Lessons on (Audiovisual) Translation from GAIN

My work experience at GAIN, a language service provider and/or translation agency in South Tangerang, Indonesia, has taught me a lot of important lessons over the course of my 3.5 years there as an in-house (full-time) translator; mostly handling materials pertaining to audiovisual translation (i.e., subtitling and translation of dubbing scripts), that is to say, working in a translation production team--chief among which are how to exercise effective self-control (i.e., discipline), implement mastery over time management, and attain proficiency in (translation) project management.

Subtitling process requires the (audiovisual) translator to sit down in front of the computer, be it desktop or laptop, and, technically, start converting source texts, from the available scripts and/or media files, into target texts, utilizing all available tools and references--both offline (e.g., physical monolingual and/or bilingual dictionaries and thesauri, etc.) and online (KBBI Daring, PUEBI, Glosarium, online dictionaries, etc.).

Naturally, a translator can get distracted fairly easily by any kinds of things irrelevant to the jobs at hand, namely, YouTube videos; social media feeds; work-unrelated websites of interest; and even offline distractions like hunger; thirst; or the need to pray and even simply to stretch out a bit after hours of being in a sedentary state. Hence, it is imperative that the translator stay focused at all times and always take an hourly break to eat, drink, pray, and do light exercise, among others.

Discipline is very crucial to maintain the mental and physical health and well-being of the translator; even more so considering the relatively long working hours involving not insignificant amount of power from brain--of which is, obviously, prone to fatigue over time.

In translation industry, as in various professional endeavours, time is of the essence.

This second point is tied up quite nicely with the first one (self-control); since proper time management entails discipline to prioritize primary tasks, and to be able to tell them apart from secondary ones. There are required loading hours to be met every month, and, with poor time management, it would be much more difficult to fulfill the demands of the clients on time--whereas punctuality is one of the most important aspects that a translator should possess; the other being, to name a few, capability (to produce clear and natural translation), as well as accuracy.

Speed is such an important factor to be observed by any aspiring translator. The ability to save the time of potential clients and/or users of the translation services while maintaining a high degree of accuracy and, at the same time, making the resulting translation still somehow sound natural (in the target language) is one of the most, if not *the* most sought-after skill of a professional translator.

To achieve the necessary speed and punctuality, translators must keep practicing by exposing themselves to source texts of various genres.

As the saying goes, "Practice makes perfect," and constant exercises would work wonders with the development of "knacks" when it comes to translation. In this regard, fast typing skill, which can be built by sufficient computer-based translating experience, would be developed along the course of translating itself, reinforcing the "muscle memory" in the fingers of the translators to type quickly *and* accurately.

Last but not least, project management consists of timecoding, captioning, translating (or subtitling), editing, and QA/quality assurance (i.e., by means of proofreading, post-editing, etc.) before the final "product" (read: translated texts in target language) is sent to the clients. The vendor (in this case, the language service provider) is responsible to ship the product under the allotted time slots, and failure to meet the deadlines could, and, indeed would, result in loss of reputation, let alone profits.

I am grateful for all the lessons I’ve learned at GAIN, and I sincerely wish all and only the best. To quote Commander Spock, live long and prosper!