Training for Translators

Classes for translators and interpreters

Translation technique


Corinne McKay

How to certify a translation

A couple of readers have asked me lately how to certify a translation, so that’s today’s topic. This applies to translations certified for U.S. purposes: to be used in the U.S. or by U.S entities such as diplomatic facilities.

Some freelance translators want nothing to do with certified translations, and that’s totally fine. If you hate working with individuals, just don’t do it. Personally, I find certified translations easy and lucrative; I work on a per-page rate (usually US $75 per page) and I don’t do the translation until the client pays by credit card. I handle that through QuickBooks Online invoicing; until a few months ago I used PayPal, but since switching to QBO, I prefer that. It’s much cleaner in my accounting records, the fee is about the same as PayPal, and I think that the invoices look more professional. So far this year, I’ve earned $6,200 doing certified translations for individuals: about half of what I’ve earned from translating for direct clients or interpreting for agencies, but definitely enough to make it worthwhile.

To certify a translation for U.S. purposes, you should:

  1. First, put the responsibility for determining the certification requirements on the client, not on yourself. Individual clients will ask you all kinds of things:Will the Maryland Department of Motor Vehicles accept your translation? Will the U.S. Embassy in Luxembourg accept your translation? There is no possible way for you to know all of these requirements, and you don’t want to be responsible if your translation is rejected. So you want to say something to the client such as, “I am certified by the American Translators Association for German to English translation. Please verify with the entity to which you’re submitting the translation whether that certification is acceptable for their purposes, or send me their certification requirements and I will review them.”
  2. This relates to another issue, whether you have to be ATA-certified in order to certify a translation for U.S. purposes. Yes, no, maybe. That’s the honest answer. Many entities, most notably USCIS, the United States Citizenship and Immigration Services, do not require any credentials as a translator in order to certify a translation. The translator simply has to sign a certificate of accuracy saying that they are competent to translate the document, and that the translation is true and accurate. However, I feel that it is a distinct advantage to be ATA-certified if you want to translate official documents. Many entities do require it, and the vast majority of entities that require some sort of translator credential are going to require ATA certification.
  3. Use a certificate of accuracy. Entities such as the American Translators Association have sample certificates of accuracy available for free on their websites. If you are certified, put your Certified Translator seal on the certificate of accuracy. If you are not ATA-certified, just sign the certificate of accuracy. I no longer offer paper copies of the certificate of accuracy unless the client requests them: otherwise I just electronically sign the PDF version of the certificate in Adobe, and tell the client that they can print it out if needed.
  4. Make a policy about notarized certifications. Realistically, notarized certifications mean nothing (literally, nothing) about the quality of the translation. I’ve honestly never had a document notarized by a notary who even understood French, much less could assess the quality of the translation. All a notarized certification means is that the translator is who they say they are. And yet, people love notarized certifications because they look official. I strongly discourage notarized certifications because they are time-consuming and annoying to obtain; I nearly always have to explain to the notary that the purpose is only to notarize my signature, nothing to do with the translation. It can also be a challenge to find a place (typically, a bank branch) to get things notarized. Typically, I will tell clients that I recommend against a notarized certification only if the entity to which they are submitting the translation absolutely will not accept the translation without a notary’s stamp. I’ve also used an online notary through Notarize.com a couple of times, with good results. The only caveat is that the notary will be certified in a state that allows virtual notary services (typically, Nevada) rather than in the translator’s home state.

If you have other questions about how to certify a translation, just pop them in the chat, and I’ll try to help you!

Corinne McKay (classes@trainingfortranslators.com) is the founder of Training for Translators, and has been a full-time freelancer since 2002. An ATA-certified French to English translator and Colorado court-certified interpreter, she also holds a Master of Conference Interpreting from Glendon College. For more tips and insights, join the Training for Translators mailing list!


Corinne McKay

Does it make sense to translate into your non-native language?

Does it make sense to translate into your non-native language? Someone asked this on my monthly alumni call in October, and I think it’s an interesting topic, so let’s take a look.

