Translation Profession

The Translation Profession. ERIC Digest.
This ERIC Digest is based on an article published in the September 1990 issue of "The Annals of the American Academy of Political and Social Science," Volume 511, titled, "The Translation Profession in the United States Today." For more information, write to "The Annals, 3937 Chestnut Street, Philadelphia, PA 19104.
The translation profession has been in existence for a long time. Translators have enabled the works of great writers to be read by many people of different cultures and linguistic backgrounds. In school, students learn about scientific discoveries, great voyages, and different philosophies, thanks in part to the work of translators. Translation has long played a role in the dissemination of scientific information. With increased contact between nations in the past few decades and with increased communications through satellites and other products of modern technology, it has become easier and faster to learn about what is happening in the rest of the world. The exchange of ideas and printed matter between different linguistic communities has necessitated an unprecedented amount of translation. In the last decade, the need for translation has continued to rise, reflecting the needs of businesses, the scientific community, and other areas. Today, the majority of individuals working in the translation field deal more with technical and semi-technical works than with literary ones.

WHAT IS THE DIFFERENCE BETWEEN A TRANSLATOR AND AN INTERPRETER?
Translation involves the skill of working with written language, whereas interpretation involves working with spoken communication. A translator renders written materials in one language into written form in another language. "Interpreters attempt to transpose statements given orally by speakers representing one culture into the spoken form that is characteristic of the culture of those listening to the interpretation" (Weber, 1990).
WHERE CAN TRANSLATORS FIND EMPLOYMENT?
Translators generally work either in-house for a business, translation agency, or other institution, or as freelancers. Most are freelancers who either find their own clients or translate for firms or translation bureaus, and who are paid depending on the length and difficulty of a translation. Fees may also reflect supply and demand of a particular language or subject.
Salaried translators are part of the in-house staff of an agency, firm, or institution. For the vast majority of this type of translator, expertise in a specific subject matter, such as chemistry or economics, is necessary. In-house translators may be called on to do foreign language research and other language-related duties because they are readily available. They may need to be able to translate from several languages. Translator positions in the United States Government, for example, require the ability to translate from at least two languages, and World Bank translators must be able to translate from three. The number of full-time positions is limited.
The leading employers of translators in the United States are the U.S. Government; U.S. and multinational corporations and their subsidiaries; importers and exporters; commercial and non-profit research institutions; manufacturers; engineering and construction firms with foreign connections; the publishing industry; patent attorneys; the news media; the United Nations and other international organizations; and foreign, diplomatic, commercial, and scientific representatives in the United States (American Translators Association, 1987).
WHAT ARE THE QUALIFICATIONS OF A COMPETENT TRANSLATOR?
Translators must be capable of expressing, in the target language, ideas that someone else has formulated in the source language. They need to understand the language from which they are translating and be able to write well in the language into which they are translating. This requires understanding subject-specific terminology and having an awareness of style and grammar, regional language, and nuances and idiomatic expressions. Translators must understand the technical area in which they are working and are often expected to possess an in-depth knowledge of highly specialized subjects. Subject matter is becoming so important that the European Economic Community has recently changed its language-specific translation divisions into subject matter ones. Translators are required to stay up-to-date with respect to terminology and must be able to look at a text for meaning and not necessarily translate it literally. For learning technical vocabulary, translators should frequently consult subject-specific articles, have access to new glossaries, and have contacts in a given field. Freelance translators also need access to word processing equipment, a fax machine, and a modem.
WHAT KIND OF TRAINING IS BENEFICIAL TO PROSPECTIVE TRANSLATORS?
In response to a multitude of needs in today's world, foreign language enrollments have been increasing in high schools, colleges, and universities. Translation courses are part of the curriculum at a number of universities, whether as separate classes or part of certificate or degree programs. Some institutions, such as Georgetown University (Washington, DC) and the Monterey (CA) Institute of Foreign Studies, offer translator-interpreter training programs.
College graduates with degrees in foreign languages who are interested in entering the translation field often do not possess translation skills because the emphasis on language instruction in the classroom tends to be on oral proficiency. The ability to speak a language is not necessarily an indication of written language ability. In translation, reading and writing become the primary language skills, and a comparatively high level of proficiency in them is required (Larson, 1987).
To assist would-be translators in preparing for a career in translation, the American Translators Association (1987) has outlined some suggestions in its "Profile of a Competent Translator and of an Effective Translator-Training Program." Recommendations include the following curriculum:
* courses that provide an extensive knowledge of, and ability to reason in, the subject matter of the translation: mathematics, pure sciences, social sciences, history, business administration, and economics;
* courses that provide a sound reading knowledge and grasp
of the language or languages from which one will be translating;
* four years of a major language, two years of a minor language, and
as many basic language courses as possible, including at least two
years of Latin;
* courses that provide the ability to express oneself
in lucid and straightforward English: writing courses, including one
in newspaper writing and one in technical writing; and
* periodic participation in advanced postgraduate workshops,
notably in specialized subject-matter areas.
WHERE DOES THE NEED FOR TRANSLATION EXIST?
In order to understand the languages and cultures of the nations with whom the United States does business, many companies have turned to translators to render advertisements into the language of the client. Translators may be called on to provide companies with information that will enable them to find out what their competitors are doing to improve their products; to facilitate communications with subsidiaries; and to translate company publications, such as employee manuals, safety regulations, and company policy. Information on research or marketing efforts within the company must be provided to foreign subsidiaries in order to promote the technological advancement of the firm as a whole, and countless letters, telegrams, and telefaxes sent from one subsidiary to another must be translated.
Many scientific journals are now written in languages that have not received much attention in the United States, such as Japanese, Russian, Portuguese, and Chinese. Currently, one-fourth to one-half of all scientific scholarly production is in languages not handled by U.S. scientists, and only about 20 percent of the 10,000 technical journals published in Japan are translated into English (Fedunok, 1987). Translators are needed to keep up with the discoveries taking place in research throughout the world.
Scholarly papers to be presented at conferences in foreign countries may need translating, and individuals seeking U.S. citizenship may need to have their birth certificate or other relevant documents translated into English.
CONCLUSION
The demand for competent translators is at an all-time high. With the internationalization of science and the global market, materials are being produced in many languages, just as American products are being marketed in many countries. Because of the advanced state of science, subject-matter specialization is a must for a translator, as are highly developed writing skills. Whereas a few years ago, the United States could rely on its immigrant population to do much of its translating, in the future it will have to rely more on the educational institutions of this country to prepare students in technical subjects and to provide them with excellent writing skills in English and translation.
REFERENCES
American Translators Association. (1987). Profile of a competent translator and of an effective translator-training program. Croton-on-Hudson, NY: Author.
Fedunok, S. (1987). Translations in science and technology libraries. In Kummer, K. (Ed.), Across the language gap: Proceedings of the 28th annual conference of the American Translators Association. Medford, NJ: Learned Information.
Hammond, D.L. (1990). The translation profession in the United States today. The Annals of the American Academy of Political and Social Science, 511, p132-144.
Larson, J.W. (1987). Using the ACTFL proficiency guidelines to assess reading and writing in the translation programs. In Rose, M.R. (Ed.), Translation excellence: Assessment, achievement, maintenance. American Translators Association. Scholarly Monograph Series, No. 1, p48. Binghamton, NY: University Center.
Weber, W.K. (1990). Interpretation in the United States. The Annals of the American Academy of Political and Social Science, 511, p145-158.
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So what's it all about? Who and what is a translator? How does one become a translator? What is going on in the translation profession? This article and the other thirteen will take a close look at these and related questions. This first article is an overview of what is to come in the rest of the series, though by no means an outline or a summation of the remaining thirteen articles. If you are an experienced translator, you might want to browse this article and then get into the meatier discussions of current and forthcoming technologies, sticky financial and legal issues, or nagging ethical problems. If you are new to the profession, or if you are exploring translation as a possible profession, please take the time to read this article so that you are acquainted with certain basics about translators and what they do.
What is a Translator?
A translator converts written material, such as newspaper and magazine articles, books, manuals, or documents from one language into another. This is not to be confused with an interpreter, who converts spoken material, such as speeches, presentations, depositions, and the like, from one language to another. Although there is some vague connection between the abilities involved in translation and interpretation, translators cannot necessarily interpret, nor can interpreters necessarily translate. Moreover, the best translators are not good interpreters and likewise, truly great interpreters are not much for translation. And while many professional training programs require interpreters to develop some skill in translation, professionally trained translators often have no exposure to the skills of interpretation.
To be clear about the languages used by translators, I’ll refer to the translator’s native language as the A language and the non-native languages as the B or C languages. A B language is one which the translator can speak, read, and write virtually as a native speaker does. A C language is one which the translator can read and understand like a native, but does not necessarily speak or write so well. Obviously we all have an A language, and equally evident, all translators have a B language. Many translators have more than one B language, and some also have C languages. What very few people have is two A languages, and even if you are one of those who do, take care in making the claim, as many people will be skeptical.
I’ll also use the following terms. Source text or language will refer to the language which the material first appears in, usually the translator’s B language. Target text and language refer to the language that the material is translated into, usually the translator’s A language. In general, translators work from their B or C languages into their A languages, though an individual’s skills and the market’s needs may alter this principle.
Bilingualism
A good translator is by definition bilingual. The opposite is not necessarily true, however. A born and bred bilingual will still need two things to become a translator: first, the skills and experience necessary for translation; second, knowledge of the field in which he or she will translate. The skills and experience for translation include the ability to write well in the target language, the ability to read and understand the source language material thoroughly, and the ability to work with the latest word-processing and communications hardware and software.
This brings up an important question: Does a born and bred bilingual makes a better translator than someone who learned the B language later in life? There is no definite answer, but the following issues are important. First, a born and bred bilingual often suffers from not truly knowing any language well enough to translate, with some even suffering from what is known as alingualism, a state in which a person does lacks a full, fluent command of any language. Second, born and bred bilinguals often don’t know the culture of the target language well enough to provide top-quality translations, or cannot recognize what aspects of the source language and its culture need to be treated with particular care, as they are in a sense too close to the language. And last, they often lack the analytical linguistic skills to work through a sticky text.
On the other hand, the acquired bilingual may not have the same in-depth knowledge of colloquialisms, slang, and dialect that the born bilingual has. As well, the acquired bilingual will not be able to translate as readily in both directions (from B to A language and A to B language). Finally, born bilinguals often have a greater appreciation of the subtleties and nuances of both their languages than someone who learns their B language later in life can ever hope to have.
The Education of a Translator
Translators come from all backgrounds. Some have Masters degrees in translation from the Monterey Institute of International Studies or Kent State University, some have certificates from Georgetown University or other programs in the United States, others have degrees from schools in Europe (such as the ones in London, Paris, or Geneva) or Asia (such as Simul Academy in Tokyo or Winzao in Taiwan) and many have a degree in a general field such as literature or history. While a specialized degree in translation is useful, it is far from necessary. What counts more than anything else is ability. So where does this ability come from?
Perhaps it is nature, but I suspect that nurture helps immensely. Most translators are very well-read in their languages, and can write well. Some are writers who use translation as a way to write for a living. Others are fascinated by language and use translation as a way to be close to their favorite subject. Still others are experts in certain fields and use their language skills to work in that field.
Almost all professional translators in the United States have at least a college degree. Some even have advanced degrees either in translation or in the field they specialize in (a few even have both). Most translators have university-level language training in their B and C languages. Some started their languages earlier, others later, but very few translators have no language training at all. Of course, language training might mean specialized courses from a variety of schools.
Translators also generally have lived in the countries where their languages are spoken. I know of translators who have spent seven or even ten years in the countries of their B language. Some translators have spent more time in the country of their B language than in the country of their A language. The notable exception to this is Spanish in the United States and English abroad. Because Spanish is used so widely and is as common as English in many parts of the U.S., some translators learn and then work in the language without ever leaving the U.S. As well, translators in other countries often work from English into their native language with just the language training they received in school.
Above all, translators must have a deep interest and dedication to the languages they work with. The only exception to this rule is people who translate very specialized material. I know an individual with a Ph.D. in mathematics who translated a book on topology from French to English. His French skills are dubious, but since few people in the world understand the material, he was suitable. In almost all cases, however, translators have to be committed to honing and polishing their language skills throughout their professional life.
