Working as a translator

[Ludens]

With all the talk of Chinese-related career options, I'm curious about people’s views and experiences in working as a translator. Some quotes from the recent career development topic (which I don't want to hijack):

I think translation might look like a natural option for someone with Chinese skills, but to actually get to the point of regular, well-paid and interesting work you're probably going to have to do so much study and dull badly-paid work that you might as well consider entering other careers. If translation is what you actually want to do, great, but in many ways it's the new English teaching.

Without other skills than language, translator is pretty much a dead end street. There's very little money in translating some simple chitchat.

Translating really is a dead end job. That's what I was for about ten years up to the late 1990s and it was horrible. Low pay, no benefits, no career advancement, nothing, absolutely nothing.

So, is it really that grim? Concerning other skills, what about translating news, movies, documentaries, books? One wouldn't need a master in anything for most of those kind of jobs.

To call it the new English-teaching makes it look easy to get translating jobs, which contradicts other comments. How hard is it to get the odd translating job? How hard is it to get them on a regular basis (all provided you have good-enough Chinese and native language skills). I mean, I understand it won't make anyone rich, but is it also near-impossible to just eke out a living?

And finally, what's the difference in situation when translating from Chinese to languages other than English, smaller languages like Swedish, Dutch, German? Would this be even harder (less jobs) or better (less competition)?

[hbuchtel]

For a short time I was supporting myself (and wife and child!) by doing C->E translating, and found it quite acceptable, except for having to spend too much time in front of the computer. Keep in mind I am living in a smaller city in China and have a pretty modest lifestyle. I don't know how easy it would be to do the same while living in another country with a higher cost of living.

I never really considered it as a long term career, but rather as a way of earning some money and improving my language skills at the same time. Now I'm starting to get into live interpreting, which pays much better, but again, I see it as a way of studying and working at the same time rather than as my real career.

My experience has been that if one specializes in a particular field and learns what type of work is the most profitable, the idea of translating as a full-time career becomes more and more acceptable.

[Jakegwood]

A friend of mine works in the court reporting business, which is basically those people you see in court rooms who type about 250-300 words a minute to take down everything that's said. These type of people are also used a lot when a lawyer wants to take a deposition, basically an interview, of a subject, witness, suspect or any other individual. A lot of his cases are international, so he often needs translators as transcription is not as efficient in many other languages, and he'll often have two or three for crosschecking. Their work is freelance and he pays them quite well. So if you are on that level of really advanced language, and you are willing to travel, I think you might be able to pull off a really exciting and lucrative career. But mind you, this is on the spot interpreting- not text translation- with really technical legal vocabulary so you'd really have to know the language inside and out.

Also, getting certified is a good idea. Not sure where you live but the ATA is very credible http://www.atanet.org/certification/ There are many others.

Hope this helps.

[Silent]

My experience has been that if one specializes in a particular field and learns what type of work is the most profitable, the idea of translating as a full-time career becomes more and more acceptable.

Exactly specialise, just what I tried to convey with the quote OP used. There's nothing really wrong with translating, but you need more than good language skills for a decent pay. Find a niche where you don't have to compete with college students.

[jkhsu]

Edit: Removing my post.

[Lugubert]

You must have encountered hard to understand manuals for computers, microwaves and whatever. From the consumer side, there is a need for good translations. Unfortunately, manufacturers don’t always understand this fact.

I have been translating from various European languages into Swedish, fairly profitably, for some 20 years. But I restrict myself to source languages and areas that I’m sufficiently comfortable with.

There are tons of people that have for example worked for a summer as an au pair in France and think that they can translate just about anything from French into their mother tongue, just because they survived for a while. WRONG. A person who undertakes a translation of a chemical text and doesn’t know how a chem lab smells, will more often than not produce a text that is lethally dangerous to the end user. And don’t touch medical AT ALL if you don’t have a thorough useful background.

Any legal and financial work (which I don’t touch with the proverbial 10 ft pole) should require a thorough knowledge of the source language system AND of the target system. An English CEO can be tricky to convert to Swedish structures. Don’t be afraid to ask the customer for established equivalences! Murder and homicide and petty larcency etc etc will often have multi-ambiguously correspondences in other legal systems

If you LOVE languages, and have some specialized knowledge (in that order), and a useful sense of finance, GO FOR IT!!! Don’t sell yourself too cheap, but Google professional bodies to find a useful level!

And don't forget that there are cultural differences all the way down to how electricity wall outlets work.

Best of luck,

Lugubert

[roddy]

To call it the new English-teaching makes it look easy to get translating jobs, which contradicts other comments.

That was my quote. I wasn't thinking of ease of finding work so much as the facts that there's an awful lot of foreigners floating around China who'd like to do it - either as they don't want to teach English any more, or they've just done a year at BLCU and see it as a natural progression; unless you get into gear on specialization and improving your skills (as I've said on here before, understanding the Chinese is at most half the job - knowing how to write the English is often the head-scratcher) you're not going to find much in the way of career prospects; and the Chinese market, where a lot of the work comes from, often can't recognize if you're doing a good job or not, and is more concerned with what you cost and where you come from.

[yellowpower]

too many misunderstand the work of translation and this field too is riddled with many misconceptions similar to those who think that native speakers of any language from any country can teach or will make the best teachers.

translation is more than about words,there are the cultural inferences, intreperation of context, use of expressions, and nuances of the language from different regions, etc to convey accurate meaning in translation. It`s no pie in the sky work. Problem is this kind of work is not considered valuable as math and science.

As with any professional field it demands non-stop learning and specialisation, specialisation, specialisation. A job as a translator is not the ability to translate everything and anything, this is not realistic...to survive in this field one needs to develop areas of expertise and master professional technical jargon. Learn till you drop.

[ilovelanguage]

Agree to yellowpower - a professional translator should be the 'professional of meaning' - I learned that while working as a translator.

So what does 'meaning' mean? Well, yes depending on the contexts and situations, but generally, it's about the cultures & traditions within the two language systems that you're dealing with.

[Brian US]

Didn't really find too much information on translating salaries, which I know will vary on the content and quality. My "friend" was sent about 2000字 for a company promotional video. It looks like it was just translated first in google, but pretty light stuff compared to my "friend" translating audit reports.

I saw on one freelance translating site that I think roddy posted somewhere, the typical asking fee for industry specific translators was around $0.10 per character. My "friend" will translate from Chinese to English and although they can't do engineering stuff, audit reports should be doable.

Assuming the pay will be less going through an agency how about ballpark pricing per 字 with:

1) Proofreading (travel, schools, basic business)

2) Translating business documents (contracts, audit reports)

edit: Pretty sure the website was proz.com, so just looking for salaries quoted.