The short answer

The TLDR version of this is: for most professional translators, it does not make sense to translate into your non-native language, but there are exceptions. Reasons for sticking to your native language include:

  • most importantly, translation quality
  • also, translation income, particularly if you get paid by the word, and you work more slowly into your non-native language
  • industry conventions

But interpreters do this all the time…

Right. Here’s the big exception. I would never, in a million years, translate into French, other than something short, informal, and informational. Once in a while, a US-based client will ask something like, “Can you write an e-mail in French, asking when the Senegalese consultant will have the final version of the report?” Sure. But otherwise, I never ever translate into French, because I’m not a native speaker.

However, pretty much every single time I interpret, I interpret in both directions, because it’s unwieldy and expensive to have two interpreters for every court appearance, attorney-client conference, etc. Nearly every interpreter in the US works in both directions, all the time. In Europe, it’s more common for interpreters to have only one active language (their native language), and then work from multiple passive languages, but in the US, things don’t really work that way. So the big exception to the “only into your native language” rule is that interpreters are expected to, and do do this all the time.

My take: the key here is that interpreters are trained (at least in all the training I’ve done so far) to use specific techniques when interpreting into their B language. For the non-interpreters, a B language is one that you interpret from and into, but it’s not your native language. Into-B techniques include using the simplest phrasing that is accurate; using concise phrasing even when the speaker is very wordy; using voice expression to convey meaning; “when in doubt, leave it out” if you can do that without compromising meaning; using phrases like, “the interpreter will paraphrase,” when you know that you don’t know the equivalent of a quote, idiom, or proverb in your B language, etc. And you can’t really use those techniques when you’re translating.

Why stick to your native language?

As stated above, there are many reasons to translate into your native language only. The most important is translation quality. Even if you have near-native fluency in your source language(s), you’re still not a native speaker. It’s likely that all of us know people who are really, really, fluent in a language, but still say things that, while they make complete sense, aren’t something a native speaker would say, or the tone is completely wrong. Like asking someone, “What’s wrong?” (empathetic) versus, “What’s your problem?” (rude). My husband and I went to Nepal on our honeymoon, and I took a picture of the sign outside a trekking lodge that proudly proclaimed, “We will welcome you so warmly, you will feel like going home.” That’s the kind of thing a fluent non-native speaker might say or write, without realizing that it means the opposite of what it’s supposed to mean.

The whole point of a good translation is to convey more than word-for-word meaning, and that’s really hard to do in your non-native language.

Additionally, most translators are going to work more slowly into their non-native language(s), which will drag down your income if you’re getting paid by the word.

A final risk is looking unprofessional. In the US, where the vast majority of translators work into their native language, it can look unprofessional to even offer translation services in the opposite direction.

But of course, there are exceptions

Exceptions to the native language rule include:

  • Translators whose dominant professional language is not their native language. If you came to the US from Italy when you were 18, then went to college and grad school here and have lived and worked in English for 25 years, your dominant professional language may no longer be Italian.
  • Translators who work with small-diffusion languages. If you need a translation from Tagalog, or Bulgarian, or Amharic into English, chances are it’s going to be hard to find a native English speaker to do that. You’ll probably have better luck with a native speaker of the non-English language, and then a native English proofreader.

I think that the native language convention is also at least partially cultural. Anecdotally, it seems that the US market has a strong preference for translators who work into their native language only, while the European and Asian markets are a bit more tolerant of non-native speaker translators.

Readers, over to you; any thoughts on this?


Corinne McKay

Tracking your translated words

File under: food for thought. A colleague and former student e-mailed me this morning and asked how many words a year I translate, and whether I track it. I haven’t tracked it–until now–and I guessed 300,000 words. My reasoning was: conventional wisdom holds that “the average” (whatever that means) full-time translator produces about 500,000 words a year. I translate about 60% of the time and work on my books and classes about 40% of the time, but I also focus on higher-paying translation work that allows me to work at a non-breakneck pace.

