ABSTRACT
114In this chapter: It is far easier to learn and remember specialized terminology, one of the professional translator’s main concerns, if one thinks of it as simply the way working people talk and write, rather than trying to memorize long lists of words taken out of context.
Intuitive leaps: pretending to be someone you’re not – a doctor when you’re translating a medical report, for example – based on fairly flimsy evidence, such as television shows about doctors that you’ve watched, may be unreliable, but is better than nothing (helps you make coherent guesses). Intuitive leaps are also often supersized with the help of the Internet, especially Google Translate and online dictionaries.
Pattern-building: essential to successful professional translation is repeated attentive exposure to people at work, and the process of constructing patterns out of their behavior – whether you actually do the job you then later “pretend” to do when you translate, or only read about it and ask people about it. Terminological pattern-building can happen entirely in the head – in the memory circuits of the translator’s own brain – but it too is often supersized through the creation and maintenance of termbases, and their use in Translation Memory software.
Rules and theories: memorizing vocabulary lists and other domain-specific features (registers, common phrases, etc.) is not the most effective way to learn specialized terminology, but even that sort of exercise constitutes “experience” of a sort, and some of it may stick.
