Jianjun's Blog

Many translators would agree that academic curiosity and a willingness to learn new things are vital assets in the highly competitive translation market. While marketing skills and linguistic knowledge are essential for a successful career in freelance translation, translators must also know how to research new terms and understand what it is that they are translating. This is especially true of those translators who choose to specialise as they will need to be familiar with the relevant jargon and be familiar with their chosen area of specialisation. Medical translators are often expected to have at least a basic knowledge of biology and medical terms, while technical translators may find it useful to know how certain components of a machine function.

For those translators who choose to stick to ‘general’ translation, or who are considering moving into a certain area of specialisation, it’s important to know where to turn to when you come across an unfamiliar term or concept. Specialised dictionaries are a good start and the reference section of your local library can be a great help in times of need. Online encyclopaedias are a relatively new resource and there are several Chinese-language encyclopaedias that are worth bookmarking.

• Hoodong (互动在线) - China’s largest wiki site and online encyclopaedia. Its format is very similar to that of the well-known Wikipedia, it’s easy to browse and covers a wide range of subjects. With over 2 million articles, you should be able to find what you’re looking for.

• Baidu Baike (百度百科) - The second most popular online encyclopaedia with over 1 million articles and is pleasing to the eye. Its only drawback is that it’s quite hard to browse.

• Wikipedia ZH (维基百科) – Last but not least, there’s the Chinese-language edition of the world renowned Wikipedia encyclopaedia. Due to the popularity of the other two websites and internet restrictions in some parts of Mainland China, Wikipedia hasn’t had the same level of success amongst the Chinese-speaking community. It’s still a useful resource as its multilingual platform will allow you to cross-reference unknown terms with relative ease.

That’s all from me for now. The Beijing Olympics kicks off in a few days’ time so I would like to end this post with a resounding “中国加油!”