Home   Blog   How to improve your language skills as a translator

How to improve your language skills as a translator

By: Shahzad Bashir Posted on Fri, 24-07-2015

A good translator should have exceptional skills in both the target languages and the source languages. The most effective way is to enlarge your vocabulary - focusing on the words you encounter in your translation projects. The specific ways are as follows:

Build Your Own Dictionary

Read in full the dictionary entries for each word. Use several sources and bilingual dictionaries, both paper and online: If your monolingual dictionary gives a meaning that is not covered in your bilingual dictionary, start to research how that specific word and meaning could be translated. Take notes of the example sentences given in the dictionary, and think how you could translate them.

Study a word from the world

Don't limit yourself at searching in dictionaries: consult also encyclopedias and other reference works: See how the words are used in context in a variety of situations. Also, online tools can be very helpful to see how the words you are studying are used in the real world, both in books and in web pages and documents: You should also think about what they mean in your source language and what their translation mean in your target language. How the meanings differ between the two languages, and how register, connotation and usage differ between the two languages.

The importance of keeping notes

Remember, every time you translate something, take careful note of all the words that you are uncertain about of that leave you with doubts: the words you are not sure what they mean, and those you know what they mean - but you don't know how to say the same in your target language. They are the starting points for further research.

Keep on doing these, as much and as thoroughly as you can, you'll see that your command not only of your source language, but also of your native language, will steadily improve.

Related Blogs

How to translate DWG file by using Trados

dwg: It means a drawing file save format created by AutoCAD, and now has been the standard format of 2D

Read More
How to import a Word text into a DWG file

Mars Translation can help you extract the texts in a DWG file and convert them into a Word file so

Read More
Convert DWG to Word online

dwg: It means a drawing file save format created by AutoCAD, and now has been the standard format of 2D

Read More
Convert DWG to TXT (text file) online

dwg: It means a drawing file save format created by AutoCAD, and now has been the standard format of 2D

Read More
Relationship between AutoCAD blocks and layers

AutoCAD blocks A block is an object that combines one or more single entity object. Operated as an individual complete object,

Read More
Overview of AutoCAD file format

What is a file formate A file format is a standard way that information is encoded for storage in a computer

Read More
How to output full HD PDF files from AutoCAD?

Software 1. AutoCAD 2015 - English 2. PDF virtual printer, such as Adobe Acrobat, PDF factory, or CutePDF. Step-by-Step 1. Open the CAD file,

Read More
What are AutoCAD print styles?

Plot style table is used to control the color, line width and other effects. In the layer manager, every layer

Read More
Unable to delete a layer in AutoCAD

The following layers can't be deleted: 1. Layer 0 and Layer Defpoints that are default layers. 2. The current active layer. To

Read More

© Copyright 2026 MarsTranslation