Why translation isn't such a great job
I realize that for the majority of people out there who actually read this, this has absolutely nothing to do with what I normally post. And that's because it doesn't. I've been a little busy lately, especially seeing as I'll be changing jobs in a few months, and don't yet have one perfectly secured. Also, I've honestly been procrastinating, so instead, I've decided to post something I've found both from personal experience and from the experience of others.
So you can speak two languages fairly fluently, and have decided that its about time you got paid to do that. After all, its great pay! And you can meet exciting people and travel to exotic places! Unfortunately, unless you've actually been doing research in the matter, there are a couple of things about translation you don't know. For starters...
1. Its hard.
I don't just mean for the normal person who, when he looks at a phrase in Spanish or German and is asked what it means, responds with "Well, I know tacos and bratwurst...", I mean for everyone. This is because of a lot of things, but the biggest thing would have to be that it is in fact, supposed to be hard. That's why people are paying you a lot to do it. If you can actually speak another language fluently, nine for ten, its because you can think in that language. That being said, now try having a conversation in that language, then having to stop after pretty much every sentence so that you can say exactly what was just said in another language to another person. Not as easy, eh? Well, it gets more frustrating when you consider...
2. Not every language uses the same grammar structure.
You note how I mentioned having to stop after every sentence to translate? Well, some of you out there may be thinking, "Why not make it faster or easier and start translating while they're still speaking?" Well, apart from the fact that you still have to listen to see the rest of what they're saying, you also have to guess a little with some languages. For example, with Japanese, most of the indicators of a subordinate clause, something that people in English normally put at the front of said clause, are at the end of the clause. Meaning you have to wait until the end of that clause to know which one to use, much less where in the sentence it should go. It gets even more interesting when you consider that all verbs also go at the ends of clauses and sentences, along with what indicates its tense and whether or not its negative. Thus, the whole "wait until the end" bit. In fact, it can get even more confusing when the grammar structure itself can use completely different or new parts of speech, thus meaning that a lot of words may actually have different uses in different languages. Using the example of snow, and Japanese, consider how snow is both a noun and a verb. In Japanese, its not. So while you can safely say, "Its snowing" in English, what you MUST say in Japanese is "Snow is falling." But, that can be even more compounded by...
3. Not every language uses the same words.
I know what you're thinking... "Duh! that's why they're different languages!" Its a little more complicated than that. Every language is modified both contextually and culturally throughout the centuries to make words for things that people talk about regularly. Different languages have different areas, and of course different cultures. Thus different things that words are made for and different things that there are more words for. Remember that snow example? Well, think of all the different kinds of snow you can in English. Slush, sleet, snow, powder, and even the ones made from mixing words, like crusty snow, corn snow, wet snow, whathaveyou. Now consider that the Inuit language has at least 17 different words for different kinds of snow, meaning they have more words for snow that we have accepted concepts of and differentiations for in English, or that even your not-so-average English speaker can think of! I know what you're thinking though. "If I come across a word I don't know, I'll just look it up, and a rough explanation in my language will help me," right? Well...
4. Not every word in a language is in a dictionary.
Consider your Oxford English Dictionary, or Webster's American English Dictionary. Consider how many words it has in it. I believe the most accurate count is "one metric shit-ton." Now consider that that doesn't actually include all the words used in American or Queen's English, much less all English. While they pride themselves on being the most complete dictionaries, that's not hard considering that most dictionaries leave out technical words, such as ones used in medicine, architecture, computers, etc. And not even Webby or Oxy are complete in these fields. In fact, there are a lot of fields not even covered in those two, such as pretty much any kind of dialect-specific words, or slang. Now consider that your average, "comprehensive" one language to another dictionary trims down almost all but the most used words, especially if its a two-way dictionary. Some may be saying, "Well, I just have to keep looking, maybe in more specific dictionaries! I'm sure a word for what I want to say will be somewhere!" Well...
