I am born and raised in a bilingual country, Finland, and speaking the minority language, Swedish there. My education and upbringing was all in Swedish and I knew more about the Swedish culture, than I did the Finnish. Strange? Early on I loved reading and writing and soon developed a keen interest in languages and different cultures. Apart from my mother tongue, I studied English, Finnish, German, French and Italian in school. Did I ever think of becoming a translator? No! It never crossed my mind. I ventured on with studies in International Marketing, hoping I could make use of my language skills and love for different cultures through that.
After a while I started looking into possibilities of working from home and tried all sorts of multilevel marketing opportunities with no real success. One of my friends suggested that I should be a translator. One day I was playing around on the Internet and found some translator networks online. I studied them, did some research online, and decided to sign up. It wasn't long until I received my first job and after that I have never looked back.
I have now worked as a freelance translator for 7 years, educated myself on the way, and now have a successful freelance translation company. I learn something everyday and love what I do. I also love learning and would become certified and educated if there would be opportunities for English-Swedish translation education and certification in the US. At least I am working on starting English-Swedish certification through the American Translators Association.
But I am wondering about others. Many other translators that I know are highly educated, and come from successful careers in medicine, law etc. How did they decide to become a translator? Was it by chance, like me? There are educational programs in translation. Therefore, there must be many people that early on have made a conscious decision to study translation and become a translator. Whichever way you get there is a good way. Don't you just love what you do? Please share!
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I fell into it. I took German and Russian in college and couldn't find a job after I graduated. I lived at home and worked 2 menial jobs for a year, and Mom heard about the Master's program at Kent. I was trying to translate a brochure for my dad's company and brought it with me. The chair of the department talked with me and walked me to the office to sign me up. I graduated with my M.A. in German translation and moved to Germany for 6 years where I had an internship and worked as a freelance. I've never looked back.
ReplyDeleteThank you for sharing your story. Even though where I live in Germany many translators come through specific translation programs in higher education, I am glad that a degree is not required to practice this profession because I think many talented translators come to the profession in other ways, like you did. Of course, there are many people who still believe that just because a person has some training (formal or informal) in a language other than their first language they are somehow qualified to translate professionally. We have to keep educating our clients.
ReplyDeleteMy own story is similar, except that I grew up in the U.S. where I didn't have as many opportunities for studying a foreign language as you did in Finland. I wanted to study French in addition to German in high school, but wasn't allowed to because my schedule was filled with other required classes. I did take some Italian and Swedish at university along with more German, but now I am only qualified to translate from German to English. After I earned my Master's I taught for about ten years, then decided to retrain as a technical writer. Coincidentally, my professor heard of an opportunity for me to complete a practicum at a company in Germany and in addition to writing documentation I got my first taste of professional translating. It was very difficult at first; though my everyday German was pretty good, the technical terminology was very challenging at first. But after a few years I felt able to start my own business and I'll probably keep translating in some capacity until I retire (if that's ever possible...).
There wasn't a lot of career advice for becoming a translator back when I was in school and at university in the U.S. I think if I had happened upon the profession earlier I would have studied in a program so that I would be proficient in more languages. Now I feel like my time is better spent learning more specialty areas in German, however, though I'd really like to be able to converse in a few other European languages. I guess there's just not time to learn everything!
Thank you for sharing your experience, I find it very interesting.
ReplyDeleteI am only 28 and I studied translation at university so translation is all my life and all I have ever done! After traveling a lot (including one year as an Erasmus in Finland!) and having worked for different companies, I decided to settle down in Canada and work as a freelance translator.
Wow! Thanks for sharing your road to becoming a translator. Glad to see you can study Swedish somewhere in the US.
ReplyDeleteYou can study Swedish (and other Scandinavian languages) at the University of Wisconsin and (I think) at some colleges/universities in Minnesota. Lots of Scandinavian heritage there.
ReplyDeleteI am just starting a series of posts on my blog on a similar subject! (www.translationworks.co.uk)
ReplyDeleteIn brief, I studied German and French at university in the UK and Austria, dreamed of being a translator but then worked in lots of interesting jobs in the international arena until I realised time was racing by. So I took a postgraduate evening course in translation and had the good fortune to land an in-house translation job just as I finished the course. Worked there for 5 years and then went freelance. Just coming up for 11 years in the profession!
Awesome post, and a most interesting post. My story is quite similar to yours; we grew up internationally thanks to an ex-pat corporate exec dad, and loved the exposure to another culture and language (am Austrian by birth, grew up in Mexico City). We (business partner and twin sister Dagmar) and I always knew we wanted to do something with languages, and back in middle school we envisioned a cross-cultural consulting business, and we've now arrived at something very similar. Did a few detours, but started translating very seriously in college, where I edited a bilingual magazine. In order to gain permanent residency in the US, I had to abandon the languages plan for a bit, went to business school for marketing and finance, did a couple of detours into corporate America, and ended up where I wanted to end up: as a linguist. Twin Translations was started in 2002 in Vienna, Austria, and I still worked full-time as a translation department manager at a large website. Finally joined my twin full-time in our business and couldn't be happier. And middle school dreams do come true: we also advise companies how to market and target their products in different countries.
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