| Pages in topic: < [1 2] | Question about specializing Thread poster: AMcMillin
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| More practice and knowledge would help | Sep 1, 2016 |
Read relevant articles, watch relevant youtube channels, read relevant facebook communities. Also you can start translating in the are you want to specialize in for lower rate - thus you would gain experience.
| | | | | I think this depends | Sep 1, 2016 |
Balasubramaniam L. wrote:
It is a matter of opinion. Are we translators first, and other things later, or is it the other way around? I tend to lean towards the position that we are above all translators and specialists in the linguistics of our respective languages. All other things come second.
It is a case of division of labour on which modern society is so dependent. We do what we are good at - which is languages. If we feel we are good at something else, we should be doing that, and not translating. We should become lawyers and doctors and leave translation to people who are cut out for it.
[Edited at 2016-09-01 08:01 GMT]
Different fields call for different strengths. A literary translator or an advertising specialist will need very finely honed writing skills and a highly nuanced understanding of their source language. A medical or legal translator will rely more heavily on their knowledge of their specialist field (whilst still needing high-level writing and comprehension skills). As a technical translator I certainly feel that I need to be good at more than just languages.
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AMcMillin wrote:
Good afternoon,
I am still somewhat new to the translation industry and I realize how important it is to have a specialization in a certain field or even several. Some agencies do not seem to be interested in offering you work unless you have a specialization. My question is how to prepare for it. I realize that some of you might have degrees in the areas you specialize in
True for my core specialization.
but for those of you who do not, how did you obtain the experience to specialize in it?
Pure experience or lifetime hobby, or lifetime commitment in one case.
Did you practice translating documents in that area and pass that off as experience on your CV or did you do volunteer work for any organizations in that field so you could get the experience?
No way. The boredom of that would have killed me. I simply translated under the supervision of someone more familiar with the field but incapable of processing the entire workload he was able to get from a nice client. In some cases translating legal texts and later business, economic and cultural texts relating to a certain field eventually allows me to just translate pretty much any text that doesn't require a Ph.D. in that field to figure out.
Did you take online courses?
Never in my lifetime.
I would just like some advice concerning the best way to go about it.
Degree course or equivalent (if tuition fees are an issue), such as simply reading the course material and getting some tips from someone who works in the field.
I want concrete experience that I can include in my CV. I'm interested in specializing in medicine and law as I have already taken some courses in these two fields while pursuing my degree in Spanish and I've done a little bit of work for an agency that I'm currently working for but I would like to put more time into focusing on these two areas than I am currently doing at the moment.
Paralegal studies or, more ambitiously, actual law school or LLM for non-lawyers (there are some such programmes for journalists and PoliSci folks, for instance). This said, one doesn't exactly do a bunch of degrees etc. in language studies and translation to become a permanent paralegal, never to be seen as the greenest lawyer's equal (yuck!).
As for medicine, don't even bother if you don't have a talent and a love for the field.
| | | | Kay Denney 
France
Local time: 10:10
French to English
| either medicine or law, not both | Sep 5, 2016 |
I agree with those who say either medicine or law, not both. As a former PM I wouldn't have trusted someone who claimed to be good at both. These are not subjects you can wing it on.
I got into textiles because my mother taught me dressmaking. It meant I knew some of the basic terminology and could find my way around fairly easily. I was hired at an agency and at first there wasn't really enough work to keep me busy all day, so I was told to put together some glossaries. My textile... See more I agree with those who say either medicine or law, not both. As a former PM I wouldn't have trusted someone who claimed to be good at both. These are not subjects you can wing it on.
I got into textiles because my mother taught me dressmaking. It meant I knew some of the basic terminology and could find my way around fairly easily. I was hired at an agency and at first there wasn't really enough work to keep me busy all day, so I was told to put together some glossaries. My textiles glossary soon ran to over 50 pages as I had a heap of material to glean terms from. That's OK for textiles, nobody is going to die if you mix up spandex and stretchy jersey.
There's far more at stake in legal or medical texts so I would suggest either building on subjects you already have at your fingertips or that you are very interested in as I did, or studying either medicine or law in some formal setting before claiming to be a specialist. ▲ Collapse
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Liviu-Lee Roth
United States
Local time: 04:10
Romanian to English
+ ...
Texte Style wrote:
I agree with those who say either medicine or law, not both. As a former PM I wouldn't have trusted someone who claimed to be good at both. These are not subjects you can wing it on.
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I work in both fields and it seems that everybody is happy.
Disclaimer: In Romania I worked in the legal field after graduating from law school and in the US I studied Ultrasound and worked for 7 years for a large hospital.
I subscribe to the idea that specialization in a certain field is beneficial but, as a beginner, you have to try everything that comes your way in order to make ends meet.
| | | | | Challenging but not impossible | Sep 5, 2016 |
I agree with Balasubramanian about exciting challenge of interdisciplinary exploration: bioethic, forensics, etc. Let's be honest, even those who have degrees in law or medicine and never practiced their specialization, but got into translating business, they haven't mastered the entire field either.
What helped me in gaining experience in translating sociology was hanging out with a guy who studied anthropology and geopolitics. I was learning along while translating his papers and articl... See more I agree with Balasubramanian about exciting challenge of interdisciplinary exploration: bioethic, forensics, etc. Let's be honest, even those who have degrees in law or medicine and never practiced their specialization, but got into translating business, they haven't mastered the entire field either.
What helped me in gaining experience in translating sociology was hanging out with a guy who studied anthropology and geopolitics. I was learning along while translating his papers and articles he was publishing. He was mentoring me in terminology and I was equipping him with the opportunity to publish in more than one language. It's not a very profitable way of gaining competence, but translation has always been about lifelong learning. You just need to love what you do and to find someone with similar likes, then you get to work for a common cause. ▲ Collapse
| | | | Kay Denney
France
Local time: 10:10
French to English
liviu roth wrote: Texte Style wrote:
I agree with those who say either medicine or law, not both. As a former PM I wouldn't have trusted someone who claimed to be good at both. These are not subjects you can wing it on.
. I work in both fields and it seems that everybody is happy. Disclaimer: In Romania I worked in the legal field after graduating from law school and in the US I studied Ultrasound and worked for 7 years for a large hospital. I subscribe to the idea that specialization in a certain field is beneficial but, as a beginner, you have to try everything that comes your way in order to make ends meet.
OK perhaps if I saw from your profile that you had genuine previous experience in both fields, I might have tried you out in each. But it's very rare to be able to do both, and I had plenty of bad experiences with translators claiming to be specialised in certain fields. I certainly wouldn't trust a youngster just out of translation school who made such a claim.
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