5 Websites That Will Make You a Better Translator

It's a good idea to spend some time scouring the Internet for useful websites, yet it's often easy to procrastinate too! If you're the sort of person who's easily distracted by the latest viral YouTube video, then this post should help direct you towards some more useful websites for your translation business.

Business Insider has posted a list of 25 websites to make you smarter, and this Translators' Hub post will highlight some of the most relevant sites for translators.

Duolingo

Duolingo was founded with the belief that everyone should have access to quality language education completely free of charge. Investors who believe in this vision provide the website’s funding, and thus anyone is able to sign up to learn another language for free. 

For translators, Duolingo provides a helpful way to brush up on your second language wherever you are in the world. You don't have to start with a language from scratch, as it's possible to take a quick proficiency test to determine your aptitude in a language. From here, you can choose lessons more suited to your current ability.

Freerice

Freerice presents readers with a simple, one-answer vocabulary test. However, what makes this unique is that for every correct answer you provide, Freerice donates 10 grains of rice to the Word Food Programme. Freerice also allows you to choose the language of the vocabulary test, which means that translators will be able to improve their vocabulary whilst fighting poverty! 

Spreeder

Spreeder is a useful web tool that teaches you how to speed-read. Speed reading is a highly desirable ability for obvious reasons, and the benefits of comprehending text quicker than normal is especially relevant to translators who spend large portions of their time reading text. 

Spreeder aims to not only increase your general reading speed (measured in words per minute), but also your ability to comprehend the speed-read text accurately. It does this by letting you paste some chosen text into a box and then, after clicking 'go', quickly flashes each word of the text before you one at a time. Spreeder claims that this process is more efficient for reading, as your eyes can't look at more than one word at a time, like when reading text off a page. 

Spreeder also claims that your natural tendency to 'subvocalize' words (unnecessarily pronounce them in your head as you read) is also reduced when using their tool. Head over to their website and give their tool a try with the text from this post if you like!

Lifehacker

Lifehacker serves as a repository of tips and quick fixes to help make life easier. Many of the articles posted on the Translators’ Hub are related to productivity or work, and so taking the time to browse Lifehacker for useful posts will no doubt help you streamline some of the more practical necessities of running your translation business. 

Quora

Quora is a crowd-sourced question and answer website, which allows you to create an account and start asking and answering questions. The community is moderated by editors with some authority in the question's field, so wrong answers are usually flagged up pretty quickly. 

As a translator, there's a ton of potential to use Quora to ask questions about some of the finer points of grammar in the documents you’re translating, or even to engage other translators directly with a tough translation choice you’re trying to make. Of course, Quora should be seen as a helpful aid rather than an unquestionable authority, so make sure that you take other people's answers as guidance rather than gospel.

Final thoughts

Hopefully these websites will provide some help for your translation career, and if there's any useful websites that you visit to assist your business, then we'd love to hear in the comments section!