neok Newbie United Kingdom Joined 4159 days ago 14 posts - 17 votes Speaks: English*
| Message 1 of 4 20 June 2013 at 9:07pm | IP Logged |
I would like to become an interpreter and was wondering what the most useful languages to learn would be. I am currently studying Arabic, Portuguese, Russian and French are these useful in the interpreting business. Thank you in advance.
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aodhanc Diglot Groupie Iceland Joined 6212 days ago 92 posts - 130 votes Speaks: English*, FrenchB2 Studies: Spanish
| Message 2 of 4 20 June 2013 at 9:20pm | IP Logged |
If you live in the UK, therefore on the doorstep of Europe, then the 3 most useful
languages for interpretation and translation would be French, German and Spanish.
Edited by aodhanc on 20 June 2013 at 9:21pm
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Ogrim Heptaglot Senior Member France Joined 4591 days ago 991 posts - 1896 votes Speaks: Norwegian*, English, Spanish, French, Romansh, German, Italian Studies: Russian, Catalan, Latin, Greek, Romanian
| Message 3 of 4 21 June 2013 at 9:42am | IP Logged |
I though the UK was part of Europe, not just on the doorstep?
Seriously though, I agree with aodhanc. French in particular is very useful if your aim is to work for a European or international organisation. Many of the bigger international organisations have only English and French as official languages (e.g. NATO, OECD, Council of Europe). In the European Union there are 23 official languages, but in practice working languages in many meetings are just English, French and German. Arabic and Russian would be useful for the UN, and could be useful in the "private" market (interpreting at business meetings, conferences etc.)
If you seriously aim at becoming a professional interpreter, I would recommend you to get a qualfication in interpretation from a recognised interpretation school/institute. There are good ones I know of in France, Belgium and Switzerland (not sure about the UK).
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Arekkusu Hexaglot Senior Member Canada bit.ly/qc_10_lec Joined 5333 days ago 3971 posts - 7747 votes Speaks: English, French*, GermanC1, Spanish, Japanese, Esperanto Studies: Italian, Norwegian, Mandarin, Romanian, Estonian
| Message 4 of 4 21 June 2013 at 2:26pm | IP Logged |
You can also try asking at www.proz.com.
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