 Hello fellow Freelancers. I'm back at least for now. I'm still pretty busy, but you know We'll see if I can how often I can keep doing these videos if I can get back on schedule Today I wanted to do a video for so this has to do with a question I received on my course and It's a guy who I think he's based in Russia and he was talking about basically he asked me He said he's getting translation jobs But they don't pay very well because he's based in Russia and the Russian agencies don't pay very well at all and And he translates from English into Russian. However, he so he was wondering if he should change from Russian into English and try to offer this as a service maybe to agencies in Europe or in the US or something like that so he could get paid a bit more per translation and Anyway, he was asking me what I thought about that and and how to go along with it So I just want to address this quickly and I thought I actually had made a video on this before but I checked and I couldn't find it So so I guess I haven't although. I'm pretty sure I've at least mentioned it in passing But the question being if you do English to Russian translations Should you try to do Russian to English translations? If you think it'll earn you more The answer is absolutely no you should not And the reason is well the reason is you should always be translating into your native tongue You should when you translate from two languages presumably one of them is your native tongue one of them is one that you Thinking that you feeling that you grew up with or whatever it might be And the other one is one that you've learned or that you've picked up along the way But either way one of them is more native than the other. That's how it usually happens that's how it almost always happens and The more native tongue is the one you should be translating into the one that you're more comfortable with in writing and or speaking but especially writing and You shouldn't switch it up There are very few exceptions which usually have more to do with what's being translated than your level or anything but You know, let me just get into this now the reason for this is if you think through it is kind of obvious it's because When you read something there's more chance you'll understand no matter what language as long as it's one of the languages that you know but when you write it it has to sound like a fluent speaker like a native speaker and this is a lot more attainable if you're writing already in your native tongue and So if in fact if you read something you don't understand it You can take all the time you want to go to the internet to the dictionary to whatever might be to try to look It up or even ask people say well What does this mean in this context doesn't mean this that and get all your facts straight and then write out the translation I mean all translators do this all the time go to pros.com go to the forums or translators cafe.com word reference You know and you see a bunch of people asking questions all the time about stuff so they can get it clear into Into the native tongue in fact a lot of these time a lot of times these forms are interesting because people reply in Their native tongue so if you have a question from Russian to English You'll ask a question in English people reply in Russian and you'll say oh, thanks and reply in English And then you get all these bilingual Conversations going on it's interesting anyway, but that's why you should always translate from whatever Language you've learned into your native tongue and that's how we should always be by the way for interpreting It's the opposite. These are for written translations So when you translate and and yeah like I mentioned it's because you can take all the time You want to understand it perfectly and you know to understand what's being said But then it needs to be it needs to sound like a native speaker when you write it when you finish writing it out and And this is also why you'll see people sometimes say that they can translate From you know Italian and Spanish into English, but then they won't necessarily translate from English into Spanish or Italian and you know because they've learned both Italian and Spanish, but English is still their native tongue and so yeah Now I mentioned there's some exceptions the exceptions usually have to do so for example for me I've always been Italian into English. That's it I don't do English into Italian and the few exceptions that I've had have been stuff like birth certificates driver's licenses report card stuff like that because you know, let's face it It's very easy. What's that? Whatever's written name surname ID number Nationality, you know stuff like that and so yeah, I can do that in the other in the other language I'm not worried too much about it. I've also heard it said I haven't done it myself But for financial statements because you know there you have income statement assets liabilities blah blah blah So you just need to if it's just a list of terms you can translate them into the other language and In theory at least it should work well You know the problem starts you start getting a problem when you start having sentences Because sentences they're either more literary in which case you want to evoke a certain feeling or sense Which you can only really get if you have a native tongue or there'll be more say legalese and you know Document types in which case you really don't want you want to make sure you say the right thing and and don't mess anything up You know, I'm thinking about double negatives and stuff like that because I've seen stuff translated into English by people who are not native, you know who's for whom English is not their native tongue and They and they'll use double negatives and stuff like that Which in a legal contract can be very bad because it basically means you're saying the opposite of what you want to say anyway So yeah, oh and I did mention interpreters I should say if you're an interpreter actually it's the opposite if you're an interpreter What you should be doing is translating from your native tongue into the the language you've acquired and and the reason for this as well as Is obviously if you think about it a bit it's because you need to be able to catch everything on the fly Which means you need to understand everything that's been said if you can't translate it exactly the same way There's 10 different ways you can translate it into whatever language you need to say it But you need to be able to understand on the fly an example. I have this is actually very old It's from when I was young. I think it's the first time what you know that I noticed The interpreting world and and what they have to go through and it kind of stuck with me This this was obviously it must have been during presidential election because I remember they were talking about the gender gap between you know male voters and female voters and It and it had to do it was a show from the States that was being broadcast in Italy So this lady was interpreting it on the fly like basically real time as it was happening and One of the shows had this comedian and I think it was a political show in fact And this comedian he was doing some act and he was juggling axes and then one of them almost fell right between his legs And he's like oh almost created a gender gap It was something along those lines and then the interpreter. She's like, oh, well, oh, that was a very bad joke I'm not gonna even I'm not even gonna translate it and moved on and I remember thinking I mean I was young at the time. I was like that wasn't such a bad joke. It wasn't you know, it wasn't like a Sexual joke or anything like that she could have translated and then that got me thinking with it Oh, wait, how could she have translated there's no real way to translate it especially with the implications of the gender gap that was going on back then for the vote and And so I realized I was like, oh actually she did a very good job translating that you know Because she's it was a joke which is already hard to translate and then but she took advantage of the fact that yeah I'd almost fell between his legs so she could say oh that was a dirty joke I don't want to translate it. I don't you know, I don't want to translate on TV something like that and And so yeah as an interpreter you have to do that You have to be able to improvise but that means you really have to be able to catch things on the fly and understand the nuance in the mood and the you know all the different Well, you know everything that the person's saying and the context of it You need to be able to understand it on the fly so that you can find a way to translate it And like I said, there are five ten different ways to translate whatever you need and you can find a way to Portrait and then move on So yeah, once again, if you're translating written translations Then you want to translate into your native tongue if you're interpreting is the opposite, but always keep this as a general rule and Try not to veer Once you get some experience you can see in which situations you can try to sort of switch it around But definitely when you're starting out always stick to translating into your native tongue And that's it don't offer the other way around because it's just gonna get you into trouble It's gonna result in unsatisfied clients. It's gonna result in bad translations and it definitely won't do anything for your career so yeah, that's it for now, I hope you found this helpful and please like if you do find it helpful and Don't forget to subscribe if you haven't and that's pretty much it. I'll see you in the next video. Thanks. Bye Savedum