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Blog Translations Information Tools for Translation IV – Research tools
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| Written by Administrator |
| Thursday, 17 June 2010 05:29 |
 We have done translation work of material from various fields: electrical and electronics, information technology, history, science, business development, construction, etc. Although we do have expertise to perform the translation of this text, it is quite often when we have to do some research for many of the terms given in a document. Sometimes it may be just to confirm that the term in the target language the translator thought about is right, other times, to find out which is the appropriate term... always, we must make sure that the term in the target document expresses the same meaning than in the original document.Obviously, there are some specialized dictionaries which we often consult, but at this moment I want to speak of the most common tools which we use and are used for any type of document from various fields due to their simplicity, accuracy and speed. Wikipedia. Most people are well acquainted with this online Encyclomedia and how it works. In our case, we make use of the different language versions, in Spanish and in English, read the definitions and explanations given in each and in this way make sure that we are talking about the same object. We are aware that Wikipedia is not 100% reliable because it may not be completely accurate as it is done by individuals and there is no professional cross-checking of the information. But for our purpose of looking into the similarities of the terms, is enough. Online dictionaries. Very often, the dictionaries that give translations of words don’t give the most accurate translation for the context you are working on and you feel doubtful of the translation given. It is very important in these cases to check the meaning of the word in the original meaning, and cross check that the proposed translation has the same or similar meaning. For Spanish dictionary, we use the online dictionary of the Real Academia Española (http://buscon.rae.es/draeI/SrvltConsulta?). Although it is not extremely user-friendly and needs to improve a little the search algorithms, it is quite useful. For English dictionary, I use the Dictionary.com (http://dictionary.reference.com): it is quite quick and gives a good number of meanings. It also has a version that can be check through GPRS, i.e. through your cell-phone. Google Images. It is extremely useful to see what image results Google gives you for a term, especially when it is a physical object, of course. First you input the term in English (considering is the source) and see the pictures you get, hopefully getting the object you are talking about. Then, you go to the Google Images of Mexico (http://www.google.com.mx/imghp?hl=es&tab=wi) or Spain (http://www.google.es/imghp?hl=es&tab=wi) and input the translated term. You should get a similar set of images. Comments (0) |