The knowledge of the field the translator is working in is often overlooked by translators and those that hire them. Translators are by definition language professionals, but they also have to cultivate a knowledge of the areas they work in. Few translators claim to be able to translate anything written in their languages, just as few people can claim to be experts in everything. Most translators have to specialize, working with one or a few related categories of material: legal, financial, medical, computers, or electrical engineering, to name a few. Each field has its own vocabulary, syntax, and style; the translator has to work hard to develop the knowledge necessary to deal with such material.
The knowledge also includes two other important factors. First, the translator should have the background knowledge to work in the field. This does not mean that a medical translator should have an M.D. or that a translator of software manuals should be a programmer. But some background, experience, or education (or all three) is essential. This can be obtained through coursework, on-the-job experience, or self-study. No one seems too concerned with exactly how translators develop their subject knowledge, as long as they truly have. And though translators do have degrees in their specialization, most do not.
Second, the translator should have the necessary resources to deal with the material. This means dictionaries, glossaries, and any other resources. Such resources can include web sites devoted to translation or terminology, Usenet discussion groups concerning translation, friends or colleagues who work in the profession, and magazines and journals. And translators have to work tirelessly to maintain if not improve their knowledge of the fields they work in by reading related material. They also have to invest the time and money in maintaining their reference library.
In other words, professional translators are always learning. You don’t just put your hand on a rock and say: "I am a translator." Nor do you simply acquire a language in a few months by living somewhere and then begin translating. Heinrich Schliemann may have learned to read each of his languages in six weeks, but he couldn’t write or speak them (nor did he need to). Moreover, at that time, languages had considerably more limited vocabularies than now. And of course, reading and translating are two separate things.
So at what point are you ready to begin translating? Simple. When you feel that your abilities of expression and comprehension in your A and B languages are strong enough that you can do the job properly by the client’s deadline. The length of time to cultivate these abilities depends on the person and the language. Native speakers of English have an easier time with the Romance and Germanic languages because their grammars, syntax, and vocabulary are relatively familiar. A language like Chinese or Japanese takes a long time simply because you have to learn to read and understand thousands of characters, as well as deal with grammar, syntax, and structure wholly unrelated to that seen in English.
Finally, you have to be able to prove that you have the skills you claim to have. Experience living, working, and studying in the country of your B language is one form of proof. A degree in your language or in translation is another. Taking a test such as the ones given by the ATA, the State Department, or the United Nations is another. But I’ll leave the discussion of accreditation for a separate article.
What is a Translation
A turn-of-the-century Russian translator said: "Translation is like a woman, if she is beautiful, she is not faithful; if she is faithful, she is not beautiful." I hope you will ignore the blatant sexism in the statement and instead see one of the kernels of truth in translation. Translators must strike a balance between fidelity to the source text and readability in the target language. We have all seen material that is so obviously translated as to sound awkward in our native languages, and in some cases as to bear enough hallmarks of the source language as to be readily identifiable as coming from it. The best translation is the one that no one recognizes as a translation. In other words, the document should read as though it were written in the target language originally. This implies, by extension, that the translator's time and effort are transparent, and the translator ends up being invisible. In other words, you do your best work when no one realizes you have done anything.
Achieving this level of translation is challenging, to say the least. Imagine walking a tightrope blindfolded during a wind storm, with people throwing heavy objects at you and shaking the rope. This represents the balancing act. Now add to it the often unreasonable deadline which agencies require of translators by having someone behind you on the rope poking you in the seat of your pants with a pitchfork. Sound frustrating? It can be. But if you enjoy a challenge and know how to deal with your languages, it’s not too bad after you’ve been at if for a while (I suppose the same can be said for tightrope walking).
The trick is to let your clients decide what they want. Since they have to live with the results of your work, let them choose. Patiently explain to them the options they have, how long each might take, and how much each possible version will cost. They’ll decide if they want a literal, if unreadable, translation or if they want a Pulitzer Prize-winning text.
If your client can’t decide, doesn’t know, or won’t tell you, then follow the advice of Buddha and take the middle path. This is easier with some languages and some subject areas than others. Although most people think that technical material is easiest for stylistic considerations, consider this. Academic style varies from nation to nation. In English, we generally present our thesis, then give the evidence, develop the argument, and then reach the conclusion. However, in Japanese, we usually present a vague thesis, give the evidence slowly with lots of discussion, and then reach some tentative statement about the thesis in the form of a conclusion. Other differences exist among other language pairs. Somehow you have to deal with these differences.
Another potential pitfall with technical translation is that often the client cannot let you see or touch the object in question. If you are translating a computer system manual, it’s very helpful to see and even work a little with the system. The same holds for a video game, home audio component, or for that matter a scanning electron microscope, which I realize is hardly something you want in your home, but I have translated manuals and technical specifications for such technology. Sometimes seeing the product in question is not possible, the system or software may still be in development, so you are effectively flying blind, trying to land yourself at a destination you’ve never seen. You might have to create terminology for the system, only to find that the client wants something else. You then have to go back and change everything you did.
The most difficult problem is when you encounter something in one language that doesn’t exist in the other. Financial instruments, legal procedures, government and business structures, and so on vary from nation to nation and culture to culture. Although standard glossaries exist for the most commonplace of these, in other words those that you might hear about on Headline News, translators are usually dealing with new or specialized material and information, so you might be stuck having to christen something on your own, or leave it in the A language and put in a translator’s note explaining what the term means.
There is a Golden Triangle in any form of business. It is an equilateral triangle (meaning that all three sides are the same size), with the first side being Quality, the second, Time, and the last, Price. If you consider an ideal project to be a balance of all three, and therefore rest in the center of the triangle, you can see what happens when you want to lower costs (imagine your job moving toward the Price side). Quality goes down and Time remains the same. If you want a cheap job done quickly, then Quality really drops. Conversely, if you want a job whose Quality is excellent, then Price and Time both rise. Keep this in mind when you consider your translation speed and what you charge; you will want to be flexible in both areas to give your clients what they want.
What is Translated
Most of the material people want translated is not high culture. I have translated materials ranging from articles in medical journals on deep vein thrombosis to bearer’s bonds. The longest translation project I ever did was a 65,000-word book; the shortest, a two-word phrase.
Outsiders to the profession generally see translation as a slow and expensive process which most businesses and organizations would rather avoid. One client told me that translation was, and I quote, "A f*cking pain in the Go**amn #ss." They prefer not to go through the hassle of calling some agency, sending them the material, waiting for a bid, bargaining and haggling over price, form and date of delivery, and then waiting to see if they get something they can use. Very little of what businesses do is worth translating. So what they do translate has to be important to someone somewhere. And therefore it has to be important to you to do it right, especially if you want to get more work from that client.
What might seem stupid to you could be worth a lot to someone. I’ve translated lost traveler’s checks surveys, interoffice memos, and advertising copy for car care products. None of this is high culture. But someone wanted it, so I did my absolute best. Remember, the only way to survive as a translator is to do a good job. You will be judged primarily if not solely on your work.
This said, materials to be translated come in all sizes and shapes. Often you have to deal with hand-written material. Someone scrawled out some message to someone else and this twenty-five-word chit of paper is now Exhibit A in an international patent infringement lawsuit. You probably won’t know that, but it could happen. When I was working in-house as a translator for the City of Kawasaki in Japan, my supervisor plopped a short letter on my desk and I translated it. I later found out that Prime Minister Takeshita took this letter to President Reagan during the Summit meeting in 1988. You never know.
When translating, no problem is too small, no term too minor to be ignored. The people who read your translation don’t know the source language. If they did, they wouldn’t have hired you. It’s easy to see why an article describing a surgical procedure must be done very accurately. It might be harder to see why the comments of a Japanese co-ed on an airline survey would be important, but they could affect future policy of that carrier. You have to take it all seriously if you want your clients to take you seriously.
The Role of the Translator
Translators are language professionals. They are applied linguists, competent writers, diplomats, and educated amateurs. Like linguists, translators have to be capable of discerning subtleties and nuances in their languages, researching terminology and colloquialisms, and handling new developments in their languages. Like writers, translators have to be accustomed to working long hours alone on a subject which interests few people and with a language that few people around them know. Like diplomats, translators have to be sensitive to the cultural and social differences which exist in their languages and be capable of addressing these issues when translating. And like educated amateurs, translators have to know the basics and some of the details about the subjects they deal with.
The above is an idealization of the translator, an image which professional translators aspire to and achieve with varying degrees of success. Not all translators need to overflow with these qualities. They must, however, have them in sufficient measure to be able to translate their material in a manner acceptable to their clients.
Somewhere in the process of translating, the translator will come across all these issues. When I work with technical or medical documents, I have to deal with the intricacies of technical writing in Japanese and English and research new or obscure terms (and sometimes invent my own). I struggle with my English to polish and hone it so that the client sees the material as natural, without the tell-tale signs that it was translated from Japanese. I deal with the differences between Japanese and American culture, especially when I translate computer manuals. We give instructions and explanations in the U.S. very differently from how people give them in Japan.
Like any professional, translators have to stay on top of their areas of expertise. I devote a lot of my time to browsing through magazines like "PC Magazine", "MacWorld", "Scientific American", "The Journal of the American Medical Association", and the "New England Journal of Medicine" as well as reading numerous books on developments in medicine and computer science.
The fundamental rule when you’re not sure of a term or phrase is ask. When you have doubts or questions about a translation, call the client, ask your question, and then get the answer. If you’re still not sure, make a note of it in the final translation. Clients are surprisingly tolerant of such notes and often expect them. I’ve even heard that clients are sometimes suspicious when they don’t see these notes. After all, how much can a translator know about new surgical procedures to clear a pulmonary embolism?
In-House versus Freelance
Translators either work for themselves as freelance translators or in-house as employees of, for instance, a translation agency or software localization firm. The former are typically called freelance translators, or freelancers, and the latter in-house translators. If you are just entering the profession, or if you are considering translation as a career, you have to look closely at these two options to decide which is right for you.
As a freelance translator, you are a business owner. You will take care of marketing, invoicing, accounts payable and receivable, taxes, equipment purchases and maintenance, and so forth. Freelance translators may make more per year on average than in-house translators, but their income is far more variable, and they have to cover all their own expenses, including all taxes, retirement funds, medical and other forms of insurance, and business/operating costs.
As an in-house translator, you work for someone else. You go to your office in the morning, sit in your cubicle during the day translating whatever the company needs, attend meetings to discuss large-scale translation projects, terminology, or equipment, go to training sessions to learn to use the new LAN system or MAT software, and then go home in the evening. Like most jobs, you get paid vacation, insurance, half of your Social Security and FICA taxes paid, and a retirement plan of some sort.
Although the remaining articles will discuss the above differences between freelance and in-house translation in detail, and even offer suggestions as to which people might be suited for, I will say here that often questions of personality and work style are irrelevant. The first and most important question is money. Can you afford to be a freelance translator? To start as a freelance translator, you will need a several thousand dollars to get the computer hardware and software you need, to do some marketing, and to wait out the first few months during which time you will likely have little work, and you will be patiently waiting for that first invoice to be paid. So if you are single with few financial responsibilities, some money saved, and don't mind a bit of a risk, the answer to the money question is affirmative: you can have a go at freelance translation. If however you are married with a couple of children, have the usual expenses of a mortgage, medical costs, and so forth, then you should think very carefully before starting up as a freelance translator.
There is also a strong argument for getting your feet wet in the industry by working for someone else. You can think of it as paid on-the-job training. You will learn more about translating by translating than by doing anything else. And you will also acquire not only all that secondary know-how, such as word processing, negotiating, or filing tax forms, but also lots of practical knowledge of the industry, such as rates, which language pairs or subject areas are in demand, or what technologies are likely to affect translation in the near future. You might even develop relationships that can be turned into clients for a freelance business. So consider starting off as an in-house translator, especially if you are uncomfortable with the financial aspects of working for yourself, or are uncertain as to how you will feel about working at home alone.
