Careers in the Language Industry
Brian James Baer,
For many American academics, translation belongs among those
activities that everyone does but that no one wishes to discuss in public. At
some time or another, we all engage in translation—if only of titles and
selected quotations—nevertheless, it is a skill (or art) that is rarely
subjected to serious, scholarly reflection. The reigning assumption continues
to be that anyone with sufficient knowledge of two languages can translate and
the dearth of translation-training programs in the
What is the Language Industry?
While the translation of literary and historical texts within
the academy may have changed little over the years, translation outside of
academe—in what is now referred to as the “language industry”—has experienced
explosive growth since the Second World War and especially since the advent of
the personal computer and the Internet. New technologies have led to an increase
in both the volume and the variety of texts for translation. Indeed, the very
nature of texts has changed, if we consider computer help files and video game
scripts as texts that have no context in the traditional sense. The Internet’s
hypertext linking allows a “text” to be composed of many different,
interrelated paragraphs or screens of information that can be accessed in any
order. Cognitively, this requires translators to develop a sense of the way
text components are interrelated, prior to or during translation; technically,
it means that the translator must be able to deal with HyperText
Markup Language (HTML), used to create Web pages, either directly or by using
technological tools.
If the traditional image of the translator has been that of a
solitary figure amid stacks of dictionaries, epitomized by the patron saint of
translators, the hermit
In what follows, I offer a brief overview of what
professional translation entails and what training and skills one needs—above
and beyond high-level proficiency in at least two languages—to pursue a career
in the modern language industry. My comments apply, for the most part, to the
translation of “pragmatic texts,” such as legal documents, medical records, and
commercial correspondence, not to the translation of literary texts.
What is translation?
While the proficiency requirements for the student of
translation are not as well delineated as those for the language learner, most
translator trainers would agree that the successful professional possesses a
number of related skills and competencies. Key is what is referred to as
“transfer competence,” that is, the ability to transfer messages effectively
between two different linguistic codes or languages. A novice translator tends
to practice more “sign-oriented” translation, focusing on small linguistic
units, such as words. Often under the spell of what Mona Baker refers to as
“the engrossing effect of source text patterning,”2 the novice will
produce translations that are awkward, unnatural-sounding, and fail to observe
the stylistic norms of the target culture. The result is commonly referred to
as “translationese.” The professional, on the other
hand, will practice more “sense-oriented” translation, translating at the level
of larger linguistic units into stylistically-appropriate target culture forms
or texts, without loss of relevant information.
The sign-oriented translation of the novice is supported by a
number of misconceptions, the greatest of which is, perhaps, that translation
is all about words and that if only one could find a dictionary big enough, all
one’s problems would be solved. Ironically, despite their unshakable belief in
and reliance on dictionaries, many novices do not use them appropriately or
effectively. Learning to find parallel texts is crucial in pushing the novice
to translate above the level of the word and to check the translation of words
against the general context. Parallel texts are high-quality texts that have
been created in the target culture and that can serve as models, providing, in
addition to very useful linguistic constructions, information regarding
formatting and codes of politeness. Consider, for example, the opening greeting
in a Russian business letter addressed to the former Russian president, Boris Yelstin: “Mnogouvazhaemyi Boris
Nikolaevich!” A sign-oriented translation of that greeting, which, by the way,
might be centered on the page, would look like this: “Much-respected Boris
Nikolaevich!” More sense-oriented translations, on the other hand, might be:
“Dear Mr. Yeltsin,”, “Dear President Yeltsin:”, or “Dear Mr. President:”.
A second misconception held by novices is that translation is
all about language. This idea is quickly discarded, however, when the novice
translator with a background in Liberal Arts is asked to translate a scientific
study, a commercial contract, or, God forbid, a patent. In such situations,
very useful are background texts, which provide content-specific information or
domain knowledge and point out the importance of subject area specialization.
For those working in highly specialized areas, such as medicine and technology,
domain knowledge is at least as important as proficiency in a language. The
importance of background knowledge is reflected in the fact that entries in
domain-specific terminology glossaries are organized around concepts, not by
alphabetical order as in general use dictionaries.
Another related set of skills or competences necessary for
success as a translator, be it in-house or freelance, involves research. The
professional need not know every word in his/her language pair, but must sense
when he/she is in the presence of, say, a colloquial expression or professional
jargon, and must know where to look for solutions, i.e., in a special
dictionary of idioms or folk sayings as opposed to a general language
dictionary.
