A translation lecture looking at the basics, common mistakes and good practices was given Saturday at Grouphorse Beijing by Xu Yanan, former director-general of the Department of Translation and Interpretation (DTI) at China’s Foreign Ministry and former chief of the Chinese Translation Service of the Documentation Division of the Department for General Assembly and Conference Management (DGACM) at the UN.

In the lecture, Xu talked about the do's of translation, including reading between the lines, breaking up long sentences, taking into account foreign audience’s way of thinking and level of understanding, and logically structuring sentences; and the don'ts, for example, avoiding word-for-word translation as well as grammatical errors.

In the Q&A session, she gave detailed answers to many questions, including how to prepare for the UN Language Competitive Examinations (LCEs) and the DTI interview after the written test, whether to learn translation or interpreting first, and whether to translate the main idea or each detail of the source text.