A Paradox
The very qualities that seem to make a good translator, those of attention to detail, passion for languages and research, care and craft in writing, also seem to be those that make a poor negotiator or marketing person. How does one overcome this paradox? One, force yourself to market, even when you don’t want to. Make a commitment to yourself to send 100 letters to agencies this week; to call your top five clients for a brief chat; to do annual taxes before 1 October, after having filed an extension on 15 April. You are in business, and don’t forget it.
You should also remind your clients that you are a business professional. Translators want to be treated as professionals, and therefore, they have to behave as professionals. Take the time to learn about your industry, about your languages, about your subject specializations, and about the technology you use to do the work you do. In any industry, there are always too many people wanting to do the work to be done, and too few people who can actually do the work properly. As a translator, you want to make clear to everyone that you are in the latter category, and not in the former.
Above all, as a translator, you are standing between two people or organizations, one which created the material and the other which wants to read it. You are their solution to this otherwise intractable problem. Remember, it’s the information age, and there’s lots of information out there in lots of languages. Translators are the ones who bring this precious commodity to the people who want it.
http://www.translationdirectory.com/jobs.htm#01



Translation as a Profession
The following articles, written by Roger Chriss in 2005, cover every aspect of the translation profession at present, both the freelance and in-house work environments. You can read the articles from start to finish, or use the index below to go straight to the area that interests you most. Roger Chriss has also written a book called Translation as a Profession if you want more current, detailed information.
Article 1: Who and What is a Translator? covers basic questions such as Who is a Translator, the matter of Where Translators Come From, as well as What Is a Translation, and What Is Translated. It also looks at The Role of the Translator and the possibilities In-house versus Freelance for work.
Article 2: What Translators Do starts with A Day in the Life as a Translator, then addresses the all-important question of Income. It then disucsses How To Survive as well as How To Succeed in the profession. Finally, it looks at Should You Be a Translator?, and if so, Should You Go In-house or Freelance.
Article 3: Starting Your Career begins by describing Where to Start, including the questions of Advanced Training, professional Experience, and Translation Training.
Article 4: Translation Careers describes the First Steps you take to get started, then The First Job as a freelancer. It then discusses possible Career Paths and industry Trends, and finally explains Making the Most of It in the profession.
Article 5: Translation Agencies starts with the question What Is An Agency? and explains Why Translators Need Agencies. If you want to go freelance, then read First Contact to find out how to approach agencies, Cover Letters to learn what to say, and Responses from Agencies to know what to expect.
Article 6: The Translation Job describes a typical Work scenario and then gives details about The Translation Job. It discusses the all-important aspects of Delivery, and everyone's favorite topic: Money. Finally, it explains How to Win Agencies and Influence Them.
Article 7: The Home Office explains What Is a Home Office, then describes Deductions for use when preparing taxes. Next comes the matter of Advantages and Disadvantages to working from home, since not everyone is in a position to do so or will enjoy it.
Article 8: Computers starts by explaining how to choose The Computer, then discusses Software for freelance translators as well as the Peripherals needed for a good home office. Next, the Internet, all-important now, and finally advice for buying Used Equipment.
Article 9: Finances looks first at the Black Side of a Translator's Balance Sheet, then discusses Rates for translation work. Next comes the Red Side, where taxes, including deductions, insurance, and investment are explained. The issue of Credit is also addressed, and finally an answer to the question Does It Balance?
Article 10: Professionalism addresses Ethics for translators, the important issue of Handling Clients in difficult situations, and then gives Tips to be More Professional, highly useful for improving relations with clients or other translators.
Article 11: Machine Translation looks at the role computers play in automating the translation process. After dispelling rumors and myths, it looks at MAT at present, and then the likely Evolution of the industry as computers become more powerful and capable.
Article 12: The ATA introduces the American Translators Association and its major activities, including the annual Conference and Certification. Next is a Perspective on the ATA and its role in the profession, and finally a discussion of Other Professional Groups for translators.
Article 13: Other Options looks at what else you can do with foreign language skills, including Interpretation, which is quite different from translation, Project Management and Terminologist work in the translation profession, Language Teaching, Linguistics, and several more possibilities besides.
Article 14: FAQs gives quick answers to questions about Business, Preparation for the Field of translation, issues regarding Business Practices and how to handle problems, questions about Taxes and Finances, matters involving Legal Issues, various questions about Computers (hardware and software), membership in the ATA or Certification, and some Miscellaneous matters.
Translation as a Profession: Article 1
Who and what is a translator? How does one become a translator? What is going on in the translation profession? This article and the others will take a close look at such questions. If you are an experienced translator, you might want to browse this article and then get into the meatier discussions of current and forthcoming technologies, sticky financial and legal issues, or nagging ethical problems. If you are new to the profession, or if you are exploring translation as a possible profession, please take the time to read this article so that you are acquainted with certain basics about translators and what they do.
Who is a Translator?
A translator is a combination of writer and linguist, a person who takes written material such as newspaper or magazine articles, books, manuals or documents in one language and converts it into the equivalent in another language. In other words, a translator converts meaning from one language to another. By definition a translator knows two languages fluently, and often knows a third or even a fourth. Translators also by definition must have strong reading and writing skills, as well as a deep knowledge of the subject material they are working on.
Translators typically work into their native language, that is to say that they translate material that is in their second, acquired language into the language they were born into. There are exceptions, especially among people who are born and raised bilingually, but in general translators produce their best work when going into their mother tongue.
In the translation profession the translator’s native language is referred to as the "A language," and the non-native languages as a "B language" or "C language." A B language is one which the translator can speak, read, and write virtually as a native speaker does. A C language is one which the translator can read and understand almost like a native, but does not necessarily speak or write so well. Obviously we all have an A language, and equally evident, all translators have a B language. Many translators have more than one B language, and some also have C languages. What very few people have is two A languages, and even if you are one of those who do, take care in making the claim, as many people will be skeptical.
In practice, many organizations will only recognize one "A" or native language even if you can legitimately claim two. Online translation profiles now offered by many translation agencies for translators to use to register themselves to get work ,and job applications at translation companies only allow one language as the A or native language. If you have two A languages, in other words you were born, raised, and educated completely bilingually, you should still claim as your A language the one you have stronger writing skills or more reading experience in. This will probably be the language you did your university-level education in or in which you have worked professionally. Then introduce your other A language, which some people would consider a very strong B language, and go from there.
A good translator is by definition bilingual. The opposite is not necessarily true, however. A born and bred bilingual will still need two things to become a translator: first, the skills and experience necessary for translation; second, knowledge of the field in which he or she will translate. The skills and experience for translation include the ability to write well in the language the translator is working into, what is commonly called the target language, and the ability to read and understand the language being translated, what is known as the source language. Further, the bilingual who would be a translator must be able to work with the latest word processing software, machine-assisted translation tools, and typical Internet and email applications.
So does a born and bred bilingual makes a better translator than someone who learned the B language later in life? There is no definite answer, but the following issues are important. First, a born and bred bilingual often does not know any language well enough to translate, with some even suffering from what is known as alingualism, a state in which a person does lacks a full, fluent command of any language. Second, born and bred bilinguals often don’t know the culture of either of their languages well enough to provide top-quality translations, or cannot recognize what aspects of the source language and its culture need to be treated with particular care, as they are in a sense too close to the language. And last, they often lack the analytical linguistic skills developed through conscious study of a language and necessary to work through a text.
On the other hand, the acquired bilingual may not have the same in-depth knowledge of colloquialisms, slang, and dialect that the born bilingual has. As well, the acquired bilingual will not be able to translate as readily in both directions (from B to A language and A to B language). Finally, born bilinguals often have a greater appreciation of the subtleties and nuances of both their languages than someone who learns their B language later in life can ever hope to have.
Where Translators Come From
Translators come from all backgrounds. Some have graduate degrees, as offered at the Monterey Institute of International Studies or Kent State University, some have undergraduate degrees as are now available at several schools in the United States, and some have certificates in translation as can be earned at programs such as Bellevue Community College's Translation & Interpretation Institute. There are equivalent opportunities in Europe, with excellent schools in London, Paris, and Geneva, and in Asia, where Japan has Simu Academy in Tokyo. Also, many translators have undergraduate or graduate degrees, or at least coursework, in their languages, or the literature or history related to their language.
While a specialized degree in translation is useful, it is far from necessary. What counts more than anything else is ability. The translation profession is open to all entrants. There is currently no required accreditation or certification exam, no required academic background or particular degree, and only general expectations for how you learned your languages. So while there are no barriers to entry, there is one essential requirement: you must be able to translate. The profession is not especially tolerant or forgiving. Ability counts for everything.
So where does this ability come from? Perhaps it is nature, but I suspect that nurture helps immensely. Most translators are very well read in their languages, and have thoroughly developed their writing skills. Some are writers who use translation as a way to write for a living. Others are fascinated by language and use translation as a way to be close to their favorite subject. Still others are experts in certain fields and use their language skills to work in that field. But regardless, they have the language skills to translate.
Almost all professional translators in the United States have at least a college degree. Some even have advanced degrees either in translation or in the field they specialize in (a few even have both). Most translators have university-level language training in their B and C languages, and may have taken writing classes for their A language. Some started language study earlier, others later, but very few translators have no language training at all.
Translators have spent time, usually years, living in the countries where their languages are spoken. I know of translators who have spent seven or even ten years in the countries of their B language. Some translators have spent more time in the country of their B language than in the country of their A language. The notable exception to this is Spanish in the United States and English abroad. Because Spanish is used so widely and is as common as English in many parts of the U.S., some translators learn and then work in the language without ever leaving the U.S. As well, translators in other countries often work from English into their native language with just the language training they received in school.
Translators are analytical. They must develop the skills, through classroom training or experience, to dissect language for the purpose of extracting meaning and then representing that meaning in another language. Translators do not work word by word; rather they identify a meaning unit in the source language, sometimes through a non-conscious, apparently intuitive process, and then reproduce that meaning unit in the target language while making certain that terminology is correct, the style of the original is preserved, and the result sounds natural.
Above all, translators must have a deep interest and dedication to the languages they work with. This leads to what I call the maintenance problem. As any native speaker of English who has lived abroad knows, your English skills deteriorate while living abroad. When I came back to the United States after two years in Japan, where I hardly ever spoke, heard, or read English, I found watching the evening news difficult because the speech was too fast, and I read noticeably slowly compared to my friends. This of course faded within a month. But if you are a translator, you have to maintain your skills in all of your working languages, and so must listen, read, speak, and write on a regular basis. I watch hours of news and other programming in Japanese (my B language) every week, and regularly read articles and books in it, too. The Internet and cable television make maintaining one’s language skills easier than ever, but you still have to make the effort.
The knowledge of the field the translator is working in is often overlooked by translators and those that hire them. Translators are by definition language professionals, but they also have to cultivate knowledge of the areas they work in. Few translators claim to be able to translate anything written in their languages; this would imply that you are an expert on everything. A translator who says he can translate anything is a jack of all trades and a master of none. Clients and employers will not feel confident working with such a translator, so most translators have to specialize, working with one or a few related categories of material, for instance legal, financial, medical, computers, or electrical engineering, to name a few. Each field has its own vocabulary, syntax, and style; the translator has to work hard to develop the knowledge necessary to deal with such material.
The knowledge also includes two other important factors. First, the translator should have the background knowledge to work in the field. This does not mean that a medical translator should have an M.D. or that a translator of software manuals should be a programmer. But some background, experience, or education is essential. This can be obtained through coursework, on-the-job experience, or self-study. No one seems too concerned with exactly how translators develop their subject knowledge, unless that knowledge is very arcane or exotic. Claiming that you acquired a thorough knowledge of quantum field theory without ever having taken a single relevant course would be difficult to accept (and if you did, you should probably be a physicist). You will have to back up any claim you make by doing the work, and the profession can be harsh if your work is poor. In other words, you must have the specialized knowledge. And though some translators do have degrees in their specialization, most do not.
Second, the translator should have the necessary resources to deal with the material. This means dictionaries, glossaries, and any other terminology, language, or subject matter resources. Such resources can include Web sites devoted to translation or terminology, discussion groups concerning translation, friends or colleagues who work in the profession, and magazines and journals. And translators have to work tirelessly to improve their knowledge of the fields they work in by reading related material. They also have to invest the time and money in maintaining their reference library and taking courses or acquiring good textbooks.
