The translation activities you carry out as a language student are a far cry from those carried out as a translation student. The objective of the former is to improve your language skills, the latter to refine your translation skills to a professionally acceptable level. When you join a translation degree at postgraduate level, for example, it is usually assumed that your language skills are already up to the job, or at the very least, that you have the ability to get them there – and keep them there – yourself.
The question of whether initial training for professional translators should take place at undergraduate or postgraduate level is an interesting one, with practice often informed by the realities of a country’s education system. But one advantage of a clear distinction between programmes for language learning learning and initial translator training is that it helps to re-enforce the difference between studying to learn a language and studying to become a professional translator.
In other words, translation competence is distinct from language competence. Researchers at Zürcher Hochschule für Angewandte Wissenschaften, Zurich’s University of Applied Sciences, describe it well below:
The translation process (and thus the training of future translators) is not only based upon the bilingual competence of the translator but also on his/her capacity to analyze the relations between the source text (ST) and target text (TT) in order to produce a translation which, on the one hand, is as close to the ST as possible and, on the other, meets all necessary linguistic and cultural conventions of the target-language community. Additionally, the translator must possess specialized knowledge concerning the subject or field covered by the ST itself (e.g. law, computational science, biology etc.).
Extract from: Susanne J. Jekat & Gary Massey. The Puzzle of Translation Skills. Towards an Integration of E-Learning and Special Concepts of Computational Linguistics into the Training of Future Translators. Linguistik online 17, 5/03. Accessed 6 July 2010.
If all language learners and teachers were to understand this difference, I’m sure it would go a long way towards raising the status of the profession. It would also ensure that students considering translation degrees would have a more realistic picture of the kind of activity they are likely to undertake, both as part of their degree and afterwards.
Nice debate !
My opinion on this matter is that science alone will not make a good translator and that is the matter for practice ! a combination between them both is a need.
I also believe that there should be a balance between both theory and practice in order to have a good translator .
Furthermore, I share the opinion with those who see practice a very important aspect in having a good translator .
By the way ,I am studying instant translation and find it such a challenge and fun to deal with all those scripts to translate !
I think that translators are lucky because they can keep their minds active and energetic all the times! Lucky them !
Thank u
These are just my personal opinons, having experienced how much the translators with just language competence suffer in translating. It is evidence that a good translator is the one with experience, among other qualities. It is true also that people have been translation for centuries now, and at that time there were no training. But what is out of doubt is that, so as to survive in the actual translation industry you need both experience and training, university degree for general knowledge and vocational or short courses for experience.
Of course, we can cheat ourselves by beleiving that “anyone with linguistics know-how” can translate. Of course there are many who do, but those with formal training (a title first and a specialization later) get a bit large peace of a cake.
Thanks for weighing in, Hamis.
Thanks for the great discussion everyone.
From the perspective of an LSP, more and more of our clientèle are looking to work with translators who have specific translation qualifications/certifications. I do agree that translators need experience, and they most certainly need training, but I was curious as to what you think about the necessity of formal translation certifications VS years of experience in producing quality output.
Good question. Thanks for weighing in.
Personally I don’t believe formal qualifications are a necessity. Good training is good training, regardless of whether that happens through formal education, vocational training or an on-the-job apprenticeship, in my opinion.
Translation degrees in themselves clearly vary widely in what they cover. Certainly my Masters in translation has stood me in very good stead and was an excellent start to my career. I consider myself very lucky, because unlike Rachel Zayer above, and many other translators I’ve spoken to, my degree focussed far more on practice than on theory (although the theory option was there for those who wanted it.) I learned more than I could ever write up in a blog post so for me, this particular route was ideal. Then again, I spent a lot of time researching my degree before I signed up – I knew exactly what I wanted, so when I got that and much more, I was a very happy customer.
But translation qualifications really do represent just an initial stage of training. The real work and refinement comes from on-the-job experience and continuous professional development, in my opinion.
Saying all that, this article from Time magazine does a good job of arguing why experience is no guarantee of expertise. What does matter apparently is deliberate practice (as opposed to routine practice), avoiding overconfidence, and regular accurate feedback.
From the perspective of an LSP, I’m guessing you can tell a mile away who suffers from this second characteristic, and you can certainly contribute to the third one, so all in all, you’re in a good position 🙂
The short answer is, neither a formal qualification nor experience on its own is any guarantee of quality output in my opinion. (I could have put that up top, but that would have been far too easy). How does this fit with your experience as an LSP?
