Visual Translators

Visual learners learn through visualizing, either seeking out external images or creating mental images of the thing they're learning. They may need to sketch a diagram of an abstract idea or cluster of ideas before they can understand or appreciate it. They tend to be good spellers, because they can see the word they want to spell in their mind's eye. People with "photographic memory" are visual learners; and even when their memory is not quite photographic, visual learners remember words, numbers, and graphic images that they have seen much better than conversations they have had or lectures they have heard.

Visual-external learners learn things best by seeing them, or seeing pictures of them; they like drawings on the blackboard or overhead projector, slides and videos, handouts, or computer graphics. Visual-external language-learners remember new words and phrases best by writing them down or seeing them written; a visual-external learner in a foreign country will spend hours walking the streets and pronouncing every street and shop sign.

Visual-external translators usually do not become interpreters; in fact, it may seem to them as if interpreters have no "source text" at all, because they can't see it. If diagrams or drawings are available for a translation job, they insist on having them; even better, when possible, is a visit to the factory or other real-world context described in the text.

Visual-internal learners learn best by creating visual images of things in their heads. As a result, they are often thought of as daydreamers or, when they are able to verbalize their images for others, as poets or mystics. Visual-internal learners learn new foreign words and phrases best by picturing them in their heads — creating a visual image of the object described, if there is one, or creating images by association with the sound or look or "color" of a word if there is not.

Visual-internal translators also constantly visualize the words and phrases they translate. If there is no diagram or drawing of a machine or process, they imagine one. If the words and phrases they are trans­lating have no obvious visual representation — in a mathematics text, for example — they create one, based on the look of an equation or some other associative connection.