5. Not always. (By which I mean,not every word can translate, or even exists in other languages.)
You remember snow? That white stuff that falls from the sky? That we were just talking about? Yeah, well, that word doesn't even exist in a lot of languages, especially several native sub-Saharan languages. Why? They don't see it, they don't need it. Well, it gets worse than that. In a lot of Asiatic languages, where all you really need to do sometimes to make up a new word is mix characters that roughly mean what that word means, and give it a new reading to hopefully not make it confusable with other words (good luck!), there are a lot of single words that don't actually exist in a lot of European languages. For example, something I've recently come across, there is an adjective in Japanese that roughly translated means that "(something or someone) is capable of or will improve your English ability." And yes, that is the shortest translation I've found everywhere that actually means what the word means (shorter ones were simply "improve" or something similar, which is far from accurate, or even helpful.) Another example is the common English word "schadenfreude." Which isn't actually English. Its German. We stole it from German. Because we were too lazy to think of a word for "taking pleasure in someone else's pain."
"Oh, at least there are loanwords. Something that I can recognize and easily understand. That'll make it easier."
6. It won't, because not all loanwords mean what you think they mean.
Here's an easy example. "Pan." Its a Japanese loanword. Pretty recognizable. You know exactly what it means! Well, if you were thinking "Bread," you were right! If not, then you've actually not studied Japanese for a long enough time. This is a fairly common word, so most people who do study Japanese know exactly what it means. Well, what about a slightly less common loanword? "Dekotora." Yeah, its borrowed from English. ekhatch.files.wordpress.com/2009/01/dekotora-006.jpg Its one of these. Its short for "Decorated Truck." Once again, a word we don't actually have in English, or a concept of without a picture.
Well, that's all the reasons that its hard. Or is it?
7. You're often paid by the page, or by the word. With a deadline.
Ok, this could be a reason its hard, or a reason the pay isn't good. But in all honesty, its both. Often, in order to make the same amount of money in jobs other people can't do, or jobs you'd rather not do, you've got to work pretty flat out. Especially if you're free-lance, trying to make a name for yourself and competing for the lowest bidder. Say you offer 4 cents a word to beat the average of 5-10. Now translate a 10-word sentence from anything that's of moderate difficulty. Congratulations. You've made 40 cents! Could be great if it just took you 30 seconds to do it. Keep it up, and you could make $48 an hour, not bad! Of course, especially if you're starting out, there's probably going to be at least one word or sentence structure you've not come across, costing you 5-30 minutes while you try to figure out what it means. That's $2-$24. Oh, and you have to finish your project on time of course. Which for anyone who doesn't like deadlines, is a pain in the arse.
By the way...
8. Its boring.
Translating movies is fun! Translating comic books, or your favorite author could be amazing! How could translation be boring? It could be boring because people don't frequently get to translate those things. More often, its help manuals, websites, advertisements, company correspondence, and newspapers or news. No, unless you love reading those things normally, you probably won't like translating those.
Of course...
9. It could make you hate the things you love.
Remember all those things you love I mentioned that you don't often get to translate? Well, even when you do, it could be... well, trouble. Actually, considering all those "hard" reasons, translating something you really love, like Terry Pratchett, or the latest Star Wars Expanded Universe novel (in whatever language you're translating it to,) could be downright frustrating and painful. With Star Wars, you'll have to both make short versions of all the new words, and especially if you don't combine existing words in that language to make a word that is different from the normal word but can be understood what it is, you'll probably have to include a glossary, or footnotes, explaining what everything is supposed to be, or giving real world equivalents. Well, probably not for "lightsaber" and things like that. And for Terry Pratchett, remember all those jokes and puns you love so much? And all the cultural references? Well, you'll have to do the same thing for that. Think of how hard it is to explain a joke to a native English speaker who doesn't get it. Think of how its not as funny after you've explained it. Now think of doing that... ok, who has honestly counted all the individual jokes and cultural references and puns in a Terry Pratchett novel? Suffice it to say, you're going to be frustrated and bored and probably hating the very thing you've loved right up until you've finished it, at which point you'll feel a heavy feeling in your bank account, a sense of satisfaction having completed it, and a great deal of pride, knowing that now you'll be famous for having translated what will soon be a big hit in whatever country you've translated it for!
