Many translators feel that it’s not so important that they maintain their active language skills in their source language, and believe that talking to clients, colleagues, potential clients, beginner translators and so on detracts from their work. Of course, this is not true, because it’s very important that translation experts are able to communicate fluently in their source language, particularly when dealing with higher paying direct clients. It’s our opinion that direct clients would be more inclined to use translators that they communicate well with, regardless of whether it’s by phone or by email, and may mistrust a translator who struggles to communicate in the client’s language.

There are, of course, translators who have an easy time maintaining their source language skills because they live either part-time or full-time in the country where their source language is spoken, or else they marry a native speaker of their source language and/or use their source language in their personal life. But other translators have barriers to overcome.

For the purpose of this post we’ll assume that French is your source language; however, no-one in your family speaks French, it’s not widely spoken where you live, and nowadays you very rarely visit any French-speaking countries. So how do you maintain your spoken, written, and cultural skills in French when it’s essential to your translation business? Well, if you’re a linguistically isolated translator, you need to invest both time and money in maintaining your source language fluency. This might include using online resources such as blogs, podcasts, online editions of newspapers, and so on because it is easy to locate high-quality, free materials in your source language. In addition, many universities, colleges and larger towns and cities have foreign language conversation groups who are always happy to welcome speakers of all levels.

Maintaining Foreign Language Skills

Learning a foreign language requires a lot of hard work and many hours of study – it’s a major achievement! Unfortunately, if you don’t immediately use these new language skills in your everyday life is highly likely that you’ll forget a lot of what you’ve learned. So, how can a translator maintain their current level of proficiency?

Here are our suggestions for maintaining your language skills –

Take a Class

Enquire at your local community college or university about foreign language classes: depending on your level of proficiency you’ll be able to either maintain or develop new language skills

Listening to International Music

Listening to recording artists featuring vocals sung in your foreign language is a great way of reinforcing your language skills. The added benefit of this strategy, of course, is that it’s quite common for musicians to write about political and social points of interest. If you search online you’ll find many websites offering free online music.

Become Interested in Foreign Cinema

What better way to maintain your language skills than watching films from other countries? Regardless of which language you may have studied, you’ll be able to find some interesting movies. Netflix, iTunes, and Amazon all have large selections of foreign movies to choose from.

Research International News Sources

Maintain your foreign language skills while learning about the world. Reading online newspapers from other countries is the ideal way of staying informed. Alternatively, you can stream video broadcasts or radio from foreign newsagencies. You’ll often find perspectives not represented in American news being provided by international media.