Another misconception commonly held by the novice is that
translation is all about the source language, which is typically the
translator’s second, non-native language. While the root of this misconception
obviously lies in the translator’s conviction that he/she has broader and
deeper knowledge of his/her native language, Hervey
and Higgins note that “the majority of English mother-tongue applicants for
translation posts in the European Commission fail because of the poor quality
of their English.”3 While one’s knowledge of the language of the
source text may be in part passive, one’s knowledge of one’s native language,
the language of the target text, must be thoroughly activated. This is the
material out of which the translator fashions his product.
Translation Tools
Our great faith in technology has fueled the widely held idea
that Machine Translation (MT) will soon render the human translator obsolete.
This is far from the truth. While under certain limited circumstances, the use
of machine translation may be economically feasible (i.e., when there is an
enormous volume of texts with a fairly limited and stable term base), the
amount of post-editing required of general-language texts that have been
machine translated is generally not cost-beneficial. Referring to machine
translation now available on some Web sites, the journalist David Kushner
remarks in the International Herald Tribune: “The process is nearly
instantaneous and, almost always, less than perfect” (April 24, 2000). For this
reason, developers of software for machine translation often describe their
product as “gist” translation, which, at best, provides the user with “the main
thrust of a particular bit of text from an e-mail, word-processing document or
Web site” (ibid). In the end, instead, of replacing human translators, MT has
produced additional work for those translators with the necessary skills and
speed to do post-editing.
While machine translation software is not generally
applicable, specialized computer tools for translation are widely used by
translation professionals today. Those tools include CD-ROM dictionaries,
online databases, terminology management systems, computer-assisted translation
(
Translation and the Internet
Another technology-related notion is that English is and will
remain the unchallenged language of the Internet. In the early days of the
Internet, it was assumed that most people with access to computers would also
know English. However, studies soon revealed that Internet users spend
significantly longer time online when searching in their native language, and
with the number of non-English speakers using the Internet increasing faster
than that of English speakers, the translation of Web sites began to appear
very cost-beneficial indeed. The inability to communicate effectively results,
quite directly, in a loss of sales, applications, or investments.
The importance of the Internet in business today has produced
a great need for “localization,” which involves, among other things, the
translation of menu items, dialog boxes, on-line help files, and “strings” of
text—words, phrases, sentences, and paragraphs that appear during use of the
software. The few translator-training programs in the
Pursuing a Career
For those interested in a career in translation, there are
different options available. While the number of translators and interpreters
in the
Translator training programs that feature at least one Slavic
language, while relatively few, do exist here in the
Those who wish to pursue a career in the language industry
would be well advised to join the American Translators Association, and become
certified in a language pair by taking the ATA exam. Interested translators are
encouraged to take a practice exam first that will provide useful feedback from
ATA graders. The organization also sponsors a number of workshops on
computer-related translation skills (i.e., localization and terminology
management) as well as on translation for specific fields or professions, such
as medical translation and translating for the entertainment industry). ATA’s yearly conference is a good opportunity to network
with employers, to share information with fellow translators, and to assess the
latest versions of dictionaries and
Other professional organizations for those interested in
translation are the American Literary Translators Association (ALTA), and the
American Translation Studies Association (ATSA). Those interested in what
translators talk about among themselves might visit the ruslantra
group on Yahoo, <groups.yahoo.com/group/ruslantra>.
The would-be language professional should also choose an area
of specialization, focusing on a specific domain or domains, such as law,
business/finance, medicine, industry and technology, and acquaint him/herself with
its key concepts, terminology and text types. When entering the market, the
professional translator will often be asked to provide a sample translation, so
you might want to have one ready from your area of specialization. Moreover,
while the beginning professional is typically anxious to find work, one should
look over every commission before accepting it and should never accept a job
for which one feels unqualified. Remember, when working as a freelance
translator, one may have very little direct contact with one’s client, and so
the quality of the finished translation is your best and often only
recommendation for future work. For someone interested in foreign languages and
cultures and with a background in another area, the language industry today offers
a variety of rewarding and exciting career opportunities.
Brian
James Baer is Associate Professor of Russian Translation at the
Notes:
1. Shreve, Gregory: “Translation at the Millenium:
Prospects for the Evolution of a Profession,” Paradigmenwechsel
in der Translation. Festschrift fur Albrecht Neubert zum
70. Geburtstage. P.A. Schmitt, ed. (Stauffenburg Verlag: 2000), p.
228.
2. Baker, Mona: In Other Words. A Coursebook
on Translation, (Routledge: 1994), p. 54.
3. Hervey, Sandor,
and Ian Higgins: Thinking French Translation. A Course in Translation Method.
(Routledge: 1992), p. 18.