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31st translation contest: "A translator's life" » English to Chinese

Competition in this pair is now closed, and the winning entry has been announced.

Discussion and feedback about the competition in this language pair may now be provided by visiting the "Discussion & feedback" page for this pair. Entries may also be individually discussed by clicking the "Discuss" link next to any listed entry.

Source text in English

[...] Translators just didn't get recognition, they didn't expect to make much of a living, just get by. Very few people were actually trained as translators, but most had a solid college education and a solid knowledge of languages, at least their own language. I had a friend who fell exactly into that category and my circle of friends expanded to include other translators. I found them to be much more interesting as people, and discovered that we often had similar life experiences. I never had trouble making friends, but I always felt "different" and I'm sure they felt it too. When my friend retired, she recommended me as her replacement. I now entered the realm of Reinsurance, of which I knew nothing. I was also the only translator there, and didn't have much to fall back on. However, it was another notch up....

On my new job, I started looking through the files, asking questions and got the company to enroll me in Insurance courses. The College of Insurance was across the street, and I consulted fire codes, insurance policies and fire extinguisher catalogs in their library. I was learning what I had never had the luxury of being able to do before: research. The first time I had to translate a proposal for purposes of insurance of a nuclear plant, I got a call from the head man in that department, congratulating me on the job I had done. "Compares favorably with what we are used to," he said. What an upper! What happened was that I consulted a document in the files similar to the one I was tackling for guidance, but when I saw that my predecessor had used the word "nucleus" instead of "core", I realized that the files were useless to me. I went across the street to the library and looked up "nuclear plants." I immediately found all the terminology I needed.

It takes a great deal more than that to be a good translator these days, of course. [...]

The winning entry has been announced in this pair.

There were 7 entries submitted in this pair during the submission phase. The winning entry was determined based on finals round voting by peers.

Competition in this pair is now closed.


Entries (7 total) Expand all entries

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Entry #36283 — Discuss 0 — Variant: Not specified
jyuan_us
jyuan_us
United States
Winner
Voting points1st2nd3rd
7516 x44 x23 x1
Entry tagging:
  • 3 users entered 3 "like" tags
  • 1 user agreed with "likes" (1 total agree)
驾轻就熟
Good term selection
Miles Wang
+1
第一次
Flows well
Good seque​ncing of w​ording
Alicewangwei
之后
Flows well
Jockie Liu
Entry #35639 — Discuss 0 — Variant: Simplified
Voting points1st2nd3rd
6714 x45 x21 x1
Entry tagging:
  • 3 users entered 4 "like" tags
  • 2 users agreed with "likes" (2 total agrees)
笔译员
Good term selection
Wenyue Ouyang
+2
科班出身
Good term selection
Jockie Liu
具备扎实的语言功底,至少对母语运用自如
Good term selection
Victor Lau
随后
Flows well
Jockie Liu
Entry #35219 — Discuss 0 — Variant: Simplified
Voting points1st2nd3rd
428 x44 x22 x1
Entry tagging:
  • No "like" tags
Entry #35501 — Discuss 0 — Variant: Simplified
Voting points1st2nd3rd
204 x41 x22 x1
Entry tagging:
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Entry #35657 — Discuss 0 — Variant: Simplified
Voting points1st2nd3rd
111 x43 x21 x1
Entry tagging:
  • 1 user entered 1 "like" tag
堆芯
Good term selection
Jockie Liu
Entry #35408 — Discuss 0 — Variant: Simplified
Lau Wei Tsinn
Lau Wei Tsinn
Singapore
Voting points1st2nd3rd
603 x20
Entry tagging:
  • No "like" tags
Entry #35476 — Discuss 0 — Variant: Not specified
Voting points1st2nd3rd
2002 x1
Entry tagging:
  • No "like" tags