Probably you are a student in college trying to determine what major to take or you are in high school thinking about what you might like to do for a living. Or you are forty years old, ready for a career change, wondering if your fluency in Portuguese can do further for you.
If you are into languages, translation may be an ideal fit for you. This article will present some tips on how to determine if professional translation work is for you, and what you can do to make it happen.
First of all, translators need total knowledge in the language they are working with. For instance, an Italian translator working with English speaking companies must be proficient in both, Italian and English. A couple semesters of Italian may not be enough to become an expert. In fact, proficiency may not even happen after five years of Italian lessons. It all depends on your linguistic knowledge and your capacity to work hard at what you want. If you want to take translation seriously, be prepared to spend several hours of language study a day.
If you were raised speaking a second language, you can pass up all those long hours of training. In fact, most companies which hire translators prefer native speakers for their natural fluency. Therefore, if you are a native speaker of Italian, who is also proficient in English; you could have strong chance to make it as an Italian translator. For those of you who are not native speakers, it will be a bit harder but if you love the language, anything is possible. It may take some hard work to test yourself, but one thing that could help is to live some years in the country that commands your language of choice. If French is your passion, go to France and commit to speaking and working with locals every day. Immerse yourself completely in the language and avoid grouping up with people that only speak your language.
Once you have the language down, or are nearly there, start contacting translation companies to find out their requirements. Tell them that you are interested in professional translation work. Introduce yourself as an expert or near expert in the field. Talking to companies about what translation work entails is the best way to get your foot in the door for working there someday. If nothing comes up right away, it doesn’t matter; be persistent. Ask to speak with professional translators. Then ask questions about demands of the job, and problems that may come up.
Remember, if you become a professional translator you will be expected to be an expert in that language. You must do everything you can to become that expert. Only you know if you have the passion and love spending several hours a day speaking and writing the language of your choice. Do you truly enjoy working with languages? Or is it just a handy skill you just have? If you have the passion and you are determined to acquire the skills, professional translation work may be just the perfect career for you.
Jacqueline Zavala.
To be proficient (more than expert) on a pair of languages is a MUST and a GIVEN to any translator. The world is changing and like it or not, machine translations are here to stay and in less than 10 years they will be good enough to take care of at least 50% of the present market. The good news is that there will still be job for the best translators. The ones who are specialists and experts not on a pair of languges, but on a field. There's where you all have to focus. Be an expert on one or two fields. That's how you are going to excel as a translator the coming years. How do you become and experienced translator when agencies and clients don't let you achieve that experience because they want already experienced translators? Knock every single door. Read a lot, learn how to do extensive research (and I don't mean just Wordreference and/or Proz).
ResponderEliminar