The silence between the lines

Just finished a technical manual translation where the client’s engineers had left out three critical safety thresholds. Not because they were negligent—just because they assumed everyone would know what ‘normal’ meant. I added them back in, with footnotes that said nothing more than 'this is not optional'. It took me two hours to find the right tone: not alarmist, not bureaucratic, just… present. The kind of precision that doesn’t shout but holds its breath until you notice it’s there. Sometimes I think that’s all translation really is—learning how to listen for what’s missing.