Tootle him with vigor! (My Experiences and Advice)

Name: Deany

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Product:	My Experiences and Advice
Date:	12.10.01 (174 review reads)
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Advantages: Chance of going freelance, responsible for your own work

Disadvantages: Can get repetitive

Imagine the scene… you buy a brand new DVD player and eagerly rush home to watch the DVD of ‘Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon’ you have also just bought. But when you open the box for the DVD player the instructions are all in Japanese, and when you eventually manage to get the thing plugged in and working, the film you are watching is entirely in Chinese. Never mind, you think, picking up the Kafka novel lying on your desk – only to find that it is written in German. Or, you log onto the internet to look for holidays only to find all the information on France is in French, on Greece in Greek, and as for information on Egypt – well, that’s just a series of incomprehensible squiggles. In short, welcome to a world without translation.

Okay, so the above example may be just a little far-fetched, but I wanted to get across the impression that translation is a thing that most of us come across in our everyday lives without even realising it. In fact, the only time we ever seem to notice translations is when we come across the (sometimes infamous) “bad” translations that you see in articles on language or peppered around the internet. Take, for example, this rather helpful sign that is displayed at a car rental firm in Tokyo “When passenger of foot heave in sight, tootle the horn. Trumpet him melodiously at first, but if he still obstacle your passage, then tootle him with vigor”. Or, these instructions for cooking pasta, taken from an Italian packet “Besmear a backing pan, previously buttered with a good tomato sauce, and, after, dispose the cannelloni”. Clear? As mud.

So, we now know why the world needs translators. The very fact that people writing in different languages need to communicate their intentions to people with no knowledge of that language means that some third party has to step in and point out what information is contained in the original message. Note that I am talkin
g about “writing”, not speaking – which is the domain of interpreters. Although the lines may blur a little when you are talking about dubbing foreign films (interpreting?) or providing subtitles (translating?) –the basic rule is that translators deal with the written word (reports, novels, manuals…) while interpreters deal with spoken language (conferences, court appearances…).

Right, that’s a bit of background, now to get down to a bit more detail about the job. First, what qualifications do you need. Well – talk about stating the blindingly obvious – the first thing you need is to be able to speak/read/write at least one other language apart from your own. And if you are really serious about the career, two or more foreign languages will help you get a lot further. I personally have a degree in German and Dutch and know enough Spanish to hold a (short and rather basic) conversation. In these competitive times, though, just having a degree in languages is not always enough, and I also have a Master’s degree (MA) in Translation. All in all, this meant five years of study at university – a 4 year undergraduate degree (including 1 year living in Germany) and a 1 year postgraduate MA. Quite a lot of time to learn a career that most people think needs no more knowledge than how to open a German -> English dictionary!

The job itself varies depending largely on where you work. As a translator there are two main options – to work in the offices of a multinational company/organisation or work from home as a freelancer. Since I work for a company I will concentrate on what I know, other than simply to point out that freelancing is usually something a translator will do later in life once they have learnt a specialist area in detail and no longer need the constant support and advice of colleagues. The company I work for is called SAP and is a German software manufacturer based near Heid
elberg, in the South of Germany. All of the software it produces (as well as marketing texts etc.) are translated into English and nearly 30 other languages. The size of the company means that there are over 100 English-speaking translators working in here Germany alone. On a typical day, I will either be translating the user interface (icons and screen text) for the software products or the documentation describing how the customers can use the software.

As with any job, translation has its good sides and its bad sides. If you are simply translating the same type of texts for days on end it can become very dull – especially if they are very technical and you are having difficulty understanding the original German. On the other hand, it is a job where you are left to get on with the work without having to be part of team decisions the whole time. A text arrives in German (or whatever other language), you translate it, check it to make sure you are satisfied with it and then pass it on to whoever wanted it. And, once you have had a bit of practice, it is quite an easy job. Okay, so you are always bound to run up against some new terminology that you don’t know, but on the whole, once you master your own language and a foreign language it isn’t incredibly hard to switch a piece of text from one to the other.

I suppose I should mention pay too. To be honest, if you are working as a translator in a translation agency in England, you are not going to earn a great deal. Go freelance and the money rises a bit as you are free to set your own rates – as long as you are actually good enough to justify the rates you charge. The real money is to be found working for multinational companies or organisations, which is going to mean working abroad. To me this was a bonus, although I can understand how it could put other people off the job. Work for a company like SAP and the wage is pretty decent, and if you manage to get in with the EU
or UN you’re laughing.

The career prospects for translation are quite good, once you manage to get your foot in the door. The increasing level of trade and political interdependence in the EU means that more and more people are coming into contact with languages they cannot write or speak and so translators are needed for a lot of modern business transactions. Most non-English speakers may be able to bang out a letter in passable English, but if they want to write any sort of marketing text or contract they are really going to need the help of a translator. And how many English people do you know who could carry out business deals in German, French, Spanish, Italian or Japanese?

One of the other drawbacks in translation is that there is not career ladder to work your way up. You can start as a translator on your first day at a job and still be translating the same things 40 years later – talk about dull! In larger companies you can earn titles like translation co-ordinator, but if you want to progress you have to abandon translation and move onto something else like project management or editing. It is one of the ironies of the trade that the more experience you get as a translator, the less translation work you actually do. Mind you, after a few years of translating most people are glad to have the opportunity to do something a little different. Translators can be seen as not only people that rewrite foreign texts in their own language, but rather more as “language experts” who can turn their hand to terminology work, lexicography, editing, copywriting and many other similar skills. We are all trained linguists and have a great grasp of our own language, as well as of the foreign languages we speak.

Well, that’s all I can think of to write for now. I hope I have managed to shed a bit of light on my profession and provided some useful information to anyone that might be interested in pursuing a career in trans
lation. Feel free to add any questions to the comments section and I’ll try to give an answer.

Before I finish, though, here’s just one final “bad” translation. It was taken from a French advert for trips in a helicopter. See if you can figure out what the ‘translator’ wanted to say, I know I can’t! “Ressort a golf to an other to wrangle a competition put down grace of an helicopter with your customers in an hostelery of the area for your businesses' diners. Offer to your family or to your fiends the inusual and unforgottable present.”

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