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How to become a translator. Steps towards a dream job in 2020

Despite fairly strong belief that the translating apps are making traditional translator’s job obsolete, there’s still a high demand for accurate, concise and clear human translation services. In fact, reports from the American Bureau of Labor Statistics Occupational Outlook Handbook show that the translation job market continues to grow quite fast. Becoming a professional translator is therefore a viable career path to take – no matter if you’re looking for an interesting subject to study after high school, taking your first steps into the job market, wanting to change your current job, or aiming for your all-time dream job. Whatever your motivation is, follow the steps below to land a successful translator job.

What does it mean to be a translator?

To put it simple, a translator’s job consists of translating written text between languages – most often from a source language into his/hers native language. It’s worth to point out that being a translator doesn’t automatically mean you’re an interpreter. Translators and interpreters are in fact two different professions, as translating is purely written, while interpreting is spoken.

Interpreters and translators can potentially work in any industry that uses language, ranging from education to business to medicine to even government and any other field in between.

Who do the translators work for?

Translator’s job is quite flexible and gives equal opportunities whether you want to manage your own schedule or prefer consistent work. Many translators work as freelancers or set up their own businesses. Others prefer to gain experience working for a translation agency or even work directly for just a single employer throughout their whole career.

8 Steps towards becoming a translator

1. Build solid language skills

The first and most important step is choosing a language. It’s not as easy as it may seem, as there’s potential translation work for almost all living languages and you can easily find arguments for any of them. Keep in mind that most common languages might bring more translating work, but concurrently have much more competition for it. Therefore, choosing something less common could help you stick out of the crowd, even if it’ll give you fewer job opportunities.

It’s good to research job availability before choosing a language, e.g. by browsing current translator listings or investigating languages most commonly used in a specific field (if that interests you, of course). If you’re, for example, interested in international or diplomatic work, learning one of the official UN languages (Spanish, Russian, French, English, Chinese, Arabic) might be useful.

After you’ve picked up your preferred language, you’ll need to study it extensively – high fluency is an absolute must. Although a Master’s or Bachelor’s Degree in linguistics isn’t a necessity for working as a translator, they are helpful in landing your dream job. Just knowing the language won’t be enough though – professional translators should also become familiar with the culture of the countries using their chosen language, as it helps in keeping their translations high quality. Studying or living abroad can be really helpful, but it’s better to postpone that until you’ll have a good grasp with the language.

2. Have a good grasp of your mother tongue

Even the best knowledge of foreign languages won’t be any good if you can’t translate them accurately. Therefore, your skills with your native language must be at least as good as those with your second language. Excellent writing skills are the key to faithful delivery of the original message, tone and purpose of the given text. The best way to keep them sharp is to read high-quality publications. You can also take courses, e.g. for technical writing.

3. Take up a translator’s training

Next step on your journey is a proper translator’s training, as just the fluency in a language isn’t enough to become a professional translator. That sort of specialized training will help you be able to deliver efficient and clear translations needed in higher-profile translating jobs. Many colleges and universities include it in their linguistic program, but you can also easily find online courses of this kind.

4. Certify your knowledge

A certificate is an easy way to show everyone you have all the necessary skills to provide translation services. For instance, certification offered by ATA (American Translators Association) gives you a special designation (“CT”), which can be used with your name in all your promotional material (including business cards, resume and website). Moreover, there are also industry-specific certifications that can help you land more specified work. Although they’re mostly aimed at interpreters, e.g. “CMI” (Certified Medical Interpreter), they show that you have the knowledge of industry-specific vocabulary and can provide viable translations in that field.

Getting a non-language-related certification in a field of your interest is also worth considering. It shows that you have a good understanding of that industry and might help you snatch a job for a translator. For example, a certified nurse might get a medical translation job easier.

5. Learn industry-specific terms

If you’re interested in landing a job in a specific field, you ought to target and learn industry-specific terms. In most cases, just being fluent won’t be enough to provide the right terminology. So, how should you tackle this problem? There are several ways to do it:

The most obvious one is picking up a dedicated course

Taking a self-paced online course

Studying relevant books

Putting together a simple list of terms in your native tongue and searching for their equivalents in the other language

Starting a customized study with a tutor

6. Pick up a relevant computer program

Nowadays many translations can be done fairly quickly using a dedicated computer program. For instance, CAT (computer-aided translation) is a great tool used by many professional translators. Learning to operate it (or other programs) will help you speed up the translation process and make your work more efficient.

7. Get experience

The irony of picking up a successful career is that you need experience to get good jobs. This applies to translations as well. Most probably you’ll have to start as a freelancer with small gigs for acquaintances. Alternatively, you might try hooking up with translation agencies and build your resume that way. Beginnings can be difficult but in time your dream job will be quite rewarding.

8. Keep growing

Being a translator means you’ll need to constantly hone your skills and keep up with the changes in the languages. Staying relevant in the job market might also require you to pick up another language, as knowing only one language (especially a common one) might not hold up for the long run. Knowing two languages (other than your native, of course) is a great way to widen your range of services and keep growing. For example, you can pick up Spanish after already being fluent in Chinese. This way you can not only translate Spanish/Chinese texts to English (and the other way around), but in time make translations between them without even using your mother language.

Summary

Following your dreams is a great way to live a happy life. If your dream is to become a translator, you can easily achieve it if only you’re willing to dedicate some effort to it and remember to hone your language skills.