In other words, professional translators are always learning. Becoming a translator is a lengthy process, and being a translator is also a process, not a state. You don’t just acquire a language in a few weeks or months from a book and then begin translating. Heinrich Schliemann may have learned to read each of his languages in six weeks, but he couldn’t write or speak them (nor did he need to). Moreover, at that time, languages had considerably more limited vocabularies than now. Most of all, reading and translating are two separate things.
So at what point are you ready to begin translating? Simple. When you feel that your abilities of expression and comprehension in your A and B languages are strong enough that you can do the job properly by the client’s deadline. The length of time to cultivate these abilities depends on the person and the language. Native speakers of English have an easier time with the Romance and Germanic languages because their grammars, syntax, and vocabulary are relatively familiar. A language like Chinese or Japanese takes a long time simply because you have to learn to read and understand thousands of characters, as well as deal with grammar, syntax, and structure wholly unrelated to what is found in English.
Your feelings about your ability may not be the best way to decide when you are ready to translate. Remember, the profession can be quite unforgiving, so you want your entrance to be successful. Taking courses, earning a degree or certificate, or passing a certification exam are ways to test your ability and acquire proof that you can translate. Experience living or studying in the country of your B language is another form of proof. Mentoring programs and related work experience are yet another. Whatever you do, make certain that you verify your sense of your ability.
What is a Translation
A turn-of-the-century Russian translator said: "Translation is like a woman, if she is beautiful, she is not faithful; if she is faithful, she is not beautiful." Setting aside for the moment the blatant sexism in this quote, we can see one of the core challenges in translation. Translators must strike a balance between fidelity to the source text and readability in the target language. We have all seen material that is so obviously translated as to sound awkward in our native languages, and in some cases as to bear enough hallmarks of the source language as to be readily identifiable as coming from it. The best translation is the one that no one recognizes as a translation. In other words, the document should read as though it were written in the target language originally. This implies, by extension, that the translator’s effort is transparent, and the translator ends up being invisible. In other words, you do your best work when no one realizes you have done anything.
Achieving this level of translation is challenging, to say the least. The trick is to let your clients decide what they want. Since they have to live with the results of your work, let them choose. Patiently explain to them the options they have, how long each might take, and how much each possible version will cost. They'll decide if they want a literal, if unreadable, translation or if they want a Pulitzer Prize-winning text.
If your client can't decide, doesn't know, or won't tell you, then strike a balance. This is easier with some languages and some subject areas than others. Although most people think that technical material is easiest for stylistic considerations, consider this. Academic style varies from nation to nation. For instance, in English, we generally present our thesis, then give the evidence, develop the argument, and then reach the conclusion. However, in Japanese, we usually present a vague thesis, give the evidence slowly with lots of discussion, and then reach some tentative statement about the thesis in the form of a conclusion. Other differences exist among other language pairs. Somehow you have to deal with these differences.
Another potential pitfall with technical translation is that often the client cannot let you see or touch the object in question. If you are translating a computer system manual, it’s very helpful to see and even work a little with the system. The same holds for a video game, home audio component, or for that matter a scanning electron microscope, which I realize is hardly something you want in your home, but I have translated manuals and technical specifications for such technology. Sometimes seeing the product in question is not possible, the system or software may still be in development. You might have to create terminology for the system, only to find that the client wants something else. You then have to go back and change everything.
The most difficult problem is when you encounter something in one language that doesn’t exist in the other. Financial instruments, legal procedures, and government and business structures vary from nation to nation and culture to culture. Although standard glossaries exist for the most commonplace of these, in other words those that you might hear about on Headline News, translators are usually dealing with new or specialized material and information, so you might be stuck having to christen something on your own, or leave it in the A language and put in a translator’s note explaining what the term means.
What is Translated
Most of the material people want translated is not high culture. I have translated materials ranging from articles in medical journals on deep vein thrombosis to bearer’s bonds, from family registers (the Japanese equivalent of a birth certificate) and university transcripts to engineering specifications for DVDs or toilet manufacturing processes. The longest translation project I ever did was a 65,000-word book; the shortest, a two-word phrase.
Outsiders to the profession generally see translation as a slow and expensive process which most businesses and organizations would rather avoid. They prefer not to go through the hassle of calling a translation company, sending over the material, waiting for a bid, bargaining and haggling over price and form and date of delivery, and then waiting to see if they get something they can use.
Very little of what businesses do is translated. So what they do translate has to be important to someone somewhere. Therefore, it has to be important to you to do it right, especially if you want to get more work from that client. What might seem trivial to you could be worth a lot to someone. I’ve translated lost traveler’s checks surveys, interoffice memos, and advertising copy for car care products. None of this is high culture. But someone wanted it, so I did my absolute best. Remember, the only way to survive as a translator is to do a good job. You will be judged primarily if not solely on your work.
That said, materials to be translated come in all sizes and shapes. Often you have to deal with hand-written material. Someone scrawled out some message to someone else and this twenty-five-word chit of paper is now Exhibit A in an international patent infringement lawsuit. You probably won’t know that, but it could happen. When I was working in-house as a translator for the City of Kawasaki in Japan, my supervisor plopped a short letter on my desk and I translated it. I later found out that Prime Minister Takeshita took this letter to President Reagan during the Summit meeting in 1988. You never know, so be prepared and do your best,
When translating, no problem is too small, no term too minor to be ignored. The people who read your translation don’t know the source language. If they did, they wouldn’t have hired you. It’s easy to see why an article describing a surgical procedure must be done very accurately. It might be harder to see why the comments of a Japanese teenager on an airline survey would be important, but they could affect future policy of that carrier. You have to take it all seriously if you want your clients to take you seriously.
The Role of the Translator
Translators are language professionals. They are applied linguists, competent writers, diplomats, and educated amateurs. Like linguists, translators have to be capable of analyzing the syntax and structures of their languages, researching terminology and colloquialisms, and handling new developments in their languages. Like writers, translators have to be accustomed to working long hours alone on a subject which interests few people and with a language that few people around them know. Like diplomats, translators have to be sensitive to the cultural and social differences which exist in their languages and be capable of addressing these issues when translating. And like educated amateurs, translators have to know the basics and some of the details about the subjects they deal with.
The above is an idealization of the translator, an image which professional translators aspire to and achieve with varying degrees of success. Not all translators need to overflow with these qualities. They must, however, have them in sufficient measure to be able to translate their material in a manner acceptable to their clients.
Somewhere in the process of translating, the translator will come across all these issues. When I work with technical or medical documents, I have to deal with the intricacies of technical writing in Japanese and English and research new or obscure terms (and sometimes invent my own). I struggle with my English to polish and hone it so that the client sees the material as natural, without the tell-tale signs that it was translated from Japanese. I have to research the subject matter using authoritative sources, expert associates, and current articles or books. Finally, I deal with the differences between Japanese and American culture, in particular when negotiating with clients or translating material with significant cultural content.
The fundamental rule when you’re not sure of something in your source text, the material that is to be translated, is to ask. When you have doubts or questions, call the client, ask your question, and then get the answer. If you’re still not sure, make a note of it in the final translation. Clients are surprisingly tolerant of such notes and often expect them. I’ve even heard that clients are sometimes suspicious when they don’t see these notes. After all, how much can a translator know about new surgical procedures to clear a pulmonary embolism?
In-House versus Freelance
Translators either work for themselves as independent contractors or for the translation department of a company or organization, or for translation agencies. The former are typically called freelance translators, or freelancers, and the latter, in-house translators.
If you are just entering the profession, or if you are considering translation as a career, you have to look closely at these two options to decide which is right for you. Although both involve translation itself, each also involves certain personality traits and individual characteristics. In addition, there are implications for the kind of work you will do, the technology you will use to do your work, and who you will work with.
As a freelance translator, you are a business owner. You will take care of marketing, invoicing, accounts payable and receivable, taxes, equipment purchases and maintenance, and benefits. Freelance translators may make more per year on average than in-house translators, but their income is far more variable, and they have to cover all their own expenses, including all taxes, retirement funds, medical and other forms of insurance, and business/operating costs.
As an in-house translator, you work for someone else. You go to your office in the morning, sit in your cubicle during the day translating whatever the company or organization needs, attend meetings to discuss large-scale translation projects, terminology, or equipment, go to training sessions to learn to use the new LAN system or MAT software, and then go home in the evening. Like most jobs, you get paid vacation, insurance, half of your Social Security and FICA taxes paid, and the other benefits that come with employment.
Although the remaining articles will discuss the above differences between freelance and in-house translation in detail, and even offer suggestions as to which people might be suited for, I will say here that often matters of personality and working style can be dismissed. The reason is money. Only if you are financially and personally in a position to assume the risks of starting a home business should you then inventory your personal strengths and preferences to see if you will be comfortable as an independent contractor. Furthermore, some languages offer more freelance work, while others offer more in-house work. For instance, since the start of the War on Terror in the U.S., the military and intelligence community have been hiring translators of Arabic, Korean, Farsi, and Davi among others, regularly. It is highly unlikely that a freelance Davi translator could make a significant amount of money.
So before you figure out which you might prefer, consider the financial and business realities of the languages you know. To start as a freelance translator, you will need a several thousand dollars to get the computer hardware and software you need, to do some marketing, and to wait out the first few months during which time you will likely have little work, and you will be patiently waiting for that first invoice to be paid. It may take several years for your work flow to stabilize at a level you are comfortable with. So if you are single with few financial responsibilities, some money saved, and don’t mind the risk, the answer to the money question is affirmative: you can have a go at freelance translation. If however you are married with a couple of children, have the usual expenses of a mortgage, medical costs, and so forth, then you should think very carefully before starting up as a freelance translator.
There is also a strong argument for getting your feet wet in the industry by working for someone else. You can think of it as paid on-the-job training. You will learn more about translation by translating than any other way. And you will also acquire not only all that secondary know-how, such as word processing, negotiating, or filing tax forms, but also lots of practical knowledge about the industry, such as rates, which language pairs or subject areas are in demand, or what technologies are likely to affect translation in the near future. You might even develop relationships that can be turned into clients for a freelance business. So consider starting off as an in-house translator, especially if you are uncomfortable with the financial aspects of working for yourself, have a language pair that is unlikely to yield a good freelance income, or are uncertain as to how you will feel about working at home alone.
The very qualities that seem to make a good translator, those of attention to detail, passion for languages and research, care and craft in writing, also seem to be those that make a poor negotiator or marketing person. How does one overcome this paradox? One, force yourself to market, even when you don’t want to. Make a commitment to yourself to send find and contact 100 potential clients this month; to call or email your top five clients for a brief exchange of information; to do submit a tax return before October 1, after having filed an extension on April 15. You are in business; as Donald Trump suggests, treat your business like a lover, with the passion and commitment necessary to make it thrive.
You should also show your clients that you are a business professional. Translators want to be treated as professionals, and therefore, they have to behave as professionals. Take the time to learn about your industry, about your languages, about your subject specializations, and about the technology you use to do the work you do. In any industry, there are always too many people wanting to do the work to be done, and too few people who can actually do the work properly. As a translator, you want to make clear to everyone that you are in the latter category.
Above all, as a translator, you are standing between two people or organizations, one which created the material and the other which wants to read it. You are their solution to this otherwise intractable problem. Remember, it's the information age, and there’s lots of information out there in lots of languages. Translators bring this precious commodity to the people who want it.
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Translation as a Profession: Article 2
Few people have any idea what translators do. Some people argue that translators don’t actually do anything because they are not creating anything new. Most people accept that what translators do is work, even if they don’t understand how translators do what they do, or for that matter in what kind of environment a translator works. Having been a freelance translator for twelve years now, I have developed certain routines and habits that should be of interest to readers who don’t already translate, and might provide some new ideas to those who have been at it a while.
A Day in My Life as a Translator
I start my work day around 7:30 A.M., in part because I live and work on the West Coast but have clients on the East Coast who may need my attention before midday, and in part because by starting early I am assured an hour of two of considerable quiet during which I can work at full concentration and without distraction.
