One thing translators need to develop is a sixth sense with regard to context. By this, I mean a sort of lateral thinking, a method of picking up clues. Once I was doing a Russian translation that consisted of a series of nearly identical files. Each contained a list of documents needed for some kind of certification procedure. One such document was a diagram of a land plot, with a mysterious abbreviation at the end. I asked a Russian native speaker to decipher this, but she couldn’t. Finally, the fourth document came into view. A diagram was shown, but instead of the mysterious abbreviation, it said “1:650.” Aha! I thought. The abbreviation must mean “not to scale.”
Another time, I was translating a contract from German. The contract made repeated references to somebody called the “Rup” or “RUP.” For example: "Der Rup ist Herr Dr. X: der Rup wird diesen Vertrag verwalten [the Rup is Dr. X: the Rup will manage this contract].” This was not a word used in any German-speaking country I was aware of. Then I realized that this contract originated from South Tyrol, the German-speaking area of northern Italy. A few inquiries revealed that this wasn’t a German word at all, it was an Italian acronym: Responsabile unico del procedimento, the “person responsible for the proceedings.” This is a position specific to Italian law, so knowing German legal language is unlikely to help you here.
Indeed, most of these puzzlers seem to be abbreviations or acronyms. In a similar case involving German regionalisms, I remember the first time I came across the semi-abbreviation Ö-Normen. Online glossaries were no help; but I solved the problem myself when I realized the document originated in Austria (in German, Österreich). The meaning was suddenly clear: “Austrian standards.”
The translator’s sixth sense thus depends on knowing the context and having some method of comparison at your disposal. It’s like your own little Rosetta Stone, helping you puzzle out esoteric things in otherwise mundane documents. For this reason, I prefer not to take assignments consisting of e-mail chains and conversations. They are typically full of in-jokes, in-house terminology and abbreviations, with typos and sloppy grammar making things even more incomprehensible. And usually, there’s no Rosetta Stone for that kind of thing.