Multiterm is one of the most useful translation tools available, and this video will show you how to use it in Microsoft Word.

I found this nice little comic strip at Mox’s blog, a site put up by a fellow translator.

I liked it because I feel like, to at least some extent, it shows what we translators go through at some point. When we are up to our eyes with work, an upcoming interview, when we can’t sleep and we have next to no contact with the outside world (not even through TV!), we’re in cruise control and can’t help but translate whatever we’re thinking. In other words, thinking itself has become a synonym for translating. We translate everything, out loud or in our heads, for ourselves and for others. Or we’ll speak in another language without realizing it or considering that Aunt So and S o doesn’t know the language and the dog doesn’t understand sentáte. But that doesn’t translate to what we think about life and death or what we’re planning to do next weekend.

As you can see, this post is not an attempt to solve anything. It’s just a reflection. We’ve made a few suggestions before about how to beat the exhaustion and stress when you’re in the middle of an important delivery (take a walk, eat an apple, call a friend on the phone). Exhaustion can lead to errors… For all the “craziness” that comes from too much translating… I don’t think there’s much we can do.

Personally, one of the things about translating that gets under my skin is having to check over it once I’m done. I hate it. But after a few jobs where I wanted to bang my head against the wall because I hadn’t gone back over it and spotted my stupid mistake (but of course someone else did, and was kind enough to point it out to me)…..Well, let’s just say that I accepted that reviewing translations is a must and cannot be avoided. And it may seem unnecessary if our translation is going to be revised by an editor, but isn’t it better for us to correct our errors before they do?

My solution? I always try to leave at least a couple of minutes before delivery time for going back over it. 10 or 15 minutes is plenty. The first three or four minutes are to relax: I finished the job. I’m no longer looking for words, I’m not after that exact phrase. I’m done translating. I go to the kitchen for some juice, maybe eat an apple, or step out on the balcony for some fresh air. And then I come back to face the final step.

I run spell check (for Word documents, which are the most common for me), which is necessary and helpful. But you have to remember that it’s not perfect: spell check doesn’t know when “sí” needs an accent and when it doesn’t, when you want to say “tale” or “tall” or when you’ve mistakenly written “his high-heels.” You have to reread the text, there’s no way around it. Sit down and read it closely and carefully. The little break between translating and reviewing helps you distance yourself from it a bit, making it seem “newer.” Being so into the text causes our eyes to play tricks on us, leading us to believe that we had written evrey word perfectly…