The translation industry is growing rapidly and, according to U.S. News and World Report, translation is one of the 50 best careers to pursue in 2011. Every year, thousands of students join translation courses attracted by such encouraging predictions, hoping they are placing their time, effort and money on a safe bet, hoping the chosen course will lead to a promising career.
Imagine you are a recent graduate of one of these courses. You even achieved a cum laude. You reflect on the knowledge you have gained, and the skills you have honed and mastered.
You are now a 'seasoned' linguist, an expert in intercultural communication and a competent information miner. Exciting theories, approaches and strategies still reverberate in your head. As do lectures about text types, equivalence, cohesion and coherence. You can see lexical gaps everywhere and you know that there is no such thing as absolute synonymy.
You may even have learned about CAT technology and tried out some of the software applications. You might even have some understanding of machine translation.
You are about to enter a giant, complex and dynamic organism – the translation industry. But how much do you really know about its internal structure, its individual parts and the way they interact? How much do you really know about its evolution and current trends? How much do you know about translation as a business process? Have you learnt about the financial mechanisms, technology management or technical standards?
A few months later you look back and think that perhaps what you learnt about navigating your boat on a still lake of theory on a sunny day of academic cloud hopping may not be sufficient to sail a super fast, technology ridden vessel through the rough, global waters of the modern translation industry.
Yes – the translation industry is growing fast and, unlike the population of fish in the ocean, the volume of words is not decreasing, but growing exponentially. The global hunger for information creates an unprecedented demand for content to be translated into more and more languages at a faster and faster rate.
You now know the industry is responding to this demand. You feel tangibly that translating is not like fishing alone, but like working as a part of a big fishing industry – a strategic business process involving lots of different players. But should you have known this earlier?
With the general awareness and ability to see a bigger picture comes the recognition that the changing nature of the translation industry creates demand for new translator skills and competencies.
Perhaps the most significant factor affecting and shaping the portfolio of skills currently in demand is the galloping technological advancements and the automation processes this brings about. Machine translation, imperfect as it is, is here to stay, but will require human assistance to move forward.
Are we translators being properly educated about this technology, about its enormous potential and its inherent limitations? How much do we know about the different types of machine translation, their usability for different text types and language pairs? Are new translators being prepared to handle this technology and deal with its aftermath?
In the past, we may have accurately analogized translators as being anglers and translation tools as fishing rods. Fishing for certain words and phrases and selecting the best fit has been the default formula for centuries. Although the fishing equipment has recently become better and more sophisticated, enhanced with fast internet connections and reusable translation memories, there is a limit to what a fishing rod can do.
The formula is changing. Clients now want translators to move on to fully automated trawlers with enormous processing capabilities and fish the odd, the wrong, the dead word out – in other words - to post-edit the catch. This new skill is representing quite a reverse process to what translators have been doing for ages. Are we being prepared for this?
Widespread translation automation also brings about changes within the market of linguistic resources. It forces us to change the way we think of these resources, the way we use and apply them in our work. Linguistic data pooling and sharing is no longer an experiment, but is becoming a real necessity, with measurable gains observed for players big and small.
New attitudes are required for translators to be able to take advantage of such processes and new competencies are needed to be able to handle them successfully. Is this issue being addressed at modern translation courses? Are new attitudes being fostered and necessary skills being developed?
In the aftermath of globalization and the information age, the demand for new translator skills is growing in many other areas, including controlled language skills, text optimization, data management as well as many added value skills such as linguistic, cultural or technology consultancy. Trends such as collaborative translation and crowdsourcing are on the rise. How are these issues being handled and dealt with during translator training? What are the priorities?
The function of a translator has been evolving over the centuries, but it is only in the last decade or so that changes have become more dramatic, pushing many translators to adapt and change, to acquire wider skill sets. What is happening right now is not just another technological improvement to the translator’s fishing rod. It is largely a whole new approach requiring a completely new modus operandi.
We think it is imperative that apart from a sound theoretical background and practical translation skills, translator courses provide comprehensive insight into industry matters, closely follow current trends and prepare new entrants to the real world as well as for the future roles that will be needed.
So, you are one of the many thousands of students who have recently graduated from the various translation courses around the globe. Are you immersed in deep waters or still standing on the shore?
We are inviting translators, their employers and tutors to discuss translator courses in the light of the modern translation industry and voice an opinion on how well these prepare new entrants for the market outside university walls.
Comments
Two aspects of translation need to be distinguished:
the formal, language aspect; and
the substantive, domain-knowledge one.
If you are lucky, you may land a job with an international organisation (IMF, OECD, UN, NATO, the EU, etc.- see the Directory of International Organisations), The linguistic and domain-knowledge demands of these are different from those in the "raw" business world, and there is a career structure specific to each organisation or group of organisations. Out here, there is no set career structure, and what standing you have is what you bring to the job at the outset.
This brings me to the point: if you are contemplating a translating career, in my view it is a good idea to gain professional experience beforehand in an area of interest to you, or one that lies within your areas of competence: that does not acctually equate with working in a translation agency but, for example, experience in engineering, banking, tourism, the fine arts, etc., in the real world whose concerns and realities you will be conveying to the target-language audience.
Beside this substantive point, there is a "low-level" functional one, that you will need to be "computerate", and a grasp of the workings of information technology is a decided advantage. Apart from specific course units on the subject, a general technology-watch attitude is needed, and the opportunities opened up on the web will undoubtedly help: Wikipedia, Tech Support Guy, &c.
If you are studying in Britain, then you will get very good career advice from the Institute of Translation and Interpeting. Joining a professional organisation has benefits in terms of mutual support, information and trarining.
I hope this may help.
With kind regards,
Adam Warren..
I actually am a recent graduate from a translation course and was awarded for my outstanding achievement, however, I very much feel that I am left standing on the shore. As good as my course was, I still feel I don't know enough about the translation industry as a whole to launch myself off into that big sea. I'm sitting a Masters this year, with the hope of gaining a bit more knowledge and becoming better prepared.
It's so difficult for graduates today to land a job in the current climate. Add the difficulty of trying to enter the translation field without much experience and hey presto, this is what translation graduates, just like myself, are faced with.
I'm almost forced to work an unpaid internship to gain the necessary experience in order to make some kind of progress. I never thought translating would be so difficult!
Despite all this I do feel reassured with the networking and communities on LinkedIn and Proz. It is possible and I just need perseverance. It's encouraging to know that others also feel still fairly unprepared for a career in translation after sitting a degree.
Thanks very much!
Regards
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