How long does one search for one term before giving up?

p1q01 wrote:

(i) when come to a phrase that looks completely meaningless, don't start to get panic, just leave it (I usually put few question marks for the unknown phrases) and continue to translate the next parts (believe me, this would save you a lot of time). Once the whole the content is (roughly) translated, from there I would get better picture of what the content is talking about (read a few times or read at least once for big project before translating could be a good habit too).

Now, the main topic of the content is clear, the next step is go back to those unknown phrases and analyze the phrases. Combine with previous and next sentences of the unknown phrase, I usually would ask myself a question: how would I write this part if I were the author/writer. For example, is the phrase describing the previous sentences? Then adjective might works. Or, is the phrase a statement for next sentence?

(ii) You mentioned that "All the words are simple, but I can't make them make sense in the context." In this case, I would suggest not to translate those "simple words", on the other hand, think of the meaning/message behind those simple words (what is the author/writer trying to tell the reader?).

There is the case that, the client might not be the author/writer, so even the client would like to help, but he/she could only provides some examples instead of giving an explanation.

Joanna Gough wrote:

How much time would you take and how many resources would you normally access for key and non-key words or terms? Do you keep on searching till you find a perfect solution do you accept the first suggestion that fits? Do you impose a limit on yourself or go with the flow? I often find I won't let go till I'm happy, even if it means spending more time than (some would say) is required:)

Tom in London wrote:

Something do do with rebooting one's brain?

[Edited at 2015-04-23 09:37 GMT]

Tom in London wrote:

Last night and this morning, working on a translation, I ran into a couple of sentence constructions that included technical terms and had me flummoxed.

Mid-morning I went out and bought some groceries. When I came back I sat down at the computer and looked at the translation again. The correct way to translate those problematic phrases just came to me immediately!

Thanks again to Anna for explaining that this is called "shifting between focussed and diffused mode" (or something like that). It certainly floats my boat!

[Edited at 2015-05-21 11:37 GMT]