Then, as I was translating away this morning…I had to know. I figured we’re only a quarter and a little through the year, so it wouldn’t take that long to add it all up. True: after about half an hour of fiddling with a spreadsheet, I came up with the following stats. Because I do a lot of official document work where word count is kind of irrelevant, I broke those out into their own category. The Q1 (ish) totals:

  • 80,621 words of projects billed by the word or by the project
  • 61 pages of official documents billed by the page. I originally had 53, but then I immediately delivered 8 more today.

Is this a little? A lot? Who knows, but there you go. If you keep stats, what are yours?


Corinne McKay

Books about translation and writing

Thanks to reader Paul Froese for suggesting this topic; Paul e-mailed me, asking about textbooks that might help one become a better translator, or that might be helpful to beginning translators. Paul referenced the free translation course that’s available from logos.it, and wondered whether there are comparable textbook resources out there.

I have a few of my own suggestions, but Paul’s question prompted me to research this question in more detail. I find that for this kind of thing, Goodreads is often more helpful than Amazon, because Goodreads users can create suggested book lists on any topic. There are several Goodreads lists with suggestions of translation-related books:

Those should contain enough books to keep you busy for approximately the rest of this lifetime, but I’ll mention a few others. These are all easy to find on Goodreads and Amazon if you want to purchase them.

  • Why Translation Matters, by Edith Grossman. If I had unlimited time to read books, I would start by reading the entire Why X Matters series from Yale University Press. Honestly, they all look fascinating. But if you haven’t read Edith Grossman’s book, start with that!
  • Although technically a memoir and not a translation textbook, Gregory Rabassa’s If This Be Treason is probably my favorite book about translation.
  • Then there’s the “Topics in Translation” series from Multilingual Matters. These are mostly from the late 90s and early 2000s, but a lot of the topics are not time-sensitive and they seem to get quite good reviews on Goodreads and Amazon.
  • When I was in grad school for French Literature, we read Jeremy Munday’s Introducing Translation Studies and I remember it as being a good overview of translation theory, with helpful case studies of how the theory applies in the read world.

Then, since translation is, after all, writing, there are tons of great books on writing. Any recommendations here must be prefaced with Dorothy Parker’s advice, “If you have any young friends who aspire to become writers, the second greatest favor you can do them is to present them with copies of The Elements of Style. The first greatest, of course, is to shoot them now, while they’re happy.” Aside from that, The Elements of Style is a great book about writing, and is consistently named as one of the most influential books written in English, period. Back in the day (in the 80s, when I was in junior high and high school), this book was always referred to as “Strunk and White,” rather than The Elements of Style. And it took me an inordinately long time to realize that “White” was not only the author of advice about serial commas, but also of books that I had read until they fell apart at the binding (Charlotte’s Web, Stuart Little, Trumpet of the Swan). This one should definitely be in your arsenal!

I like style guides, so I use The Chicago Manual of Style on an almost-daily basis. Descartes’ writings or Descartes’s writings (option b)? Northern California or northern California (option a)? Does iPod use an initial lowercase letter even when it’s the first word in a sentence (yes)? Those dilemmas can only be solved with a style guide.

Then, if you just want to read a really good book on writing, read Stephen King’s On Writing. For someone who once described his own writing as “good salami,” Stephen King is incredibly good at writing about writing. From the obvious but often unsaid (leave out the boring parts) to the liberating (it’s OK to use regular words, like “said”), this book is just great.

I’m sure that other readers have good suggestions too; let’s hear them!


Corinne McKay

Speaking of Translation: translating outside the box

Eve Bodeux and I just released a new episode of our podcast, Speaking of Translation; here it is! We are also on iTunes if you’d like to subscribe to us there.

In this episode, Eve and Corinne discuss how to identify, market to, and successfully work in non-traditional translation specializations. Drawing on their own experiences translating children’s books, personality tests, university marketing materials, and zombie role-playing games (really!), Eve and Corinne offer ideas of other non-traditional specializations that translators might want to pursue, along with some pluses and minuses of working in the non-traditional market.

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Translating outside the box