Spanish Translator as a career. Anybody?

I'm far from an expert on this, but I can tell you that my sister majored in Spanish as an undergradute, and after graduation she was offered a job as a translator at the NSA. Does your college have an office of career placement/guidance? That might be the best place to start.

 

Skill here is more important than the degree itself. And skill is good enough for informal settings, but not for work with courts, government, and the like. Once upon a time I translated informally in Spain and in Illinois - Spain at a prison but not in an official capacity and Illinois for the County Health Department and later for the , but as an extension of another job as opposed to officially. In neither case would I have been used by a county office in an official capacity where what I translated would have carried legal weight. The only folks who were tapped to do so held translation certificates.

Look, then, for translation certificate options, but more importantly, check with (for example) a county court to see if the certificate is recognized. This isn't too important for most universities, but on the chance you find a place called Ismitje's House of Translation that purports to offer certificates in translation, be sure somewhere you might want to work would recognize the certificate.

 

Having published translations from French to English, I would just make you aware that translating is a lot harder than you might think. I had no idea what I was getting myself into at first, and I'm bilingual in French. Just a word of caution.

That said, my translations have all been of texts that (broadly speaking) fall within my area of academic research/expertise/whatever. When it comes to translating, it helps to be at least pretty familiar with the subject matter at hand--if you're giving this serious thought, I would suggest that you narrow your focus to some more or less specific domain.

 

I'll always remember my first morning in the prenatal clinic - you want me to ask her about that? Better give me a list and I'll come back tomorrow ready to go!

. . . and that doesn't fly in court.

I also did some English-Portuguese translation back when my Portuguese was waaaaay better than it is now. The first thing I translated was both perfect and terrible at the same time - perfect grammar and the like, but the writing style was 100% American. And while I spoke as my friends in Portugal did, it turns out that doesn't correlate with writing styles.

 

I like do a translator.

spanish translation​

 

I'm pretty skilled at Spanish and Portuguese, but you really do need a specialized vocabulary for whatever you are translating for. Because who ever really knows how to say "hand me the ratcheting closed end socket wrench" in another language?

If you want to go into translating, you have to know which field to get into...being a general translator doesn't work too well with common languages like english and spanish. There are too many hispanic soccer moms with that capability. You have to choose a field and specialize.

 

What's annoying is when the client comes back to you and says, "Wull, my wife's pilates partner is in a wine club with a man married to a woman whose cousin is from Colombia and she says that..."

Just b/c you can speak a language does not mean that you're an expert in the study of language.

I've done a bit of free-lance stuff, and the pay is good. I haven't done it in 5 years, but I used to charge $.13/word. Now w/ a PhD I'd charge $.17 or so.

I finally refused to work w/ lawyers. They literally cannot deal w/ the fact that I billed more per hour than they did. It destroyed their entire universe. Good times!


But yeah... Get your degree; if you can, study in nation that speaks the target language, focus on a specific industry, translate into English for 95+% of your jobs (say a company wants a quick, informal memo to be typed up), charge by the word and invest in good dictionaries, even in a digital age.