First I review any new email or files that need my attention, answering client queries and making sure I am on schedule for my current projects. Then I translate. I find translation to require considerable concentration, particularly if I am working on a document with sticky syntax or troublesome terminology, with concepts that are new or unfamiliar, or with printing of such poor quality that the job turns into an exercise in archaeological decipherment. Phone calls and faxes can interrupt the flow I get in once I start on a text, so I all but guarantee myself a couple of hours in which, except for rare cases, I can crank along at a steady, productive pace.
Also, there is considerable evidence from neurology and cognitive science that the language function of the brain operates best in the morning hours. Whether or not this has any impact on translation remains to be seen, but I do find that I work better, producing higher quality text in less time, in the morning.
I do sometimes get calls early in the morning, occasionally as early as 2:00 or 3:00 am, though that hasn’t happened much since the industry shifted to email-based communication. Since freelance translators inevitably work for businesses that are many time zones ahead or behind them, sometimes even a day ahead if the International Date Line is involved, calls can in theory come at virtually any time or the day or night. As such, some businesses may come to expect their freelancer to be on call 24 hours a day, not only able to accept faxes or email, a relatively automatic process, but to confirm on the telephone receipt of such faxes or email, and even to discuss a project, if not actually work on it. I’ve gotten calls from New York at 9:00 pm Pacific time on a Friday night. Ignoring the obvious question for such callers, I cannot support the practice of 24/7 availability. Further, if you want to do business with someone, or if you want a favor from someone, you really ought to call when convenient for that person, and not for you. A few people have called me at 1:00 or 2:00 a.m.; I do not answer the phone at that hour unless I see a caller ID from a close family member or friend, and I’m disinclined to call back such people.
Translators have to be willing to work hard for their clients, but as independent contractors they also have to protect their life outside of work and discourage clients from thinking of them as always available. Whether you choose to be available for your clients at all times or to ignore your business phone, fax, and email at certain times is up to you, but I strongly suggest the latter so as to prevent excess stress (will they never leave me alone!?), job dissatisfaction (all I do is work, work, work!), and burn out (I can’t take it any more). A career is like a marathon: only by pacing yourself will you be able to retire with grace and poise.
If, by the way, you are awoken by your business phone very early in the morning, don’t answer it. Save yourself the embarrassment and confusion. You will not, regardless of how quickly you think you wake up, sound particularly coherent or give intelligent answers to questions. Let your answering machine take the call, then call the client back once you are fully awake and aware, ready to work. Also, there’s nothing wrong with firmly yet gracefully insisting that clients call you during your normal business hours.
The rest of my day can unfold in one of a few ways, depending on how much work I have and when the work has to be done. I’ll tell you about each, one at a time. On days when I have a lot of work, I spend the rest of the day working on the translation until either it is done, or at least far enough along. Whenever I receive an assignment, I check the length of the source text, do a quick calculation, and figure out how many words I have to do every day. I then do a little more than that per day.
As I translate, when I find words or phrases I don’t know, I note them on a separate page and then look them up later. Sometimes, my search for these words takes me to a library, sifting through dictionaries, encyclopedias, almanacs, and maps, or has me on the phone, checking with someone who can either tell me the word, or at least explain the concept to me. At other times, I wander the Web, looking for authoritative references, since I need not a random mention of the term but a credible source.
On days when I have only a little work, I still begin the day by translating. Once finished with the day’s quota, I work on finding more work and keeping my skills sharp. This means making certain my information with potential clients is current and available, looking for potential new clients and letting them know I exist, and studying my languages and subject areas. I watch hours of television news in Japanese per week, along with other programming. I regularly read books and articles in Japanese and English on both general subjects and the areas I translate in. Of course, some of my time also goes into my website, and even working on articles such as the one you are reading now.
If I don’t have any work, I work on finding work. Despite over a decade in the translation profession, I still have the occasional day when I don’t have any work. Freelance translators, like most self-employed people, generally describe their work flow as being “feast or famine.” You are either drowning in work, translating from dawn until late at night, trying to meet your impossible deadlines and fretting over carpal tunnel syndrome as you do so, or you are waiting by the phone, praying to the patron saint of translators, St. Jerome, or perhaps the patron saint of lost causes. This feast or famine cycle has become more accentuated in recent years as clients have shortened the time frame for translation projects. A job that might have been granted a week five years ago is now given only three or four days. So expect to work very hard when you have work, and then have down time during which you have to look for more work.
You probably noted the paradox here. When translators have lots of work, they have no time to market themselves for the upcoming and inevitable dry spell. When they have no work, it is too late to do the necessary marketing. A freelance translator is in the business of providing translation services, which means that you are more than a translator; you are a businessperson, whose duties include finding work. A discussion of finding work can be found here. For now, remember this truism for translators and all other freelaners: market always!
Income
Income in translation, particularly freelance translation, varies considerably. At the lower end, a freelance translator can have negative income, a result of spending more for business purposes than earning from translation in a given year. The upper end of the range is filled with rumors, from stories of individuals earning over $150,000 per year to claims by duos or small teams of generating in excess of $200,000 per year.
Realistically, few translators ever have negative income, except perhaps during their first year of business. This is most likely to happen if this first business year consists of the last two months of the calendar year, during which considerable funds are spent on computers and other office essentials. Also, few translators ever make over $60,000 per year, and you should be very skeptical of claims of income above $75,000. Of course, there are exceptions, but for the most part translators can expect to make between $35,000 and $45,000 per year. If you hear stories about income levels much higher than that, just smile and bear in mind that most people exaggerate their income, at least to some extent.
The American Translators Association publishes annually the results of their income survey of their readership, and makes available a booklet with all the results. Aquarius and other online translator forums also have rates and salary surveys, as does the employment website Salary.com. Rates and income for translators have been soft for the past five years, falling even in some areas. So you don’t need to find especially current information. Broadly speaking, freelancers, who in the United States are almost always paid by the word, working with European languages are seeing rates on the order of $0.07 to $0.09 per word at most, and freelancers working with Asian or other rare languages are getting roughly $0.08 to $0.12 per word. In-house translators are still starting around or a little above $30,000, with the average near $40,000, and a few exceeding $50,000 after years of experience. These freelance rates do vary by subject area and job time frame; the in-house salaries vary depending on education, experience, language, and subject area.
So if you are asked if you make a lot of money as a translator, your answer will probably be no, though that does depend on what you consider a lot of money. And it also depends on what month or year you are in, as translation, like all businesses, is not perfectly stable or predictable.
Income for a freelance translator can be calculated with a simple equation:
Income = Average Word Rate x Words Translated
Figure out how many words you translate per week and the average word rate for the projects those words are a part of, and the result is your income for that week. Similarly, you can calculate your monthly income or your annual income. If you are getting $0.08 per word (a reasonable rate for the market overall) and translating 2000 words a day, five days a week, fifty weeks per year (we’ll assume you take a vacation day here and there, celebrate the usual holidays, and get sick once in a while), then your income for the year is $40,000. Of course it make take several years to find a steady flow of work at that rate and learn to translate that many words per day every day, but this is a reasonable model that many people do achieve.
So what about the rumors of translation riches? What about the Web sites offering systems to earn high five-digit or even six-figure incomes? First of all: caveat lector. Don’t believe everything you read, especially if it’s marketing material, and in particular if it’s on the Web. Ask yourself why such people aren’t using their own system rather than trying to sell it? Ask yourself how many translators have been featured on Lifestyles of the Rich and Famous? Do the members of your local translators’ group arrive in Rolls Royces, do the experienced translators at the annual ATA Conference fly in on their own Lear jets, do you know any translators who have retired early from their translation earnings?
But let’s approach this differently. What would it take to earn $150,000 per year as a freelance translator? Simple math shows that at $0.10 per word (a good rate) you’d have to do 5,000 words per day, six days a week, 52 weeks per year, to earn $156,000 annually. Or at a rate of $0.20 per word, you’d have to do 2,500 words per day.
To get $0.20 per word, you’d have to find all your own clients, since no agency is going to pay you $0.20 per word except under extremely extenuating circumstances that could not possibly continue for a year’s time. Even direct clients rarely pay that much these days, unless you are providing desktop publishing and other ancillary services, which themselves can take a lot of time and require expensive software and other technology. And direct clients generally expect a completed translation, one that has been edited, proofread, and perhaps even prepared for printing. So you either have to do all of that yourself, or you have to pay someone else to do it. Either way, your overall income will fall.
Second, you’d have to be very fast and efficient to maintain that level of productivity over a year’s time. There are people who do it. There are even people who claim to do in excess of 7,000 words per day regularly, some of whom simply dictate their translation into a tape recorder, and then pay others to transcribe and edit their work. As above though, your income will fall as you pay some of your gross earnings to the people who do this work for you. And as for doing it all by yourself, that leads to…
Third, you’d spend a great deal of your time working, probably in excess of ninety hours per week. Remember that for every hour of translation you do, you will likely have five to ten minutes worth of other office work, including marketing, invoicing, accounts receivable and payable, banking, purchasing office supplies and equipment, maintaining and upgrading your computer system, evaluating and acquiring new dictionaries and other language resources, and doing taxes, to name a few possibilities. This is a part of running a business, and you can certainly pay other people to do this work for you, but again, what you pay others comes out of your income.
So set aside the myth of rapid riches. Starting freelance translators with good skills and languages that are in demand in the market can reasonably expect to make $25,000 in their first or second year, perhaps more, sometimes even considerably more, depending on their language combination and subject specialization. The average in the industry seems to be around $40,000 per year, with a few people making in excess of $100,000 per year. But those that do so rarely have time for little else but eating and sleeping. There are far easier, faster, and more humane ways to get rich. With the right education, such as in international law or finance, and a few languages, one can go very far and very high in industry, or so I’m told. In other words, translation is not a way to get rich quickly or make it into the Forbes’ 400.
For those of you that dream of translating a great novel or book and living off the royalties, doing so will be extraordinarily difficult. Authors generally get about 10% of the hardback sales and 4% or the paperback sales in royalties and have to fight very hard for that. They’re not going to yield part of it to some translator unless they absolutely have to. I’ve translated books and gotten paid the same way I did for everything else: by the word. Many years ago, different relations existed between publishers and translators, but nowadays, the only advantage to translating a book is that you have a lot of work for a long time. Also, royalty payments generally are paid starting six to twelve months after the book hits the bookstores, which will likely be six to twelve months after you finish translating it. That is too long to wait for a substantial amount of income, though this may be offset by an advance from the publisher, should you be able to get one. In sum, translating books can be a fascinating process, but approach it as a business proposition. Do the math if you are offered multiple payment options and make a strategic business and financial decision about the job.
If you’re thinking of translating literature, think twice. It takes a long time to translate a work of art, and even more for it to be published. You might get some kind of royalty out of it, but hardly enough to justify the time and effort you’ll expend cultivating the necessary relations with the publishers, editors, and of course, the writer (if alive). You really need to love literature if you want to do this. It can be very rewarding, I say so having done a bit of that work myself, but it is also quite demanding. Enter into such projects slowly and carefully, if at all.
So if you think $35,000 to $45,000 a year is enough to live on, to raise your family, and to prepare for retirement, then you’ll be fine financially in translation. Of course, there is the theoretical maximum, and you can increase your income by finding your own clients, or providing other services. However, your income will vary from month to month and year to year. Translation is a very fickle industry, subject to the vagaries of politics and economics like few other professions are. The dot-com crash ended a five-year boom for localization that kept many translators employed and happy. The advent of the War on Terror created a demand in the U.S. intelligence community for languages that most people had not previously heard of. And the Internet has enabled offshoring of languages, particularly through services like Proz.com and TranslatorsCafe.com, that has made U.S.-based translators in some languages struggle.
As an independent contractor, your income in one year is not a good indication of your income for the next year. In fact, it is no indication at all, unless you are so well established and work in such an esoteric (but still in high demand) field that you can somehow count on work always. Furthermore, your income from month to month fluctuates. While you will never make so little as to have to choose between feeding yourself or your cat, you may well have little left over after basic expenses in some months. Other months will leave you with enough to take a luxurious vacation, though you should save at least some of that extra income in preparation for the months with less income.
Furthermore, there are financial implications of being self-employed. The details are complex and vary year to year, so what follows is necessarily general in nature. However, keep all this in mind, and keep track of all this, because it is not only important, but it’s the law. And consult with a tax professional for answers to any detailed or unusual questions.
