Although many people have been studying English for many years and had taken for granted that they can translate academic papers related with their majors, in fact, it’s not an easy thing to do it well, and it’s a more difficult job to have the translated papers or books up to the publication standards.

After many years’ hard-working and practice, I truly feel that translation is a tough job. I have ever translated various materials related with my major, research papers, journals' and books' contents, product introduction, company introduction, books, and so on, and most of them are from English to Chinese. But till now I still feel my translation proficiency has to be greatly improved.

I began to do translation since I started to work. I did translation just because I like English and other people also thought my English was okay. Some asked me for help to translate the abstracts of their papers into English, or translate instructions of products or gifts sent by their relatives or friends abroad. At first, I took it as a fun and had never taken it as a profession to earn my living.

In the early 1990s, the editor-in-chief of the proceedings of one international conference invited me to translate several papers of the proceedings into Chinese version. I translated 3 papers, 5 dollars for each, equivalent to RMB 50 at that time and nearly one fourth of my one-month salary. One of the three papers was more than 20 thousand words and I spent more than one week to have it translated. I still keep 5 dollars in my drawer, now it can exchange for less than 40 yuan.  But this experience gives me much confidence in my translation ability and let me greatly practised.

Then in later life, I  did full time scientific translation for several years, and had translated hundreds of papers and abstracts, but also mostly from English to Chinese.

Translation from Chinese to English is much more difficult. It requires the translator to know both the source and target languages well, especially when translating scientific papers. So I have less difficulty to translate agricultural papers but feel very difficult to translate other specialty's papers, and I even dare not try those papers far from my major.

No matter it's English to Chinese translation or Chinese to English translation, if we want to do translation well, we need to have long term practice.