Society Talk

Info: reading foreign-language news with translation tools (a translator's tips)

Since a lot of us here read outlets in languages we don't speak, a few tips from someone who translates for a living:

1. Machine translation is great for gist, risky for quotes. Tone and nuance (sarcasm, hedging, legal terms) often get flattened.
2. Watch numbers and units. Commas vs full stops for decimals trip people up all the time.
3. Names and titles get mangled. Cross-check against an English source.
4. If a single word carries the whole story ('crackdown', 'riot', 'terrorist'), check how it was rendered in the original.

That last one is basically the GONOM approach applied to translation.