EVS Translations welcomes the newest member to its in-house translation team – our Chinese translator Yuan, responsible for translations from German and English. He’s supported by our fantastic project managers as well as the translation engineering team for Chinese. I caught up with him to find out how he’s settling in.
Q: How did you get into translation?
A: I have always enjoyed the feeling of switching between different languages. All these motivate me in pursuing a profession where I can engage myself in language switches. This is how my career as a translator started.
Q: What are the challenges in translating Chinese?
A: The biggest challenge lies in sentence structure and expressions, especially for complicated English or German sentences. An example could be translating content for advertising into Chinese. It’s not easy to find a Chinese equivalent for a certain expression, because Chinese tend to use many idioms (usually made up of four characters) to achieve the same advertising effect, so choosing the most suitable one can be a process of brain-storming. Apart from this, when translating into Chinese, one should also pay attention to punctuation, which could also vary from place to place.
Q: Do you have any tips or advice for our clients who want to translate their materials into Chinese?
A: You’ve got to keep the consistency of the translation in terms of terminology. This should be a priority in maintaining the translation’s quality. This gets harder as the volume of content grows, so it has to be properly managed from the outset.
Q: How is life at EVS Translations as an in-house translator?
A: EVS Translations has its unique, professional management process for all translation projects, if I could compare it to a gear system, now I feel like myself already being one of the gears, well meshed with each other. Besides, as an in-house translator, I am honored to be able to work together with other native speakers of English and German. This is an invaluable resource in ensuring prompt communication and information exchange. It’s a great environment to work in as a translator.
Q: What do you think makes a great translation?
A: A great translation is about the core word “accuracy”. Thoroughly understanding and interpreting the (hidden) meaning of a source text, while ensuring accuracy in stylistic refinement. I think a “ready-to-learn” attitude will play an essential role, which means, it is the translator’s insatiability, relentlessness, and perseverance for knowledge that make a great translation.
Thanks to Yuan for speaking with me! We wish him all the best as he supports our clients manage their growing demand for Chinese information and communications.