Unfortunately...
10. Translation is often a thankless job.
Tell me. Do you remember who translated Final Fantasy 10 to English? Or your favorite anime or manga? Or maybe who translated The Matrix or Harry Potter into Japanese? You probably don't. And if you tried to be cheeky by cheating a bit, especially on the Japanese ones by researching, it probably took you a long time to find out, didn't it? That's because often all people care about is who wrote it, or who was in it, or who the characters were, or what company it came from, or simply only the story. In fact, translators are often listed somewhere between the sound effects crew and the minor computer animators. If not the propsmaster. When's the last time you even cared who the propsmaster was, or bothered to stick around and look? In fact, pretty much the only time you'll have your name in even small letters on the cover of something, you'll either have to be pretty famous, or working on a small-time project.
Of course, on top of it all...
11. Its hard to get work.
Consider if you're a freelance translator. You'll have to do all the project searching yourself pretty much, because you aren't well known, so no person or company is going to be looking for you personally, or barely even generally. Of course, for a price, the internet makes this easier for you (despite there being a bunch of places that could easily be scams.) Remember that lowest bidder bit I mentioned earlier though? Well, that's mainly because the internet makes it easier for a lot of other people too. So not only do you have a hard time finding work, you have competition. You've also got tests usually. Since the companies turning to such search sites still need the lowest bidder to finish the job they accept, they'll often test your speed and accuracy with a sample. If you aren't up to snuff, or if someone who bid lower did better, you probably won't get it. Now lets say you were to try for a company. Well, if its a company that needs an on-staff translator, they'll be pretty strict in who they hire usually. And your average translation company doesn't have a nunger section for customers who want a budget job. So they'll also have tests. Given by translators. To people who also want to be translators. Or are translators. And to top it off, with companies like this, often its not what you know, or what qualifications you have, but who you know. Much like it is in other industries.
So there you have it. Although, on the other side of the coin, Translation is simply work. Its something you have to do, and often can come with good enough pay. And after all, the same can be said about other "cool" jobs, like anything in the music industry, acting, pyrotechnics, and pro-sports.
So you can speak two languages fairly fluently, and have decided that its about time you got paid to do that. After all, its great pay! And you can meet exciting people and travel to exotic places! Unfortunately, unless you've actually been doing research in the matter, there are a couple of things about translation you don't know. For starters...
1. Its hard.
I don't just mean for the normal person who, when he looks at a phrase in Spanish or German and is asked what it means, responds with "Well, I know tacos and bratwurst...", I mean for everyone. This is because of a lot of things, but the biggest thing would have to be that it is in fact, supposed to be hard. That's why people are paying you a lot to do it. If you can actually speak another language fluently, nine for ten, its because you can think in that language. That being said, now try having a conversation in that language, then having to stop after pretty much every sentence so that you can say exactly what was just said in another language to another person. Not as easy, eh? Well, it gets more frustrating when you consider...
2. Not every language uses the same grammar structure.
You note how I mentioned having to stop after every sentence to translate? Well, some of you out there may be thinking, "Why not make it faster or easier and start translating while they're still speaking?" Well, apart from the fact that you still have to listen to see the rest of what they're saying, you also have to guess a little with some languages. For example, with Japanese, most of the indicators of a subordinate clause, something that people in English normally put at the front of said clause, are at the end of the clause. Meaning you have to wait until the end of that clause to know which one to use, much less where in the sentence it should go. It gets even more interesting when you consider that all verbs also go at the ends of clauses and sentences, along with what indicates its tense and whether or not its negative. Thus, the whole "wait until the end" bit. In fact, it can get even more confusing when the grammar structure itself can use completely different or new parts of speech, thus meaning that a lot of words may actually have different uses in different languages. Using the example of snow, and Japanese, consider how snow is both a noun and a verb. In Japanese, its not. So while you can safely say, "Its snowing" in English, what you MUST say in Japanese is "Snow is falling." But, that can be even more compounded by...
