Works in languages industry include translation, interpretation, writing, linguistic analysis, etc. Translation among them is the service that can be provided regardless of location, timezone, so it is accessible to many people both with or without professional background. Due to that nature of translation, there are many amateur translators working in the field, leading to some common misunderstandings about this job, for both translator and the job’s audience.
In this article, I would like to list some most common misleading information that you can encounter when getting to know about this career.
Misunderstanding 1: All those who know more than one language can do translation.
This has been the most known misunderstanding for years, among a wide range of audience and stakeholders of the translation industry. Even at my time when I had to choose a language to learn as a profession about 15 years ago, most of the people around me said this:
“Don’t select English, it is out of date as too many people can speak that language nowadays, meaning you will be unemployed after graduation!”
Oh, God, from up to now, English is still the most earning language in my industry, also thanks to ‘too many people using it’, meaning more people are in need of translation services, but from professional translators, not the one ‘just knows how to speak’.
Misunderstanding 2: Machine translation and a monolingual native speaker can together produce a good translation product.
It is an undeniable truth that machine translation has been working better and better recently. But it does not (or not yet) the time when machine can replace human! Important messages and documents still need human check and works involved to get true and correct products.
(source: https://wordminds.com)
Misunderstanding 3: A native speaker who is good at the foreign language can be a good translator.
It is a surprise to most native speakers, and new players in translation industry that the most important element to work well in this industry is your NATIVE LANGUAGE! Evidence is that most of the translation recruiters are requiring translators to be native speaker of the target language. And of course, to be a great language user of your native language is much easier than your foreigner one(s).
Misunderstanding 4: A good translator is good at both directions of translating – to and from their native language.
Continuing with the argument in the Misunderstanding 3, to be a professional translator, you have to be very (or beyond) excellent of your target language. Therefore, the most job one pro takes is to translate into their native language, while translating from native language to your good (or excellent) foreign language just takes a small portion of the workload.
Generally speaking, language industry with translation career is a wonderful land for discovery and there are still things nice there for us to learn more, including to uncover of misunderstandings in the field. Wish you have some good insights about this industry, and I look forward to hearing your own opinions! 🙂
Nice reading and translating!