Freelance translation Thread poster: Hourayra Jebrane (X)
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Hourayra Jebrane (X)
France
Dear fellow translators,
I'm thinking of becoming a translator and I have a few questions. As a student in English I would like to know if the job market for freelance translation is reliable for a decent income. I'm aware that it is rather rough at first, but I would like to know, with the current state of automatic translation, if the job has a future. Are there enough translation assignments available to live comfortably from it ? Is it possible to have enough assignments to work... See more Dear fellow translators,
I'm thinking of becoming a translator and I have a few questions. As a student in English I would like to know if the job market for freelance translation is reliable for a decent income. I'm aware that it is rather rough at first, but I would like to know, with the current state of automatic translation, if the job has a future. Are there enough translation assignments available to live comfortably from it ? Is it possible to have enough assignments to work full time? And last, for those who are familiar with the school, does Edvenn (formerly CI3M) offer a good translation course?
Best Regards,
Hourayra ▲ Collapse
| | | | Tom in London
United Kingdom
Local time: 21:11
Member (2008)
Italian to English
| Three points | Jan 28, 2022 |
Hourayra Jebrane wrote:
Dear fellow translators,
I'm thinking of becoming a translator and I have a few questions. As a student in English I would like to know if the job market for freelance translation is reliable for a decent income. I'm aware that it is rather rough at first, but I would like to know, with the current state of automatic translation, if the job has a future. Are there enough translation assignments available to live comfortably from it ? Is it possible to have enough assignments to work full time? And last, for those who are familiar with the school, does Edvenn (formerly CI3M) offer a good translation course?
Best Regards,
Hourayra
1. Time spent obtaining academic qualifications would be better spent gaining practical experience of translation.
2. Specialise, specialise, specialise.
3. "Automatic" translation, as you call it, is only useful at the first stage of translating a document. In my experience this stage equates to about 10-20% of the work required to perfect the translation. The remaining 80% requires skilled work by a human translator.
[Edited at 2022-01-28 17:55 GMT]
| | | | Samuel Murray 
Netherlands
Local time: 22:11
Member (2006)
English to Afrikaans
+ ...
Tom in London wrote:
1. Time spent obtaining academic qualifications would be better spent gaining practical experience of translation.
Yes and no. 95% of what you learn in an academic qualification is not going to be useful in your job as a translator, but I wonder if that isn't true of most jobs. I'm certainly glad that I did a translation course (3 years at a technical college) at the start of my career, but the training itself didn't help me much when I started working. It's hard to explain: it's useful but it's not useful. You can become a successful translator without any training, but if you do have the opportunity (and money) for training, then I would recommend it.
2. Specialise, specialise, specialise.
Even my translation professors said that, but I don't know about that. It's sometimes better to cast your net wide. It's good to be an expert at one or two things, but specializing typically comes only after you've done a lot of work in that field, so it's a bit of a chicken-and-egg situation.
3. "Automatic" translation, as you call it, is only useful at the first stage of translating a document.
In some fields and some language combinations, machine translation has become very, very good. But it still needs a human touch, and you can be that human.
Hourayra Jebrane wrote:
As a student in English I would like to know if the job market for freelance translation is reliable for a decent income. I'm aware that it is rather rough at first...
It's very hard. You can make a good income, but it's hard work and there is a lot of uncertainty, especially in the first few years. And you are up against a lot of competition from people who think translation is an easy way to make money.
Does Edvenn (formerly CI3M) offer a good translation course?
I don't know them at all, but their courses look interesting. They appear to be 1-year courses. Were you thinking of doing the general translation course? Of course, all training colleges make their courses look very, very interesting in the prospectus.
[Edited at 2022-01-28 17:40 GMT]
| | | | Hourayra Jebrane (X)
France
TOPIC STARTER | Translation market | Jan 28, 2022 |
Does Edvenn (formerly CI3M) offer a good translation course? I don't know them at all, but their courses look interesting. They appear to be 1-year courses. Were you thinking of doing the general translation course? Of course, all training colleges make their courses look very, very interesting in the prospectus. [Edited at 2022-01-28 17:40 GMT]
Yes, I plan to do that one. I fulfill the requirements to apply for the course, and I hoped it would help me get translation assignments. The financial issue can be solved with a funding from the local institutions where I am (France). Besides, an acquaintance of mine from ProZ took the course and is now a full time translator; he claimed the course is very useful and practical.
Thank you both for enlightening me regarding automatic translation. What I am most concerned about is the financial situation I would be in as a freelance translator: how is the job market for translation? Is there a strong demand for qualified/experienced translators in English to French? I was thinking of specializing in localization (video games, software, apps, websites).
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Adieu
Ukrainian to English
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France can be hard as a high-ish income, high-tax jurisdiction with plenty of expats and native bilinguals
Ideally, you need a desirable native language (typically your target), an education from another country with a desirable source language (can also be your target language if you grew up there as an immigrant and are near-native bilingual), and a low-tax & low-income jurisdiction to live in.
Good languages are EU languages (bless the bureaucracy) and large regional... See more France can be hard as a high-ish income, high-tax jurisdiction with plenty of expats and native bilinguals
Ideally, you need a desirable native language (typically your target), an education from another country with a desirable source language (can also be your target language if you grew up there as an immigrant and are near-native bilingual), and a low-tax & low-income jurisdiction to live in.
Good languages are EU languages (bless the bureaucracy) and large regional languages.
English acquired from schooling in a non-English-speaking country is a pretty bad choice.
If I were looking to study an extra language in Europe, I'd look for something nice and niche like Slovenian or rich but less known like Dutch. ▲ Collapse
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