3. Not every language uses the same words.
I know what you're thinking... "Duh! that's why they're different languages!" Its a little more complicated than that. Every language is modified both contextually and culturally throughout the centuries to make words for things that people talk about regularly. Different languages have different areas, and of course different cultures. Thus different things that words are made for and different things that there are more words for. Remember that snow example? Well, think of all the different kinds of snow you can in English. Slush, sleet, snow, powder, and even the ones made from mixing words, like crusty snow, corn snow, wet snow, whathaveyou. Now consider that the Inuit language has at least 17 different words for different kinds of snow, meaning they have more words for snow that we have accepted concepts of and differentiations for in English, or that even your not-so-average English speaker can think of! I know what you're thinking though. "If I come across a word I don't know, I'll just look it up, and a rough explanation in my language will help me," right? Well...
4. Not every word in a language is in a dictionary.
Consider your Oxford English Dictionary, or Webster's American English Dictionary. Consider how many words it has in it. I believe the most accurate count is "one metric shit-ton." Now consider that that doesn't actually include all the words used in American or Queen's English, much less all English. While they pride themselves on being the most complete dictionaries, that's not hard considering that most dictionaries leave out technical words, such as ones used in medicine, architecture, computers, etc. And not even Webby or Oxy are complete in these fields. In fact, there are a lot of fields not even covered in those two, such as pretty much any kind of dialect-specific words, or slang. Now consider that your average, "comprehensive" one language to another dictionary trims down almost all but the most used words, especially if its a two-way dictionary. Some may be saying, "Well, I just have to keep looking, maybe in more specific dictionaries! I'm sure a word for what I want to say will be somewhere!" Well...
5. Not always. (By which I mean,not every word can translate, or even exists in other languages.)
You remember snow? That white stuff that falls from the sky? That we were just talking about? Yeah, well, that word doesn't even exist in a lot of languages, especially several native sub-Saharan languages. Why? They don't see it, they don't need it. Well, it gets worse than that. In a lot of Asiatic languages, where all you really need to do sometimes to make up a new word is mix characters that roughly mean what that word means, and give it a new reading to hopefully not make it confusable with other words (good luck!), there are a lot of single words that don't actually exist in a lot of European languages. For example, something I've recently come across, there is an adjective in Japanese that roughly translated means that "(something or someone) is capable of or will improve your English ability." And yes, that is the shortest translation I've found everywhere that actually means what the word means (shorter ones were simply "improve" or something similar, which is far from accurate, or even helpful.) Another example is the common English word "schadenfreude." Which isn't actually English. Its German. We stole it from German. Because we were too lazy to think of a word for "taking pleasure in someone else's pain."
"Oh, at least there are loanwords. Something that I can recognize and easily understand. That'll make it easier."
6. It won't, because not all loanwords mean what you think they mean.
Here's an easy example. "Pan." Its a Japanese loanword. Pretty recognizable. You know exactly what it means! Well, if you were thinking "Bread," you were right! If not, then you've actually not studied Japanese for a long enough time. This is a fairly common word, so most people who do study Japanese know exactly what it means. Well, what about a slightly less common loanword? "Dekotora." Yeah, its borrowed from English. ekhatch.files.wordpress.com/2009/01/dekotora-006.jpg Its one of these. Its short for "Decorated Truck." Once again, a word we don't actually have in English, or a concept of without a picture.
Well, that's all the reasons that its hard. Or is it?
7. You're often paid by the page, or by the word. With a deadline.
Ok, this could be a reason its hard, or a reason the pay isn't good. But in all honesty, its both. Often, in order to make the same amount of money in jobs other people can't do, or jobs you'd rather not do, you've got to work pretty flat out. Especially if you're free-lance, trying to make a name for yourself and competing for the lowest bidder. Say you offer 4 cents a word to beat the average of 5-10. Now translate a 10-word sentence from anything that's of moderate difficulty. Congratulations. You've made 40 cents! Could be great if it just took you 30 seconds to do it. Keep it up, and you could make $48 an hour, not bad! Of course, especially if you're starting out, there's probably going to be at least one word or sentence structure you've not come across, costing you 5-30 minutes while you try to figure out what it means. That's $2-$24. Oh, and you have to finish your project on time of course. Which for anyone who doesn't like deadlines, is a pain in the arse.
