10-13-2013, 09:10 PM
I like to compare the whole topic to the process of learning a new language. When you start out you spend a lot of time studying words, repeating grammatical structures and all this stuff, just as you do when you start out with drawing and painting. At some point you become proficient enough to express yourself through this language, even without looking everything up in a dictionary. Sometimes though, you don't find just the right word and you work around it - just like you do when painting something and you're not getting that one spot right because there's a little bit of knowledge missing. That's where the dictionary respectively a reference comes in handy.
If you're a professional translator, it's totally normal to work with dictionaries; actually it is even when you're a writer in your native language, because sometimes you need to be reminded of the possibilities to express something in the most elegant way. However, you can never fake being proficient in a foreign language by just using a dictionary and sticking randomly translated words together - just as you can never fake being a good artist by just sticking references together without having studied the basic structures. The more you use your language, the more words and phrases get stuck in your mind and the less you need to look things up.
If you're a professional translator, it's totally normal to work with dictionaries; actually it is even when you're a writer in your native language, because sometimes you need to be reminded of the possibilities to express something in the most elegant way. However, you can never fake being proficient in a foreign language by just using a dictionary and sticking randomly translated words together - just as you can never fake being a good artist by just sticking references together without having studied the basic structures. The more you use your language, the more words and phrases get stuck in your mind and the less you need to look things up.