Translation

WORKING PHILOSOPHY

Love and respect for language in general, and for the German and English languages in particular, are the driving forces behind my work. A language is a living organism that needs to be treated with care and a sense of responsibility. A smooth, idiomatically correct flow of the target text is what I look for when I translate. Each sentence of the original document first needs to be understood, then re-thought in the target language. Finding just the right idiomatic expression in the target language in each given situation is key to creating a translation that gives the appearance of an original document.

While good writing skills are imperative for any written communication effort, knowing what you are writing about is just as essential. Many years of hands-on experience in the industry have provided me with a unique understanding of technical matters. And many more years of working closely with client experts on numerous translation projects have added to this expertise. Each new project requires studying and fully understanding the respective subject matter. You cannot translate what you don’t understand — a fact that is often ignored in the translation industry.

Translating is much more than just substituting a word in the target language for each word in the source language. That is why machines cannot do it. The logic behind human language is totally different from machine (i.e. computer) logic. It takes a human brain to translate it. Languages use different imagery, different grammatical principles and above all, very different idiomatic expressions. 

Clarity is the most important issue. Compensating for lack of expertise by using vague expressions is a technique as common as it is fatal for human communication.

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