Freelance translators are self-employed, meaning that they have to file a Schedule C at the end of the tax year. They also have to pay quarterly estimated income tax (both federal and state, unless your state does not require payment of state income tax). And they have to pay self-employment tax, though one-half of that amount is deductible from your overall income tax.
Unfortunately, there's more. Freelance translators also have to pay all their Social Security tax, all their FICA tax, and any other taxes your state and the federal government invent in the future. Freelancers also have to fund their own retirement plans, though this does have some advantages, including more control over how your retirement funds are invested and higher ceilings for annual investment in retirement funds. And self-employed people need to arrange for their own health coverage and life insurance (if necessary), both of which tend to cost progressively more per year as one ages. All in all, freelancers end up paying a lot more in tax than someone who works for someone else.
However, you can take many more deductions than people who are regular employees can. First and foremost is the well-known “Business Use of Home” deduction. You can also deduct as expenses any and all equipment, tools, and supplies, including computer hardware and software, paper, stamps, envelopes, paper clips, erasers, and dictionaries that you use, as well as a percent of your telephone and utility bills, and a part of your medical insurance costs (this percentage changes every year). Furthermore, you can deduct advertising costs, finance charges for business stuff bought with a credit card, and cost of membership to professional associations and subscriptions to professional journals and magazines.
In sum, if you can handle variety and unpredictability in your income as well as the responsibility of managing your personal and business finances, then being a self-employed won’t be a problem. If you want a paycheck every month with the same amount on it, and you want to see that amount go up incrementally over the years, then look for an in-house position or consider a new profession.
How to Survive
There seem to be two fundamental rules in the translation profession. Most successful translators seem to follow both, though some successful translators follow neither.
Rule Number One: Work in the country of your B language.
Rule Number Two: Marry a native speaker of your B language.
These rules are not meant to be humorous. Translators typically do make ten to twenty percent more working into a foreign language in the United States as compared to translating into English. And some agencies and employers are more comfortable giving work to a translator whose spouse is a native speaker of the translator’s B language. I’ve had a few agencies choose not to give me work because I was not married to a Japanese. Obviously these rules are not meant to suggest that those who break them are doomed to failure, but those who do will have to work harder.
Now then, what to do when there isn’t much work coming in? One possibility is to rely on your spouse’s income (not feasible unless you are married). Another possibility is rely on the money you have in your bank account (assumes you have enough money). A third possibility is to do something else part time.
Many translators also do other things on the side. I personally consider myself a consultant who provides language services to anyone who wants them. I have taught English, Japanese, and Spanish over the years. I have done copy editing, proofreading, and written abstracts and text analyses for people. I have worked part-time as a desktop publisher and a database consultant. I do some technical and commercial writing, including short articles for Transparent Language and operating manuals for QXCOM (now a part of Computer Associates). And I have taught courses on translation at the Monterey Institute of International Studies (the course is called, not surprisingly, “Translation as a Profession”) and at Bellevue Community College’s Translation and Interpretation Institute, and now conduct workshops for translators on a variety of subjects.
Never forget that the suite of abilities which translators possess can be applied productively to numerous related fields. Translators are often quite capable copy editors, proofreaders, and desktop publishers. Translators can readily make the transition to writing manuals for computer companies, articles for local papers or magazines, and even short stories or books. Translators can also teach the languages they know or prepare reference or educational materials. Some translators even make the move into interpretation, but be warned: interpretation is very different from translation and requires thorough schooling in the techniques of consecutive and simultaneous interpretation.
Because translation is catch-as-catch-can and can even be seasonal, having a fall-back position is a good idea, particularly as you’re getting started in translation. I don’t know many translators whose clientele is so reliable that they have a constant and unending flow of work. You have to be ready for those dry spells. If you need money, then go get a part-time job or do something on the side. You can always work for a temporary agency. If you don’t need the money, then do one of those things you talk about doing all the time.
How to Succeed
So how do people succeed in this profession? Is there a secret, and if so, what is it? And why, some people might ask, would anyone bother becoming a translator? All good questions; let’s examine each in turn.
First: how to succeed. In a nutshell, you succeed by working hard. Sorry, that’s really all there is to it. You can sit in your home office, watch your screen saver splash picturesque photos or swing logos around your computer monitor, and think that you are failing simply because you are an unrecognized and undiscovered genius, you are working in a language with little demand, or you don’t have the right background or equipment. However, the truth is much simpler.
If you are not succeeding, you are not working hard enough.
Of course, this assumes that you do have some equipment (translations hewn in stone or written on parchment are not acceptable these days), that you know a good language (little demand nowadays for Hawaiian or Basque), and that you have some ability (though if you didn’t, you wouldn’t be reading this article). Maybe you are the next great literary translator, the person who will bring new meaning to the Upanishads or the Iliad. But most translators are not literary geniuses, and they don’t have to be. In other words:
If you’re not succeeding, you’re not working hard enough.
So what do I mean? Simply this: being a freelance translator involves a lot of business and a lot of translation. You will have to spend your time marketing yourself, telling clients that you exist and are available to do work, proving to people that you can do what you say you can, and continuing to do this for the duration of your stay in the profession. No matter how long you’ve been a translator, you’ll have to market yourself incessantly. Send your resume hither, dither, and yon. Cold call potential agencies or clients. Walk into local companies (for example: law firms and consulting houses) and see what their needs are. Contact your local Chamber of Commerce or the appropriate embassy or consulate. Log onto the Web, use the directory of translation agencies at Yahoo, go to each agency’s web site, and sign yourself up as an independent contractor (also known as a translation vendor) with the agencies that let you do that online.
Unfortunately, hard work is often not enough. The industry is nowadays flooded with unskilled people all competing for the same jobs. This plus offshoring and Internet-based work exchanges has put a lot of pressure not only on rates and salaries, but also on translators themselves. There just isn’t enough work to go around in many languages these days. So hard work combined with the right skills and resources, in other words a competitive language pair, strong computer skills, deep subject knowledge, and aggressive marketing, will lead to success.
Second: what’s the secret? In a word: Timing. This isn’t much of a secret, and saying it is much easier than doing it. Timing is everything in translation; and I mean this in the broadest sense possible. When you contact potential or existing clients, when you submit samples of your work to agencies, when you take vacations, when you make new purchases, when you pay taxes, when you get paid, and most importantly, when you submit work.
Let’s start with the last first. Submitting work to an agency or client is what you have to do in order to get paid. Clients and agencies want the work on time. The top complain of project managers is late work from translators. In other words: don’t submit anything late, ever! Always know and respect your deadlines. If by some chance you can’t, contact your client ahead of time to revise the delivery schedule. And keep time zones in mind: I often submit work the evening before a 9:00 a.m. delivery on the East Coast.
In sum: Never submit anything late!
Next timing tidbit: set aside one third of your earnings for taxes. The government has this rule that self-employed people have to pay taxes quarterly (by April 15, June 15, September 15, and then January 15). When you do your annual income taxes, you figure out what you owe, then subtract what you’ve already paid and then pay the government the remainder (unless you paid too much, in which case you get some back). Pay something every quarter so that you avoid the penalties for underpayment at the end of the year and the shock of a large payment on or before April 15. If you have already paid most of what you owe at year’s end, you won’t have to pay much of an underpayment penalty, if anything at all.
Timing purchases: You should also plan your purchases, be they personal or business, around your finances and payment schedules. Any large business purchase is best made at the end of the year when you are close to getting your deduction for it. Any large personal expenditure is best made when you have a lot of work and a bit in money in the bank. And always keep some extra in the bank, just in case.
Timing vacations: Of course this depends a lot on your personal life, but it’s very easy to get work around Christmas and New Year’s because almost no one is around to do it. Also, during August, the supply of translators drops (they all migrate somewhere) and so if you’re available, it might be easier to get work. And, you should know the annual cycle for the languages you’re working in so that you know when the busy and off seasons are.
Finally, timing marketing: Advertise and promote yourself regularly and consistently. Keep your profile with agencies that maintain translator databases via their web site up to date. Make certain you check your listings as the busy season for your languages approaches. Also, know when to call. Project managers are very busy and don’t often want to chat with translators they don’t know. If you’re going to call, do so midweek during the middle of the morning; this seems to be the least irritating time for project managers. When you call, be concise and constructive.
Remember, the secret is timing, and experience is the best way to master it.
Should You Be a Translator?
There are many reasons to become a translator. I often hear potential translators say that they want to enter the profession because they love languages or already know two fluently. These are necessary but not at all sufficient conditions for a career in translation. You have to enjoy the task of analyzing language for meaning, then transferring that meaning from your B language into your A language. You also have to be comfortable working on tight deadlines while paying close attention to details such as terminology and formatting, using current software and hardware effectively and enthusiastically, and polishing your writing skills in your A language.
Further, you have to be very knowledgeable in a subject area that is in demand. Just knowing two languages is not enough to be a translator these days. You have to know the common concepts and facts in your subject area, along with the appropriate terminology and writing style to translate well. More and more, the subject areas that offer a lot of work are technical, mostly related to computers, biotechnology, medicine, and communications.
I translate because I like to write and I like languages. I also like my subject matter. I mostly translate original research in the fields of electrical engineering, telecommunications, and computer science. I enjoy seeing what brilliant minds in top labs around the world are working on now, often months or years before the news media or popular press pick up on it.
In general, people are in translation because they like to translate. They enjoy taking information in one language and discovering a way to render it into another. They relish the challenge of wading through uncharted linguistic and terminological waters. They feel challenged, but not frustrated, as they try to find the best way, or at least a good way, to write in their A language what the source document says in their B language. Harsh deadlines don’t bother them, and, of course, they are interested in their subject matter.
Although many people enter translation by first knowing two languages and then gaining subject expertise, some become translators because they are experts in a subject area and want to combine that with a knowledge of two languages. Bilingual computer scientists, engineers, and physicians find the move into technical translation to be smooth, though not necessarily easy. Unfortunately, you won’t know how you feel about translation until you actually do it. Home or classroom exercises are not the same; in school I did 2000 words of translation per week, whereas now I often do more than that each day, and I’ve been doing it every day for 12 years. Some people find they don’t like translating once they do it full-time and move on to related work. If you find yourself in this position, take a look here.
Should You Go In-House Or Freelance?
In many cases the market will determine where you work, but assuming you have a choice, consider this. When you are self-employed, you are alone. You have no colleagues, co-workers, supervisor, manager, maintenance or tech-support staff. On the plus side, you can work in your pajamas while blasting acid rock; on the other hand, you have to motivate, schedule, manage, and market yourself, as well as dealing with the reality of being by yourself all the time at work.
Conversely, as an employee you are surrounded by other people, often making unreasonable or unrealistic demands on your time and ability. The translator in the next cubicle may type loudly, chat on the phone often, play music on a radio, or chew gum and blow bubbles day after day. You have to do the work assigned to you when and how it is assigned, you have to deal with managers who often know only one language and consider translators to be failed writers or over-educated, over-paid bilingual secretaries.
Which is better? Ultimately your personality and working style will decide. If you can, try both. You’ll quickly find out which you prefer. I am a freelance translator because I like to work for myself. I have translated in-house in Japan and have had teaching jobs on both sides of the Pacific. I’ve also worked as a hospital orderly, as a desktop publisher, graphic artist, database consultant, truck driver, stock boy, construction laborer, and garbage shoveler, to mention a few of my past fields of employ. At this point, I prefer working for myself, though that could change, given the right opportunity.
So is there a right reason to be a translator? I doubt it. Is there a wrong reason? Quite. Knowing two languages or loving language is not a good reason to be a translator. It’s a start, of course, but there is a lot more. Loving languages is also a start, but I know people who love languages and hate translation; they seem to head into linguistics or language teaching.
Back to the Contents.
Translation as a Profession: Article 3
So you’ve decided this is the right career for you, and you want to be able to say that you are a translator. This is the first step in the proverbial journey of ten thousand miles. There is a well known process, a sequence of steps people take on their way to translator status, and although short cuts are possible, they are not recommended. Remember, the translation profession is not especially forgiving. It is open to all comers, and because there are so many people trying to enter, if you come unprepared, you will go unnoticed.
