Knowing the Requirements for Becoming a Translator

Being a translator can be a very demanding job, because your clients always depend on you to communicate with the world beyond their own language fields. The quality of your job may bring a great impact into the life or business of your clients. Your precise translation may help your client to win a multi-million-dollar contract in a competitive international bidding, or your lively translation of advertisement may draw millions of customer attentions to your client. Thus, what are the requirements you should meet for being a qualified translator? You may get some ideas from the following points:

1- A professional translator should always have confidence in yourself and have the determination to accomplish the job.

A translator may always encounter some unexpected challenges. The client can come up with some new content you might never know or never see before. If you are a freelance translator, this week you might work on a legal paper, and next week you might be occupied in translating some cosmetics brochures.

Everything is possible to happen in a translator's world. Sometimes you might work on a project whose schedule is very tight; however you might be not very familiar with the knowledge and technical terms related to this project. Under this situation, you must still keep the confidence in yourself and tell yourself that there must be a way to work it out. A very famous translator in Asia ever said: 'Each time when I started to work on a challenging project, I felt I was jumping off a cliff. But while I fell down in the air, two wings grow up in my back.'

2- You should always be open-minded and be willing to learn new things.

It might be unrealistic to expect a translator to become experts of each field. But a translator shall have a board range of knowledge. For example, if you are a professional in translating the software technology, whenever some new technology comes up, you should get some idea of it.

3- You should be familiar with the culture background of both languages.

Language is a tool for communication. In order to understand the meaning of the languages well, you can't separate the languages from their own culture background. A same word might be translated into very different way, due to different local cultures. For example, in western world, we use the blue color to describe the sad feeling. But in Asian culture, blue is a bright color representing the happiness.

4- You must also be a good writer in the target language.

Translation is a kind of art. You must not only understand the meaning of the source text, but also be able to express the meaning precisely in the target language. If you can't deliver a good writing in the target language, the readers might not be able to receive the original sense from the original text. That's why a bilingual person is not necessarily a qualified translator.

5- You should be flexible to meet the needs of clients.

Sometimes you might have to modify your work according to the specific taste or requirements of your clients. As mentioned, translation is a tool for communication. However, according to different people, the logic of communication could be varied. So don't feel humiliated when a client asks you to modify your work.

6- You should know how to use the internet efficiently to search for information.

As mentioned above, translation can be a very demanding stressful job.

In fact, thanks to the advanced computer and internet technology, you can use the search engines on the internet to quickly find the information you need to help you accomplish your job.