UPDATE: We are now offering a course on “How to Quote for a Translation Job“, designed for translators and project managers who are just getting started, or want to up their game. Check it out!

Note: this article concerns translation, which involves written text, rather than interpretation, which involves the spoken word. For many reasons that I won’t go into here, translators are not often interpreters and vice versa, as they involve very different skill sets.

Are you considering a career in the language services industry?

Translators come from a variety of backgrounds, so there is no one way to succeed.

In fact, in contrast with many other professions, coming from an unrelated industry can actually be beneficial. Your past experience will bring to your translations a host of knowledge and terminology expertise.

.

Being bilingual makes you a translator about as much as owning a camera makes you a photographer.

To be a translator, knowing two languages thoroughly is indispensable, but it is far from enough.

In my opinion, the ability to perform thorough and accurate research is what actually makes someone a top-notch translator.

Unless you plan to be in-house at one company for the rest of your career, you will frequently find yourself working with documents outside of your immediate expertise.

You will need to know how to quickly and efficiently find and verify the appropriate terminology and turns of phrase.

For example, in the last month I translated a Spanish patternmaking manual, a technical user manual for a grape press, and audit reports for a multinational pharmaceutical company.

A translator is not unlike a journalist: the first hours (and sometimes days) of preparing for a translation is usually spent immersing yourself in an unfamiliar subject. For my translations, I had to learn how to create and duplicate a Japanese-sleeve pattern, how to operate a grape press, and how to read a balance sheet.

Your reader should have no idea that they are reading a translation at all – the text should read as if written by an industry insider.

Linguee is a great resource when you are feeling stuck, but is far from infallible, and should always be confirmed with reliable texts from confirmable sources.

I have also found ProZ terminology forums to be indispensable, with the same caveat.

In the end, nothing beats an industry-vetted and approved primary text – or sometimes even a call to a professional in the field:(“Could you say it this way?” “Does this sentence make sense in the context of the last?”)

Think about how political terms can get in any given industry! If you can wield a highly-charged term with nuance, your clients will be very impressed.

.

You must be an excellent writer in your target language.

Opinions often vary on whether a translator should “improve” source texts that are badly written. Wherever you fall on this spectrum, everyone agrees that you must be able to successfully reproduce a well-written text.

This means you must have complete mastery of your target language and all nuances.

For this reason, translators of most language pairs are strongly discouraged from translating into their non-native language.

Think about it – can you write a university-level paper in your non-native language and be confident that no odd turn of phrase, no false cognate would sneak its way in?

Even confident writers probably remember the red ink of their university writing experiences. Imagine trying to reach the same level of cohesion and flow in a language that isn’t your own.

Personally, while I have studied five other languages to the university level, I only translate from those languages INTO English.

.

You must be able to leave your source language behind.

It can be hard to let go.

When I first started my translation business and was vetting translation samples from potential new translators, I was shocked by how many translations I had judged to be “non-native English” were in fact written by native English speakers who simply weren’t aware of the extent to which they were parroting the source syntax or literally translating idioms.

A great example of this is the phrase “permet de” in French, with literally means “to allow to” but in French is used liberally before any verb.

Example:

FRENCH: Le appareil permet de améliorer notre façon de respirer.

LITERAL ENGLISH: The device lets you improve the way that you breathe.

This isn’t grammatically wrong in English, but isn’t the most elegant or natural way to say it. We don’t use “lets” as liberally as the French do. A better translation might read:

IMPROVED TRANSLATION: The device improves the way that you breathe.

There are other changes I would make to this translation as well depending on context, but I won’t get into that here.

What is important to take away is this: when a translator isn’t able to leave the source language behind; if the translator is not firmly planted in his or her target language, this kind of oddity can slip by. This leads to translations that don’t read as smoothly as they should, which leaves their audiences doubting the professionalism and the capability of the source.

.

Stay Up to Date

A successful translator must be aware of political, technological, and cultural developments in any country that uses the languages in question – that means keeping up with both your source and target language.

It is good to get in the habit of at least skimming several newspapers every day, and/or incorporating multilingual news into your RSS or Twitter feeds.

Delicast also offers a great way to watch TV news from nearly any country.

When I have mindless formatting or other low-concentration tasks to do, I often leave French or Chinese TV news running in the background.

.

Get Educated

While true expertise can only grow with practice and exposure, translation certification programs and MA degrees can speed up this process.

Here is a list of international programs recommended by the American Translator’s Association, which should serve only as a guide, as it is not exhaustive.

You can also check out Meridian Courses for more opportunities to learn about the art and business of translation.

After all, one of the perks of being a freelance translator is that part of your job is to keep yourself educated!

When your incoming work slows down, use this time to work on either your language skills (dig deep into a book in your source language, or try out a language tutor on italki or work on your domain knowledge (take a MOOC course, a Lynda course, a Udemy course, or try out Khan Academy.

.

Ok…but how do I actually get translation work?

There are a number of translation directories out there in a variety of languages, which can be a good start for beginners (for example, ProZ.com) or TranslatorsCafe.

However, I don’t recommend that you rely too heavily on these directories, for the following reason.

The translation industry uses a model that is ideally structured like this: The Client (e.g. Samsung) hires a language services company (e.g. Meridian Linguistics) who then hires a team of freelance translators, editors, proofreaders, Desktop Publishers, Graphic Designers, project managers, QA specialists, etc to actually complete the work.

In practice, the way this often works is that large translation companies hire smaller translation companies, who then hire smaller and less-established translation companies, who then hire freelancers using these translation directories, because they haven’t yet built up a roster of reliable translators that they can depend on.

Accepting work from these directories, then, usually means you are getting a very small slice of the pie.

You’re also very far down the payment chain – you are going to have to wait a long time before you see your money, and if any problems occur at any of the higher levels, your payment may be in jeopardy.

.

So Why Should Translators Work With Agencies?

Of course, as a freelance translator, it may seem financially ideal to work directly with the Client.

However, that client may have needs that surpass your own abilities (once again, desktop publishing, very careful technical editing, etc) or simply may not be ready to place their faith in a freelance translator that has not been vetted by an established language services company.

Furthermore, maintaining a direct client relationship can be a lot of work – they may expect turnkey products, 24/7 availability, and full responsibility for any business losses resulting from translation errors.

This is why I recommend establishing (and maintaining through diligent and reliable performance) a good working relationship with a small language services company focused on maintaining a happy, loyal, and reliable workforce of their own.

At Meridian Linguistics we have the firm belief that building a loyal team rather than always searching out the lowest bidder is what actually saves us all money (and a lot of grief!) in the end.

Translators that are valued return high-value work, work that our clients keep coming back for. When you’re ready to start translating, please consider working for us!

.

.

Are you ready to work as a translator? Take our Translator Readiness Quiz!

.

.

Have any other recommendations? Disagree with any of my advice? Want to recommend other resources? Please leave your thoughts in the comments!

Other Resources

Corinne Mckay’s Indispensable book, “How to Succeed As a Freelance Translator” and very useful blog, Thoughts On Translation

Lingua Greca’s translator profiles offer great insight into the lifestyles and backgrounds of freelance translators.

Nix Trans Stories will keep you laughing as you navigate some of the more frustrating aspects of working as language professional in a world that somehow, really doesn’t understand how language works.