By the way...
8. Its boring.
Translating movies is fun! Translating comic books, or your favorite author could be amazing! How could translation be boring? It could be boring because people don't frequently get to translate those things. More often, its help manuals, websites, advertisements, company correspondence, and newspapers or news. No, unless you love reading those things normally, you probably won't like translating those.
Of course...
9. It could make you hate the things you love.
Remember all those things you love I mentioned that you don't often get to translate? Well, even when you do, it could be... well, trouble. Actually, considering all those "hard" reasons, translating something you really love, like Terry Pratchett, or the latest Star Wars Expanded Universe novel (in whatever language you're translating it to,) could be downright frustrating and painful. With Star Wars, you'll have to both make short versions of all the new words, and especially if you don't combine existing words in that language to make a word that is different from the normal word but can be understood what it is, you'll probably have to include a glossary, or footnotes, explaining what everything is supposed to be, or giving real world equivalents. Well, probably not for "lightsaber" and things like that. And for Terry Pratchett, remember all those jokes and puns you love so much? And all the cultural references? Well, you'll have to do the same thing for that. Think of how hard it is to explain a joke to a native English speaker who doesn't get it. Think of how its not as funny after you've explained it. Now think of doing that... ok, who has honestly counted all the individual jokes and cultural references and puns in a Terry Pratchett novel? Suffice it to say, you're going to be frustrated and bored and probably hating the very thing you've loved right up until you've finished it, at which point you'll feel a heavy feeling in your bank account, a sense of satisfaction having completed it, and a great deal of pride, knowing that now you'll be famous for having translated what will soon be a big hit in whatever country you've translated it for!
Unfortunately...
10. Translation is often a thankless job.
Tell me. Do you remember who translated Final Fantasy 10 to English? Or your favorite anime or manga? Or maybe who translated The Matrix or Harry Potter into Japanese? You probably don't. And if you tried to be cheeky by cheating a bit, especially on the Japanese ones by researching, it probably took you a long time to find out, didn't it? That's because often all people care about is who wrote it, or who was in it, or who the characters were, or what company it came from, or simply only the story. In fact, translators are often listed somewhere between the sound effects crew and the minor computer animators. If not the propsmaster. When's the last time you even cared who the propsmaster was, or bothered to stick around and look? In fact, pretty much the only time you'll have your name in even small letters on the cover of something, you'll either have to be pretty famous, or working on a small-time project.
Of course, on top of it all...
11. Its hard to get work.
Consider if you're a freelance translator. You'll have to do all the project searching yourself pretty much, because you aren't well known, so no person or company is going to be looking for you personally, or barely even generally. Of course, for a price, the internet makes this easier for you (despite there being a bunch of places that could easily be scams.) Remember that lowest bidder bit I mentioned earlier though? Well, that's mainly because the internet makes it easier for a lot of other people too. So not only do you have a hard time finding work, you have competition. You've also got tests usually. Since the companies turning to such search sites still need the lowest bidder to finish the job they accept, they'll often test your speed and accuracy with a sample. If you aren't up to snuff, or if someone who bid lower did better, you probably won't get it. Now lets say you were to try for a company. Well, if its a company that needs an on-staff translator, they'll be pretty strict in who they hire usually. And your average translation company doesn't have a nunger section for customers who want a budget job. So they'll also have tests. Given by translators. To people who also want to be translators. Or are translators. And to top it off, with companies like this, often its not what you know, or what qualifications you have, but who you know. Much like it is in other industries.
So there you have it. Although, on the other side of the coin, Translation is simply work. Its something you have to do, and often can come with good enough pay. And after all, the same can be said about other "cool" jobs, like anything in the music industry, acting, pyrotechnics, and pro-sports.