Poll: What would be your main piece of advice to an unexperienced translator? Thread poster: ProZ.com Staff
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This forum topic is for the discussion of the poll question "What would be your main piece of advice to an unexperienced translator?".
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In this day and age, choose another profession!
| | | | Lingua 5B 
Bosnia and Herzegovina
Local time: 22:32
Member (2009)
English to Croatian
+ ...
| | Plan Z, for when all else fails | Jul 17 |
Maria Teresa Borges de Almeida wrote:
In this day and age, choose another profession!
Lingua 5B wrote:
Always have a plan B.
An inexperienced translator would be well-advised to choose another profession, and consider adopting translation as their 'plan B'.
An unexperienced translator would do better to proof-read their output before hitting 'send' on a public forum, choose another profession, make sure they have a plan B, plan C, plan D ... and then pencil in 'translation' as their 'plan Z'.
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Baran Keki
Türkiye
Local time: 23:32
Member
English to Turkish
| Inexperienced/unexperienced | Jul 18 |
The beauty of translation is that anybody (talking about people in Turkey, don't know if that's the case in other non-English speaking countries) who's watched a few Netflix series with English subtitles think they can translate from English as well as the next man when all they need is a computer with an internet connection. What's more, they can start their career at any time of their lives (you can't be a surgeon or a lawyer or a musician at 43, no?), is there any other profession that allows... See more The beauty of translation is that anybody (talking about people in Turkey, don't know if that's the case in other non-English speaking countries) who's watched a few Netflix series with English subtitles think they can translate from English as well as the next man when all they need is a computer with an internet connection. What's more, they can start their career at any time of their lives (you can't be a surgeon or a lawyer or a musician at 43, no?), is there any other profession that allows you to start from scratch at the tender age of 58, from the comfort of your home?
My main piece of advice to these folk is to go love themselves. ▲ Collapse
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Nowadays this is no longer a profitable profession, if you studied and love languages, you should try another profession that allows you to exploit your studies
| | | | | Experience counts for very little | Jul 18 |
Most experienced translators are still crap translators.
But otherwise, yeah, find something else.
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| Post removed: This post was hidden by a moderator or staff member because it was not in line with site rule | Nicholas Boline
United States
Local time: 15:32
Member (2023)
Spanish to English
| Network, Online Presence, and Interpreting | Jul 18 |
I don't agree that the industry is dead; however, the people with power in the industry (i.e. the large corporate agencies and their lackeys in organizations such as the ATA) are unilaterlly pushing ahead with anti-worker technologies like AI, which steals our work without our permission and then uses the data to drive down our wages. Since our labor is unorganized, we have little recourse to stop them from doing anything they'd like. But it won't take long before the limitations of these techno... See more I don't agree that the industry is dead; however, the people with power in the industry (i.e. the large corporate agencies and their lackeys in organizations such as the ATA) are unilaterlly pushing ahead with anti-worker technologies like AI, which steals our work without our permission and then uses the data to drive down our wages. Since our labor is unorganized, we have little recourse to stop them from doing anything they'd like. But it won't take long before the limitations of these technologies are impossible to ignore and the work comes back to humans. But in the meantime, it seems that some users of translation are willing to accept a certain decrease in quality in order to keep costs down, I would argue because of the falling rate of profit in general and other macroeconomic factors. But it's certainly not the case that it's impossible to make a living.
As somebody who has only been in the industry for a few years years as both a translator and interpreter, I have to say there are two key factors in the success I've had: 1) Joining every professional organization that pertains to you and networking aggressively in all of them and 2) Being very easy to find online and having a high-quality presence on LinkedIn and yes, to some extent, ProZ. Every single paid job I've ever gotten in this industry is directly attributable to one of these two items. I still haven't gotten my own professional website, but I'm told by my colleagues that that is also important. ▲ Collapse
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