Translation Tips from Dr. Paul Gillingham.

1. Read the document once from start to finish concentrating on deciphering its overall meaning, the gist; don’t worry about individual words or even sentences, but ensure that by the end you can define to your own satisfaction the central meaning of the text. If you cannot, you’ll have to do it again; it’s essential to know the gist of any passage BEFORE you begin detailed translation efforts.

2. Begin translation sentence by sentence.

3. When you come across a word you don’t know, STOP. Do not immediately look it up; examine the context and identify what sort of word it is – noun, verb, adjective etc. If it is a verb, you need to make the infinitive; eg in Spanish “peca” is the third person singular of “pecar”. Now go to the dictionary, and find its meaning.

4. When you have completed a first draft, which many people advise should be left rough and finished with some urgency, you can then use the time you have set aside – at least twenty minutes, and ideally as much as half an hour – to reread and polish; ensuring that individual sentences are grammatical, fluent and make sense; and that those sentences together sum up to a coherent body of writing; a passage with a clear theme and meaning.

5. This implies very careful time management; were this my exam, I think I’d aim to use ten minutes for a first read, fifty minutes for a first draft and half an hour for a final extensive polishing and checking.

6. Aiming to translate the minimum acceptable, however that may be defined, is a high risk strategy. One serious error in 500 words will almost certainly not derail your grasp of the text’s overall meaning. One serious error in 250 words may well do so.