Creative Aspects of a Translator’s job

Travelling day and night, jumping from one time zone to another and still working with utmost perfection is quite an impossible job to do. But some great professionals out there, who have dedicated their heart and soul to their respective jobs, don’t mind taking up the challenge. While at times there occurs some bumps and breaks in the work delivered, but otherwise the overall outputs delivered are par the excellence. Similar is the job profile of translators, every now and then these people need to jump from one language to another to deliver the message effectively and efficiently within the stipulated time frame. Due to some situations gone wrong and errors committed unknowingly by some of the professionals as it would have happened in any profession, biased notions such as translator as traitor have started prevailing. Working hard in the shadows of prejudice and still delivering brilliant outputs is a tough task but their bag pack filled with a combination of skills and a hint of their personal creativity help the translation professionals in better dealing and beating out the challenges of their profession.

Here is an admirable set of skills that expert language translation professionals possess with their binge of creativity manifested in it:

1.      Ability to connect the dots

A translator has to go on connecting many dots before finally achieving the amazing end results. The dots that language translators need to connect harmoniously together include factors like feel of language, translation and writing skills, in-depth contextual knowledge, ability to read between the lines and other technical aspects of the work such as CAT tools, glossaries, resources and others.

2.      Creatively perceptive

Language translation professionals are a great artist that not just transfers the text from one language to another but also elaborates, adapts and metamorphoses information in source language in adequate formats of the target language. Like any other artists, translators too need to have a creative perspective of their own otherwise they would be lost in the translations. They need to soak up the language available around them and then modify the solutions accordingly.

3.      Language as a creative tool

Language is indisputably a tool to highlight a linguistic expert’s creative approaches in translation. Just like an artist uses colours, make their varied combinations to serve the purpose of an art project, translators similarly use language as a personalized tool to fulfill their respective work demands.  Considering the fact that translators are champions in dealing with at least two of different languages, their creativity gets stimulated even more. They are enriched by languages and know exactly how to fill the void between the two.  

Translators’ creativity is evident on many levels but is in urgent need of true as well as honest attention and appreciation, first and foremost by translators themselves, and then by the rest of the world.  They are not copycats but creators of an art form and this is the message about the profession that they need to firmly and confidently disperse out to the world.