Reference Materials

Critical to good translation work is the pool of reference materials – texts known to be of a good standard -- that the translators can draw upon. Often availability of such materials is scarce. Here are a few approaches: The first efforts would necessitate a constant lookout for reference texts, both in English and the target language, needed to build this library – often the challenge is in finding the Bible or teaching materials in the target language. The second effort would be to surely and steadily build up a glossary of useful and common terms. Finally on the long term, the building up of a body of sentence pairs; one approach is where one sentence in English is followed simply by a marker such as “%%” (and not a sentence return) then followed again with that translation in the vernacular as to make one long connected pair. An example of such a sentence pair: Say: O brethen! Let deeds, not words, be your adorning. %% Mwatule nti: Abange mmwe obooluganda! Mukkirize ebikolwa, so si bigambo, bye biba bibeera ekyambalo kyammwe.

These sentence pairs will serve, in word searches, both like a dictionary and a pattern of language usage – see point c. in the section of Useful Tools.

As translation work accumulates, it is critical to have secure backups, such as via a portable hard-drive, or even better, an external store such as via Cloud-based services such as “Google Drive” and MS “DriveOne”. Lastly, one is advised to submit periodic DVD’s of such work to interested institutions such as Publishing Trusts that can act as a repository.