Where to Start
First, the minimum requirement to begin the process of becoming a translator is knowing two languages fluently. It does not matter how you acquire your languages. Whether you are born into a bilingual family or environment, or are educated in school, ideally starting at a young age, you must achieve adult-level fluency in your A and B languages.
Adult-level fluency refers to a command of your languages identical to that which adults working professionally as native speakers of those languages would have. You must, in other words, be able to read, write, speak, and understand what these people would in their various professional and personal settings. In other words, high school and college-level language classes represent the initial phase of the process. You may have completed three or even four years of university coursework in Chinese or Russian or French, but that is, unfortunate to say, very little. When you can pick up a newspaper, magazine, or research article on any subject you plan to translate in, read it without using a dictionary at all, then have a discussion about its content with a professor or other person knowledgeable on the subject, and finally write a cogent “letter to the editor” about the article, you have the achieved the language facility you will need.
Okay, the above is an exaggeration. But only slightly. All of the successful translators I’ve known in the past two decades have that ability, or very close to it, in their languages. Achieving this will require lots of classroom and fieldwork. By classroom I mean courses that first teach you the language, and then have you function in that language doing professional-type things. By fieldwork I mean living and working in the country of your B language, ideally for years.
My own background may help clarify what I am describing. I started Japanese as a sophomore in college (better late than never), then spent my junior year in Kyoto in Japan studying at Doshisha University as an exchange student, during which time I practiced kendo with a school club, took calligraphy lessons twice a week, had four hours of Japanese language classes every day, lived with a home-stay family, and traveled extensively using youth hostels and college rail passes. Senior year back in the United States I took more Japanese classes, and after graduation I went back to Japan for two years, where I worked as an English teacher and did some basic translation work, and during which time I took advanced courses in Japanese at night, along with lots of other activities that took place in Japanese. Following that I went to graduate school for a year as a linguistics student, taking classes in Japanese, whereupon I left my program and entered the translation school at the Monterey Institute of International Studies. In my first meeting with my advisor during orientation week I was told that my language background was wholly insufficient to be a translator and that I should go back to Japan for at least several years, perhaps even a decade, and then come back. Being a bit stubborn, I didn’t do that, studied very hard at the Monterey Institute, where virtually every translation class I took was in Japanese, and finally graduated. Then I started translating. In retrospect I think my language skills could have been sharper, but more on that below.
Often overlooked are A language skills. You must become an excellent writer in your native languages, with the ability to emulate a wide variety of styles, respect the customs and conventions of your native language, and produce properly formatted, orthographically correct, well punctuated material. Take writing classes, including technical or scientific writing classes, as are available for English at many schools in the United States. Read books on the subject. My favorites for English are The Chicago Manual of Style, Strunk and White’s Elements of Style, and On Writing Well, by William Zinser. These are all classics and belong in the collection of any native English speaker who wants to translate. Also worth reading is George Orwell’s Politics and the English Language. Further, find and read any book or article on writing for the subject area you choose to work in. Finally, read, read, read written material, particularly in your subject area, so that you are fully conversant in the style and conventions of your native language.
Advanced Training
As you develop your language skills, you also need to gain a thorough grounding in one or more subject areas you can do your translation work in. A translator has to translate something, obviously, and as discussed in the first article, that something is a text, document, or other written material that is on a particular subject. In other words, you not only need fluency in two languages, but also knowledge of the subject in question.
Common subject areas at present in the translation profession include scientific and technical material, in particular hardware and software documentation, medical and biotechnology materials, and telecommunications and research documents, as well as legal, financial, and sometimes more general texts, which here refers to everything from birth certificates and school transcripts to newspaper articles and Web site content.
The more difficult or demanding a subjects is, the greater the pay and amount of available work. If all you can do is handle simple documents like birth certificates or general news articles, you won’t be able to find much work or convince an employer to hire you. If however you can translate medical instrument patents, pharmaceutical research, and bioinformatics material, you should have little difficulty finding a job.
So you will need to take at the very least university-level courses in the basics of the subject you want to work in, or through professional experience gain equivalent knowledge. If you are still in school, this should be fairly simple: take introductory physics, engineering, and calculus classes plus programming courses if you want to work on software or hardware localization, take accounting and finance courses if you want to be a financial translator, take law and policy courses if you want to be a legal translator.
Your subject knowledge will save you if your language skills flag. My Japanese, though fluent, is not perfect, and so when I’m translating a research article on, for instance, robotic vision, my knowledge of computer science and robotics helps me see what the article is talking about even if the language is obscure to me. And remember, many documents will be poorly written, so again your subject knowledge will be invaluable for figuring out what the document is trying to say.
Ideally you should take courses in your subject area in both of your languages, or work professionally in your subject area using both languages. Of course this is often impractical, sometimes even impossible. So instead you can read, read, read all material you can find on your subject area in a process that is referred to as parallel reading. Texts about on the Web, including not only such multilingual sources as Wikipedia (www.wikipedia.com) but also through industry and professional associations which maintain their Web resources in several languages. I know this seems like a lot of effort, but it is what you will have to do to become a competent professional translator.
I realize that many people, particularly in the United States, but also in other countries acquire their language skills through a liberal arts education that includes a lot of classes on literature, culture, and history, and virtually no science, mathematics, business, or other professional-type coursework. This type of background will be insufficient. Although literature is a fascinating and worthy aspect of language and is often translated, the world of literary translation is quite separate from the rest of the translation profession, and best approached by pursuing graduate-level study in your language, usually a doctorate, and then an academic career in which translating literature is a part of your profession. My undergraduate advisor was a master of modern Japanese language and literature who spent his non-teaching time translating and writing about Junichiro Tanizaki. I learned a lot from him about literary Japanese, virtually none of which has any impact on my work as a technical translator.
So learn everything you can about your languages, but stay focused on the reality of what is translated in the translation industry. Whatever your background or interests are, you should be able to find a subject area that appeals to you and is in demand for your language pair. To make certain you are heading in the right direction, find out what is in demand by looking at job listings for translators in the ATA Chronicle, other language publications such as Language International or Multilingual Computing, and Web sites including not only the obvious job search engines like Monster but also resources like Proz (www.proz.com) or Translator’s Café (www.translatorscafe.com). If you don’t offer what the market wants, you won’t have work. So find out as early as possible how to develop your skills so that they match the realities of the market for your languages.
Experience
First of all, classroom work is experience. Regardless of how limited and artificial learning a language as an adult in a classroom is compared to acquiring one as a child in situ may be, the classroom is where most translators start. Make the most of it; go to the extra practice sessions, join the conversation club for your languages, find native speakers and spend time with them, and go to where your B language is spoken as a native language.
A classroom can only take you so far. Few if any universities offer language classes specifically for using the language in a medical, engineering, legal, or scientific context, and there are hardly any textbooks along such lines. So the alternative is to spend time living in the language and its attendant culture and society; this is the most efficient route to achieving the adult-level fluency in professional, business contexts that a translator will ultimately need.
Merely traveling around a country for a few weeks or so, staying in youth hostels, hanging around bars, coffee shops, pachinko parlors (or their equivalent) will introduce you to a limited subset of the language, one that will be of little value in the translation profession. As a translator friend of mine pointed out recently, dating someone from the country of your B language will also be of limited value. After all, how many couples discuss genomics or IC design as a part of a relationship, particularly during the initial few months?
Instead, you need a job. Teaching English or another language seems to be the most common route into another country, particularly for an American with a humanities education. While not optimal, this is certainly practicable. If you take the time to read extensively, expose yourself to the language in all possible professional contexts, and challenge yourself by taking extremely advanced classes, studying for a proficiency exam, you will make ample progress in a year or two.
Conversely, for people now living in other countries and planning a translation career with English as their second language, the situation is a bit different. Because English, American or otherwise, is so widely used and available around the world, because many countries offer such outstanding language training for their youth in English, and because some countries use English as a second language for official, diplomatic, or business purposes, the need for such people to spend one or several years in an English-speaking country like the U.S. or U.K. is limited. They can and do develop excellent language skills while growing up in their own countries. If you have such a background, take advantage of the incredible head start you’ve gotten; expose yourself in university or through employment to all aspects of English in the subject areas that interest you professionally. You will be that much more prepared when you start translating.
Translation Training
Finally there is the process of learning to translate. If fluency in two languages were the necessary and sufficient requirements to be able to translate, then there should be no shortage of translators working between English and any other language in the world. Unfortunately, fluency in two languages is merely the starting point. You also have to learn to translate.
No one at this point in time understands exactly what goes on inside translators’ brains while they are translating. Such studies are probably not possible given the limited resolution of current brain scanning technology, but I await the day that we do have detailed information about this issue. Such information could easily demonstrate to an often doubtful public that translation involves more than just knowing two languages.
Training programs for translators have existed for upwards of four thousand years. Ancient Egypt had its School of Scribes, the Vatican has trained scholarly priests to translate since its inception, and virtually every major nation on the planet now has at least one school dedicated to training translators and interpreters.
In the United States at present, there are several types of training programs, each with at least a couple of schools. The ATA provides a booklet on the various programs available, so I’ll be brief here. The Monterey Institute of International Studies and Kent State University have programs that confer an M.A. upon completion of two years of class work and a graduation project. Classes involve not only translating a lot of texts, but also studying terminology management, MAT and other uses of computers in the translation process, and even courses on the business side of the profession. A few schools, such as the University of Washington at Seattle and the University of Wisconsin at Madison, offer a Master’s specifically for translation of a particular language pair in a scientific or technical context. The University of Hawaii and New York University (NYU), among others, offer online training programs that lead to a certificate of completion. Classes largely involve translation work. Last, Bellevue Community College and other schools around the country provide classroom certificate programs in which students start by learning about the profession and process of translation, and eventually take not only business, computer, and ethics classes, but also classes that involve actually translating.
As an aside, there are also individuals who offer workshops and seminars purporting to train translators and interpreters during a weekend or two. Such offerings tend to appear and disappear over the years, and no one in the profession believes that you can learn to translate in just a few days, so they won't be discussed in any detail here.
The majority of translators in the U.S., as stated previously, do not have formal training. However, the industry has changed a lot in the past decade. The translation profession is now listed as a hot career in books like Cool Careers for Dummies, and is gaining widespread recognition because of the War on Terror and some high-profile legal cases. The FBI, CIA, and other government agencies are actively and publicly recruiting translators and other language professionals. And the ATA has revamped what used to be known as the accreditation exam into what is now called the certification exam, adding among other things a continuing education requirement. The details of the ATA certification exam can be found here.
In other words, if a translator who started in the profession in the 1980s or 1990s tells you that because she didn’t need any formal training you don’t, think again. The question is not what did I or someone else who has been around for a long time do at the start of their careers. Though interesting, even amusing at times, and possibly inspiring, the information is rather old. You need to find out what your potential employers want you to have. If they don’t care about training at all, then just make sure you can translate well. If they want some form of training, go get it.
These days, some employers, particularly the ones offering higher paying positions in technical translation or localization seem to want some form of training. Other employers don’t care much at all. However, most prefer training if they can get it. At the same time, they will likely test your ability using a short translation test or a bilingual interview. Training, many employers know from bitter experience, does not guarantee ability, and lack of training, obviously, does not preclude it. So be prepared to demonstrate that you can translate.
Which leads to the question of how do you know when you can translate. And how do you know when you are just starting out to translate that your translations are any good. Some people believe that you just know, that they have an intuitive sense of when a translation is good, and that they felt from deep down within that they could translate. Such people represent either the gifted minority whose ability will outshine everyone else’s or the misguided, even deluded majority who fall into the all-too-common trap of using language classroom standards and uninformed measures to evaluate their own work.
If you aren’t sure you can translate, then you can’t say where your translation may have problems. You are left with two options. First, get a job that involves a little bit of translation, one in which your work is supervised and monitored. Some firms offer internships or have junior translation positions. Other companies want, for instance, bilingual software testers or game evaluators. Such positions can offer a lot of experience, from which you can build a lot of competence and confidence. The other option is to go to school.