Hahah. I think you’ve hit the nail on the head.
I’m not in charge of resourcing here, but I do handle our RFP and proposal process, so I’m the one that has to explain our inter processes/practices/metrics to everyone else. Basically, as an organization we don’t put too much emphasis on certification, but rather on measurable forms of experience. (My degree was actually in Japanese translation, for the record, but it mainly focused on the theory behind ‘literary’ translation — not nearly as technical as your education sounds.)
That is, how many years has the translator been translating? What kind of subject-matter expertise does he/she have? Who are some of the people with whom this translator has worked, and will they vouch for the quality of his/her translations? From there, for new translators (or translators who are new to us, rather), we’ll put them on some real, but non-critical projects and use a variety of our internal metrics to measure as best we can the ‘accuracy’ of the translation from several different perspectives. If the translator continues to perform well on these types of projects, and is responsive, and is polite, dependable, punctual, etc., then we’ll consider working with them on a long-term basis.
Beyond that, I think useful training would be more tool- and technology-related, because from both the client and LSP’s perspective technical prowess in language tools has a notable effect on translators’ productivity and, naturally, the ‘leveragability’ of their work.
As for the second characteristic that you mentioned above… hahah. I’m just glad that I’m not a project manager. I don’t envy them their jobs, but ours always seem civil enough to not warrant any enterprise-wide death threats. Something that I would probably fail at.
I wouldn’t be surprised if language pairs, i.e. ST-TT language combinations, can make a big difference. Being a Russian, and mostly working in the EN-RU pair all my life, I noticed a few interesting things. Only well educated people with VERY good command of their own language, Russian in our case, can deliver acceptable translations.
If you didn’t study translation techniques, and don’t know even the basic tricks (for example, the word order in the target Russian sentence most often will be the opposite to the English source text sentence), you have to be an extremely talented writer of Russian, with a subtle feel of the language to produce translations that will look and sound natural to Russian readers.
Translating a single sentence, which contains some popular translation gotchas, from English to Russian will reveal how professional a translator really is. You’d be amazed how many people failed such a test miserably. Ironically, on the famous translators portals, they all are proudly listed as successful pros with 15+ years of experience.
🙁
My definition of an EN-RU professional translator/editor:
– translates only into his/her native language, which he/she knows better than 95% of his countrymen,
– translates only the subject matter of his/her second (non-linguist) degree, or equivalent experience, and
– yes, he/she studied translation for at least two years from good instructors.
Truthfully, how many such people are there? I think the main reason why many bilinguals today consider themselves professional translators is transformation of translation into a commodity, and lowering of quality requirements by most customers. At least here, in the USA, where I am working.
Exactly!! I’m living proof. I know both Eng and Ru fluently (not exaggerating either) , yet I prefer leaving it up to the pros to translate, b/c it’s a learned skill that takes years of practice to polish. Most often it’s just assumed that knowing the lang. and being able to translate to and fro are interchangeable… they are not! It’s hard work that only those qualified should really be getting the credit for 🙂
I think there will never be only one point of view… And I think it should be considered in a positive way since we can always learn something from each other. Those who believe translation studies are important will teach us what we need to study and which aspects of the language we should focus on; those who believe you don’t need a specific education to become a translator will teach us what dedication and passion can add to a profession and how many different approches there can be.
I personally think that, as usually, the truth is in the middle; both things can be true… Good studies can help you in finding out an inclination while a passion can become a profession if supported by specialistic education.
“I think there will never be only one point of view… And I think it should be considered in a positive way since we can always learn something from each other….”
Good point, and I agree with you 100% on this. It interests me when people see only one side or the other of this debate (and indeed, many others), and refuse to acknowledge any merit in the alternative view. It’s pretty shortsighted, and speaks volumes about the attitude of that individual, don’t you think?
Clearly, there are many different routes to becoming a good translator. Who cares which route you take, once you don’t diss others along the way.
As a translator with a translation qualification and the benefit of many years’ experience, I will quite gladly say that with hindsight I found the qualification useful – MSc, looks good to employers – but the course content actually quite pointless in terms of becoming a sound translator – far too much theory, not nearly enough practice.
Despite the MSc and my good degree in languages from a good university, starting out, I felt throw in at the deep end and disheartened to get work proofread in-house returned covered in red.
