 Hello! I'm coming to you today from our business center. The topic of today's video is reading. I enjoy reading a lot and not only books about languages and linguistics but you know all types of books. And I really notice when I do my translations how much reading helps, getting acquainted with various forms of sentence structure and you know what's allowed and what isn't, what sounds good, what doesn't. I fervently believe that reading is extremely good for your translation. And if you want to work on your translation, if you want to raise the level of your translation, it really helps to read in your target language and in your source language. In fact, I think one of the most interesting things is reading books that's been translated from one to the other. You get to see what's a good translation and many times you can see what isn't a good translation as well. Maybe what doesn't work at all. So next I'm going to be reading a book. No matter what book it is, pay attention to why you like a certain passage or why it captured you, why you find it funny or why you didn't like it, why you had to reread it three or four times. If it just sounded awkward, if it was too long, if it was trying to say complicated stuff, if it was trying to sound, you know, you're trying to use 10 words where one would have sufficed. Also notice the differences in fiction, in non-fiction, in how-to books, in historical books, the differences in tones, even, you know, when you compare, I mean, a website or a user manual because you're going to be working on these translations as well. And they'll say the same thing in very different ways, depending on what the context is. You can really get acquainted with this by reading a lot more. Now, obviously, I'm not saying to collect a bunch of user manuals and just read those in your spare time, but if you do read books, you know, then you start noticing when you read, say, a user manual, you're like, oh, I see what they're saying. But, you know, the terminology is so different from what would have been used in this book. I was just reading, even if it talked about similar stuff, maybe, or I'm reading about how to build the furniture. I mean, we've been building furniture. That's why I have that in my mind. You know, but if you have a book that talks about antique furniture, it'll say, talk about the same things, but in a very different way. And maybe if it's part of a novel and they happen to mention furniture, it'll still be different from that. All languages have a lot of nuance in them, have a lot of expressive elements that really can be changed in many interesting ways. The better you become acquainted with these, the higher level, you know, the better your translations will be. Obviously, I'm not trying to be pedantic. I'm not trying to be, you know, like a school teacher. You should read, you should read more. I'm also not trying to be like those annoying people who keep saying books are better than movies and blah, blah, blah. All I'm saying is that when you're working in translation, you're working in languages, you're working in written languages. And so the more you deal with these written languages, the better it is. So, hopefully you love reading. If you do, then you're golden. Then spend time reading. In fact, don't feel guilty about spending time reading. That is research for you. That's helping you build up your skills. If you don't like reading as much, try to find some medium that you do like. Find something you enjoy, whether it's comic, young adult, weird, complex, his scientific stuff, fiction, historical fiction, nonfiction, whatever it is, it'll be good for you and it'll help you with your translations. So anyway, that's it. Just a short video. Stay tuned. Subscribe for more videos with freelance translation. Some of them are general like this one, but other ones get more into the nitty gritty and, you know, into the daily life and daily issues and problems that you have with translation, with freelance translation, freelancing in general. So if you stay subscribed, you get more of these videos. If you like this video, please give it a thumbs up. Those always help and I always appreciate those. And otherwise, I'll see you in the next video. Thanks. Bye.