How to be good translator?
Not only learning a foreign language well can translate well, and their mother tongue skills also determine the quality of the translation. If you cannot be good at the Chinese, you cannot also be good at English translation. I think, to be a good translator, the following views are worth noting:

First of all, you should have good English reading skills.
Translator should know that the view is wrong that you understand the English and have a dictionary, and then can do translations. The Information will have more or less losses during the conduction process from one place to other place. Perhaps translator can probably understand the meaning, but it does not mean that translator can express the original meaning to another when translators receive the fragments words.

Moreover, if translators express these fragments words again, there may be lost meaning. So the reader to the translated file can only receive the fragments translation, and cannot understand the original meaning.

Good English reading skills is mean to the basically complete and accurate understanding of the original content including the idea of the exact meaning which the article conveys to reader, the structure of the organization, and other content, such as puns, allusions and so on.

This can ensure the translator to understand as much as possible the original information. Of course, it is very default to do these, but you can not ignore that information, at least we should be able to feel the information. Lack of English reading ability, translator cannot do good translation in many case.

Read Also: Tips of A Successful Freelance Translator

Second, there must be a good dictionary.
When I just learned the translation, a teacher pointed out “The translator must have a good dictionary, Kingsoft is totally unacceptable.” I was not convinced before, but over all these years, I have slowly realized that he said makes sense.

In my experience, the value of a good dictionary is mainly reflected in the following aspects:

First, a good dictionary can explain the translation very comprehensive, and you can find the precise and appropriate interpretation for the words or sentences. You should not to make your own interpretation or explanation. This can make you know the precise meaning of the word.

We all know that Al Pacino and Robert De Niro acted in a very exciting movie Heat. Without a good dictionary, perhaps you will try to translate it into “hot”, but the good dictionary will tell you that Heat is American slang, refers specifically to that the police make every effort to hunt down criminals.

Second, a good dictionary usually contains thesaurus. The thesaurus is very useful for the translator. In some time we could not find a suitable translation for the words or sentences. But when referring to dictionary thesaurus, we can find a suitable synonym to translate them over. Put the translation in the file it may very suit for the context.

Third, a good dictionary will provide a number of precise and appropriate sentences. If there is an English-Chinese dictionary, the sentences will be translated into Chinese, so that we come into contact with the usage of words in context