It was only through experience and practice that I was able to develop the confidence and translation techniques which I believe make me the highly-rated translator I am today, and which I believe far outweigh any studies of translation theory, and in part any initial language competence.
Being an effective translator is a combination of a number of different elements: language competence, cultural competence, confidence in your translation abilities and to think round and go away from the source text where necessary, attention to detail, client relations and the acquisition of certain techniques that can only come through practice.
That said, I also know from experience that the practice is hard to come by when you start out, even with a specific qualification in translation, and I always feel for those starting out with a genuine passion for languages and genuine desire to become a quality translator.
Surely the ‘bottom line’ is that translators with qualifications in translation will always insist that translators need qualifications in order to be effective and those without will insist that qualifications are not important and just get on with the job. I am living proof that you do not NEED specific translation qualifications to be a successful, highly rated translator with a great income. I take great care with all of the assignments I complete and my clients appreciate this. This, coupled with a commercial attitude drawn from the commercial sector in which I worked before learning my second language, means that I am able to deliver an appropriate translation whilst keeping my client’s specific needs in mind.
By all means, take translation qualifications if you want to but please don’t be fooled into thinking that the only translators worth their salt have a nice, shiny certificate hanging on their wall!
Interestingly, a study carried out by a French trade union for translators this year states that almost 40% of the 1000 translators who responded don’t have any kind of degree in translation/interpretation, and that having followed a course in translation/interpretation does not guarantee higher prices. Even more : on average, translators who don’t have such a degree have a turnover that is 16% superior to the others.
Here’s the original post I wrote with a link to the study http://tinyurl.com/35mutk5 – it makes you wonder whether this kind of theoretical knowledge on translation in even a plus…
“You seem frustrated by the translators you encounter”. Not quite. I had in mind the ones who write earnest books and articles (some of them passing as academic) about how translators are under-rated, underpaid, under appreciated and so on and chippily on. They’re long on how hard it is to be a translator and short on what precisely a translator needs to know that a bilingual person doesn’t already know. For instance: what precisely would you teach translation students that you wouldn’t teach language students? (“Specialist vocabulary” doesn’t count: if knowing languages A and B doesn’t make you a translator, then knowing specialist language A and specialist language B also does not.) I’ve read up on this and found surprisingly little in the way of concrete exercises (with the exception of interpreting training).
The real life translators that I know, of course, don’t bother their heads with all that nonsense. They just get on with the job, whether they have the “capacity to analyze the relations between the source text (ST) and target text (TT)” (read: paid for and took a course in Zürcher Hochschule für Angewandte Wissenschaften) or whether they just happen to know two languages.
@Desiree Good luck with your translation training.
@Henry Grodsk That’s funny. But actually, I know plenty of translators who say that, ones with and without translation qualifications. You seem frustrated by the translators you encounter. Maybe you could try to widen your circle to include those with a broader range of viewpoints? It’s not hard once you start looking. Just a suggestion – it’s an approach that’s worked well for me, and I enjoy interacting with a more diverse cross-section of people and perspectives as a result.
Anyhow, of course the point of my post was not to say that you need translation training to be capable of translating. Again, I’m fortunate enough to know many excellent translators who have not had formal education in translation.
My post is an attempt at making a distinction between just two of the kinds of translation we can encounter as linguists. It interests me that the act of translation can seem the same on the surface but follow a very different process, or result in a very different product, depending on the purpose of that act… This is not very groundbreaking stuff in the field of translation, but it’s a perspective that I believe many language learners – and indeed aspiring professional translators – are not aware of.
What translator is ever going to say “sure, any literate person who knows two languages can translate from at least one of them to the other”? No one. And yet, the number of them willing to state the bleedin’ obvious opposite is countless.
Great article. The issue of when and how to begin training for translation and when language training is sufficient enought is certainly interesting. I’m going into a post-graduate translation program now, but it has been frustrating to find translation training almost entirely unavailable at the undergraduate level. Then again, it seems so many translators today started their career on a different path and were trained in unconventional ways. We’ll see what the future brings.
Unfortunately, there are too many people who think that they can become translators just because they know another language…
I’ll second that! I know two languages fluently, however , I never meant to become a translator and therefore have no practice (training). People that know me simply assume that the terms are synonymous and put me in the position of translating things for them…. and frankly it’s not as easy as one might think!
Kudos to the pros 🙂
Training is a must for translators.