40 Times Translations Went Hilariously South

Just like any other profession, translation requires many years of hard work and dedication. In this case, it's all about studying languages. Translator Dot Roberts told us about her journey towards becoming a professional translator. "I started learning German at school when I was 12 and I really enjoyed it. It was one of my favorite subjects," Dot says.

She continued to learn German and after graduating, went to Berlin to work as an au pair. Dutch came into the picture when she started her university years. Since she liked translation as a subject so much, she decided to pursue a Master's in Translation Studies at the University of Manchester.

While doing her Master's, Dot started doing freelance work. First at her part-time employer LUSH, later for Wayfair. "I built up my experience with them before taking on other clients and getting more into subtitling," the translator shares.

"I never really purposefully chose this profession," Dot admits. "I just always pursued the things I enjoyed the most and it sort of led me here. I love the projects I get to work on and I have so much fun doing my work and being part of the wonderful translator community."

Nowadays, her job isn’t just about doing translation and subtitling. Dot also hosts her own podcast called Meet the Translator. She chats with different translators about various topics relating to the industry. Don’t hesitate to give it a listen if board game, video game and sports translation and localization sound intriguing to you!

Dot is also a speaker at translation conferences and runs an annual audiovisual translation workshop with a colleague for students at the University of Manchester. "I love supporting new and aspiring translators and showing them how much fun the job can be!" Dot gushes.

What are the most important skills a translator should have? As we've seen from this list, language proficiency should be at the top of the list. Dot agrees but also tells Bored Panda another important characteristic most people wouldn’t think to name. 

"Your target language skills are actually more important than your source language skills," the translator believes. She says that a translator needs to be a really good writer in their target language.

Another important skill a good translator should learn, according to Dot, is to communicate clearly with clients. "I’d say you need to have good research skills and good communication skills. It’s important to have a strong relationship with your clients so you know exactly what it is they need you to do and you feel comfortable enough to ask them questions."

This skill can come in handy when the translation can be ambiguous and there are multiple potential interpretations. Dot recommends asking the client for context in these cases. "There’s a joke about translators always asking for context, but it’s true. There can be hundreds of different ways to translate something, so context is key if you want it to actually make sense," the translator says.

Currently, one of the hottest questions in the translation field is the growing presence of AI. "It’s definitely been a hot topic in the industry, with an increasing number of conference talks popping up about it," Dot agrees. Yet, she says that we're still figuring out how translators can get the maximum benefits. 

"Machine translation has been around for a while and it’s definitely getting better," Dot observes. "But it’s still not as good as human translation and I doubt it really ever will be."

She tells us she's seeing more translators offering MTPE (machine translation post-editing) as a service. MTPE means that a translator reviews and improves machine-translated text to make it more accurate and fluent.

Dot also says that she's aware of some automatic subtitle translation software. "But from what I’ve seen so far, it’s not amazing," she says honestly. Her outlook overall is positive.

"A lot of people are concerned about the future of translation with AI. But I think the more we understand it, the more we can hopefully use it to our advantage. It’ll be interesting to see how AI develops and shapes the industry!"

Naturally, we had to ask Dot if she has a favorite translation mishap. It's not hers, but one that she saw in Beijing while studying. "I think my favorite was in one of our textbooks. There was a list of dishes and their translations, and one of them was ‘squirrel sample fish’. Safe to say, I never ordered that one," Dot adds.