English-Indonesian Translation

All translators should agree that time matters most in their career. Time can convert to financial matters. Therefore, most tips for translation would include how to manage time. As an illustration, imagine you can finish a 500 word text in an hour. This, for instance, equals to $10. Then, by saving an hour, you can earn extra $10. Even though you have to pay another person to do small tasks for $6 in an hour, you still get an extra $4.

Tips for Translation: How Tools Help You

As illustrated above, a better time management may convert to more financial incomes. There are many strategies to save your time. For instance, instead of doing trivial tasks, you had better focused on doing the translation jobs. You can outsource trivial tasks like preparing invoices, managing social media accounts for marketing, or posting article updates on your websites and blogs.

Even looking up to dictionary for idioms and difficult terms can waste your time, right? The following are some tools to save your time as a part of tips for translation:

Digital Dictionary

A dictionary is certainly the most important ‘weapon’ for any translators. It may account for the most part of the translation process. That is why looking up the dictionary can waste your time. Imagine if you have to use the conventional dictionary.  Using digital dictionary can significantly save your time. A number of sites offer free dictionary, encyclopedia or thesaurus.

You may consider online or downloadable dictionary app. The online dictionary can help you online when you are connected to internet. The benefits include more comprehensive collections of words, idioms, and terms. Meanwhile, a downloadable dictionary is suitable for mobile translators. You can use it anywhere. However, the collection of terms and words may be limited.

Translation Memory Tool

This kind of time management tools is increasingly popular during the last several years. This tool does not translate texts for you. Instead, it helps you cut down the time to translate repetitive texts or sentences. There may be cases, in which you translate similar sentences repeatedly. The tools keep such sentences in its memory and retrieve them when finding similar sentences.

A number of apps are available with this feature. Some apps may be able to identify sentences that match 50-60%, while others may need more close match. The apps mostly work in a similar system: they tell you when identifying sentences that match what you did in the past.

Outsourcing Apps for Translator

As described above, cutting time otherwise used for doing trivial things, may benefit you much. A number of online platforms are ready to help you. The websites offer small services like proofreading, making invoices, or managing marketing accounts on social media. They are mostly paid on hourly basis.

Before hiring an outsourced service, make sure to consider the profit and loss aspects. The hourly spending must be lower than your hourly rate. The services must also be a worthy spending. Fortunately, you can find a number of People per Hour websites that offer such services.

Of course, there are many other tips for translation focus on time management. You do not need to have them all. Instead, as your career in translation goes, you will be able to identify what types of tools you may need.