sebngwa3 Diglot Senior Member United States Joined 6166 days ago 200 posts - 217 votes Speaks: Korean*, English
| Message 1 of 18 20 January 2011 at 5:37am | IP Logged |
..hone the languages you already know or learn new languages to try to make a living?
It seems there are much more Software Engineer jobs then translators. But you can also make good living
from translating.
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Splog Diglot Senior Member Czech Republic anthonylauder.c Joined 5671 days ago 1062 posts - 3263 votes Speaks: English*, Czech Studies: Mandarin
| Message 2 of 18 20 January 2011 at 7:44am | IP Logged |
sebngwa3 wrote:
It seems there are much more Software Engineer jobs then translators. But you can also
make good living from translating.
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You are right. There are far more jobs for programmers than translators, and they tend
to offer a much better income. I owned a software company for many years, before
retiring, with clients around the world. None of them demanded that my team spoke the
local language. English is the language of business in the software world. So, if you
can speak English fluently, then being a programmer will usually earn you more than
learning another language.
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Arekkusu Hexaglot Senior Member Canada bit.ly/qc_10_lec Joined 5383 days ago 3971 posts - 7747 votes Speaks: English, French*, GermanC1, Spanish, Japanese, Esperanto Studies: Italian, Norwegian, Mandarin, Romanian, Estonian
| Message 3 of 18 20 January 2011 at 3:29pm | IP Logged |
I don't see why you can't do both. I also don't think "honing" a language is enough to become a successful translator.
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sebngwa3 Diglot Senior Member United States Joined 6166 days ago 200 posts - 217 votes Speaks: Korean*, English
| Message 4 of 18 20 January 2011 at 11:42pm | IP Logged |
^
Then what is enough?
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Ygangerg Pentaglot Senior Member United States Joined 5320 days ago 100 posts - 140 votes Speaks: English*, Spanish, Arabic (Written), Mandarin, French Studies: German
| Message 5 of 18 22 January 2011 at 4:33am | IP Logged |
A handful of threads in the "Languages & Work" section have some good input from professional translators.
I've been looking into the field myself, and was told a very good analogy: if having two languages mastered is like having two hands, then being a good translator is like being a concert pianist...
That is to say, translation has its own skillset outside of linguistic competence. It demands solid writing skills, business skills, and mastery of a specialization (medical, legal, patents, etc).
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translator2 Senior Member United States Joined 6921 days ago 848 posts - 1862 votes Speaks: English*
| Message 6 of 18 22 January 2011 at 5:25am | IP Logged |
If you are interested in programming and foreign languages, why not consider a career in computational linguistics: Computational Linguistics
sebngwa3 wrote:
..hone the languages you already know or learn new languages to try to make a living?
It seems there are much more Software Engineer jobs then translators. But you can also make good living
from translating.
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1 person has voted this message useful
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Ichiro Triglot Senior Member United Kingdom Joined 6211 days ago 111 posts - 152 votes Speaks: English*, Japanese, French Studies: Spanish, Mandarin, Korean, Malay
| Message 7 of 18 27 January 2011 at 5:37pm | IP Logged |
I went the programming route. That allowed me to work in Japan, where I learnt Japanese.
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hrhenry Octoglot Senior Member United States languagehopper.blogs Joined 5132 days ago 1871 posts - 3642 votes Speaks: English*, SpanishC2, ItalianC2, Norwegian, Catalan, Galician, Turkish, Portuguese Studies: Polish, Indonesian, Ojibwe
| Message 8 of 18 27 January 2011 at 6:03pm | IP Logged |
translator2 wrote:
If you are interested in programming and foreign languages, why not consider a career in computational linguistics: Computational Linguistics
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Or localization. There is actually a need for talented localization programmers.
R.
==
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