consideration since accuracy is a priority. Some documents that belong to this sub-category are business and company-related documents.
D. Technical Translation
The technical documents can be in the form of manual, user guidelines, and engineering documents. In this topic, a translator should have enough understanding of the engineering terms. It should be done accurately just like the previous professional translation type which should not create future problems in understanding the translated documents.
However, there are still so many other types of documents that can be categorized into the four types above i.e. website translation. But many types of websites with different purposes will use the style that resembles one of the mentioned types above. Thus a good understanding and comprehension will help you advance in this area.