The decision to go to school to start a career represents a business decision. In business, money is always the limiting factor, by which I mean that it is the factor that more than any other determines what you should do. School costs money and time. While you are in school, you will probably make no money, so not only are you paying tuition, but you are also losing income. On the other hand, after graduation you may be able to command a higher salary, obtain a more secure position, even move faster and further on your career track.
To make this decision, you need numbers. Check the current tuition at Kent State University and the Monterey Institute, or at any other program you are interested in, then compare it with the salaries being offered by employers. Further, contact the program director to find out what the graduates are doing and what their income is. You want to know not only what the graduates from last year are up to, but also what those from five and ten years ago are doing now. Then talk to a couple of current students and recent graduates to see how they feel about their investment. Last, talk to several potential employers to find out if they reward education in any substantial way.
Your path into the translation profession can follow one of several routes. No one at this point can say which is better. I know people with graduate-level educations in translation and people with no formal training whatsoever. I also know that the demands in the profession vary depending on the language and subject you are working one. This is, as described above, why I cannot be more specific. Of course, what we’re trying to do here is determine beforehand, possibly years beforehand, whether or not an employer will reward you with a job, maybe even at a higher salary, after you complete a training program. As Niels Bohr said, prediction is difficult, especially about the future.
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Translation as a Profession: Article 4
You’re starting your career in the translation profession, having accepted your first job or gotten your first assignment from a client. But a part of you may be wondering: where does this all go? How long can someone translate before doing something else? What are the longer-term opportunities for a translator and what can be done to make the most of the years of discipline and dedication that mastering translation between two languages in a demanding subject specialty require? Finally, where is the old translators’ home, and when do I get my gold watch?
First Steps
Translators translate, so if you are a translator, you are going to translate. For however long you are in the translation profession, you are going to translate. There are, however, a variety of other tasks in the translation process that translators can and do become involved in.
First, however, you have to get started. As hinted at briefly in the first three articles, not all languages and subject areas are equal in the translation industry at present. Your fate in the translation profession, particularly at the beginning, will depend in no small part on factors you have no control over. Unfortunate, perhaps, but true.
I've seen many fine, talented translators complete training programs or even degrees only to discover that their skills are not in demand in the translation marketplace because their language combination is too obscure or too well populated by competent, established people, their subject expertise is too limited for them to do anything but the most elementary work, or their skills with the software tools necessary for translators are insufficient.
Languages like Spanish and French are too commonly known in the United States for a newcomer to have an easy time getting work. Further, such languages don't pay well because of the law of supply and demand, which in terms of the translation profession states that if there is a given demand for translation in one language and the supply of translators rises, then the rates paid to the translators will fall. Conversely, languages like Japanese and Chinese are sufficiently rare and the demand for translation sufficiently high that if you have the requisite skills, you will do better in general than someone with Spanish or French.
I know this will disappoint those of you who have spent years mastering the language of Cervantes or Voltaire, but I would rather share this now than have you unprepared. By the time you are ready to consider being a translator you have already invested heavily in your languages. Although it is always possible to learn another one, you know well what it took to learn those you already know.
Consider instead developing secondary skills if you want to work in-house or offering ancillary services if you want to be an independent contractor. Translation agencies and those companies that hire translators full-time will be more inclined to hire you if you have strong computer skills, including with MAT (Machine-Assisted Translation) software like Trados, if you have desktop publishing or graphic arts skills, or if you have editing skills. Freelance translators when first starting can gain experience and income by teaching or tutoring people in their languages, getting involved in home-based telephone interpreting, and even just temping through a temp agency like Parker, Kelly, or Manpower, all of which, by the way, I did during my first year as a freelance translator.
Also, don’t overlook other skills you have. I’ve heard of would-be Spanish/English translators who somehow forget they have a CPA (Certified Public Accountant). The combination of language skills and accounting can sell well. Further, some people start out doing both translation and interpretation, as have a number of colleagues of mine, and then the market determines whether they focus on translation, interpretation, or continue doing both.
The First Job
Where and how you start in the translation profession will depend on the languages you know, what if any training or certification you have, and what subject are you can handle. As stated in the earlier articles, some language pairs will prove very difficult to find good work in, while others will be easier. So don’t take personally a failure to find work; you may have to consider less apparent options or even a different career path altogether.
A search on major job sites on the Web using "translation," "localization," "bilingual," or the name of a particular language as keywords inevitably yields positions in localization, positions involving translation, project management positions in a translation agency or company that is active in several countries, software, hardware, and games testing, law enforcement and military positions, to mention just a few. Many of these positions are for work going from English into other languages, usually not the languages Americans study in high school or college.
The following statistics make this point nicely. According to the Education Life section (p. 21) of the New York Times (Nov. 11, 2001), in 1998 the eight percent of college students were studying foreign languages were mostly taking Spanish, French, or German (90%). This means that less than one percent of American college students were studying other languages. Also worth keeping in mind: few college students ever go beyond the second-year level.
In other words, although few Americans ever gain fluency in a second language, the majority of the translation positions require a native language other than English. When the position requires English as a native language, the second language is often one of those "one percenters," a language like Japanese, Chinese, Korean, or Arabic. So competition may make your entry into the profession difficult.
What to do? There are many possibilities. First, you may be able to find a translation position for your language pair and in your subject area. However, because many employers prefer experience translators, you may have to start with a different type of work. Such work includes bilingual testing of computer hardware, software, or games, staff positions in companies in which translation is a part of your duties, or if you are attempting to become a full-time freelance translator, jobs that involve editing, proofreading, desktop publishing, or related work for translation agencies instead of translating itself.
Since many translators learn their trade on the job, an obvious question emerges: how do they get such a job without already having experience? The answer is that for entry-level positions, particularly outside of the United States, translation may be one of a variety of language-related tasks such people are hired for. For instance, I did my first translation work for the City of Kawasaki Board of Education when I was on the JET Program in Japan in 1987. Although hired as an Assistant English Teacher, my Japanese language skills resulted in occasional requests for translation from Japanese into English. In a similar fashion, many translators cut their teeth in the profession.
Career Paths
Once you have started in the translation profession, there are several possible career paths. The first and most common is to continue translating, often working at a higher level with more challenging material and at a higher salary. Eventually you may become a senior translator, the person in charge of a group of translators all working in the same languages or even in charge of all of the translators in an organization. People in such positions spend part of their time translating, and the rest of their time training and evaluating their staff, managing the ongoing projects, and dealing with the technology the group uses.
In larger companies the senior translator is distinct from a translation manager. While the senior translator will be the most experienced and competent member of the team, whose responsibilities may include hiring and training, working on translation technologies like MAT tools, and preparing terminology databases, the translation manager may be an individual with little if any translation or language skills but with the requisite business and management ability. On the other hand, often translators can become translation managers, particularly in organizations that want such managers to have a clear, complete understanding of translators and the work they do.
A project manager is an individual in a translation company or in the translation division of an organization who oversees the translation projects, assigning specific sections of material to individual translators, keeping track of productivity and progress in various jobs, evaluating technologies for use in the translation process, working with clients and vendors to prepare quotes for a translation project or deliver a completed job, and handling any and every problem that arises with the staff, outside vendors, or the technology. Such people must be able to multitask to an incredible degree, be cool and confident under pressure, and be willing to work often long hours. Although a background in translation or language is not required for such positions, it is obviously extremely helpful, and so not surprisingly this is a frequent preference, particularly in translation agencies.
A localization manager is similar to a project manager in terms of job duties and personality. The difference is that a localization manager works for a single firm, usually a high-tech firm, and is focused on the preparation of corporate materials in foreign languages. There are many levels of localization managers, with responsibility and the size and scope of projects increasing as one rises to higher levels. Knowledge of common localization tools and technologies (including, for instance, Trados, Catalyst, or Deja-Vu), as well as standard documentation management and project management tools (including, for instance, Microsoft Project, XML, and web site management software) is vital for such positions.
Another possibility is terminologist. Large-scale translation operations, particularly localization operations or any other situation in which MAT software is used regularly, require precise, ongoing management of the terminology used in the translations. This task usually falls to a full-time terminologist, an individual with a strong background in translation or linguistics and with the requisite subject knowledge to define precisely and accurately in two or more languages the terminology to be used in the translations. The terminologist typically works closely with both translators and translation managers, and must have a good command of common software tools for translation, along with database software.
There are, of course, other positions and other opportunities to use once translation skills, but they are sufficiently obscure and unusual that they will not be discussed here. Often, creativity and resourcefulness are invaluable when looking for a new, more challenging and lucrative position within the translation profession.
Trends
The dominant factor in the translation profession since the mid-1990s has been the Internet. The high-tech boom of the late 1990s created rapid growth in the localization industry, which became the tail that wagged the translation dog for several years. Although the dot-com boom is long over, the Internet continues to influence how and where translators do business.
The advent of online job sites such as Proz (www.proz.com) and Translator’s Café (www.translatorscafe.com) have introduced a new model for doing business in the translation profession. Translation agencies and businesses that need to have translations done can offer work directly to freelancers, who bid against each other to win the job. This is created considerable downward pressure on prices in the translation market, particularly for language pairs available in two or more countries in which the cost of living and the cost of doing business differ considerably.
Although such sites represent an interesting opportunity for new translators as well as a good way for freelance translators to find work, like auction sites there is little accountability for individuals or organizations that cheat, and little quality control, particularly in regards to the ability of an individual translator to do good work or the capacity of an organization to pay in a timely fashion for the work.
Nevertheless, such sites will continue to flourish and represent one common path by which translation work is done. When quality, reliability, or secrecy are paramount for a project, translation agencies still prefer to work directly with someone they know, and so such sites do not now and will not in the foreseeable future take over the industry.
The other critical factor influencing the translation profession is Machine Assisted Translation (MAT) and Machine Translation (MT) software. MAT provides a variety of forms of assistance to a translator, particularly when working on a large project, or a project that is similar to one the translator has done previously. MT ideally provides finished copy in the target language, though the reality at present varies from acceptable quality for certain purposes to garbled text.
More and more translators are required to use MAT software, and few find themselves in a position to do all of their work without it. As long as you have an electronic version of the source document, translation memory containing terminology or useful concurrences, and material that is redundant or repetitive, the software improves productivity, particularly in terms of accuracy and consistency with terminology and phraseology. The cost of such products, particularly Trados, remains prohibitive for many freelance translators, however. In translation agencies and companies, these products are so commonly used that job applicants must already be comfortable with them. Many freelance jobs, as can be seen by viewing the listings in Translators’ Café or Proz, also require such technologies. The translator who does not take the time to become well-versed with them will ultimately be without work.
Making the Most of It
Long-term success in the translation profession requires not only dedication to your languages, but also a willingness to continually improve your knowledge of translation technologies and maintain your expertise in the subject areas you work it. The ATA now requires continuing education credits to maintain certification, as is common in many other professions.
Successful translators will have to routinely attend classes, workshops, and seminars in order to stay on top of their profession and abreast of all new developments. Fortunately, the annual ATA conference, specialty conferences given around the year by the ATA and other organizations, classes and workshops held at local community colleges, and seminars given by chapter organizations of the ATA all represent good opportunities for translators to continue their education.
There is, however, a tendency for translators not to stay the profession for very long. Rare is the translator has 10 or more years of full-time, continuous experience in the field. Many move on to related professions, change careers entirely, or simply stop working to devote time to raising a family (this, of course, is more common for women translators). The reasons translators leave the profession vary considerably, though naturally income and job satisfaction are the primary motivations. There also seems to be a certain degree of burnout, particularly among translators who have to work very hard at low rates in order to earn enough to scrape by during the first couple of years in the freelance market. The amount of work coupled with the low income and little prospect for improvement has led to a number of disgruntled translators who have left the industry for greener pastures. Finally, some translators succumb to repetitive strain injuries (RSI) such as carpal tunnel syndrome or thoracic outlet syndrome. Although technologies such as voice input software can compensate, many people find it easier to change careers.
There does not seem to be an "old translators' home." I personally know several translators who retired in their 60s after a long and successful career, and I know translators who left the profession after 2, 5, or even 10 years of work. Ultimately, how your career evolves will depend on a variety of factors that you cannot anticipate until they happen. The important thing is to make the most of your career while you are working in the translation profession, and if the time to leave does come, then to do so gracefully and move onto something else.
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