Translator Career
Translator Career
The Real Poop
SNAPSHOT:
¿De dónde es Lupe?
Lupe es de México.
¿Y cuántos años tiene?
Ella tiene dieciseis años.
There you are, dozing through Spanish 2 class, dreaming of your future as a translator for the UN.
You see yourself traveling around the world with foreign diplomats and peace leaders, wearing those sleek headsets that make you look totally official (and definitely not like a telemarketer). Maybe you'll even be interpreting for the President of the United States one day.
Well, wake up. You'd better be really good at Spanish. And if you want to work for the UN, Spanish isn't even your best bet, unless it's your mother tongue and you're translating from something like Russian to Spanish.
You'd be a lot better off learning French, Chinese, or Arabic. Master all of these (including Russian and Spanish) and you'll be a pretty tough candidate to pass up. To get hired as a UN interpreter, you need to be fluent in at least two of the UN's six official languages, in addition to French or English.
UN interpreters sit in a soundproof isolation booth, listen to big speeches by important political honchos, and translate them into their mother tongue for the sake of dignitaries and ambassadors. Simultaneously. That means listening, translating, and speaking. All at once.
You know how hard it is to follow movie dialogue while you have to explain everything a second time to your Mom because she dozed off? This is even worse. It's no easy task.
But alas, it's an important task. And since it's so difficult, it pays big bucks. Like $210,000 a year big. UN interpreters are treated like royalty, mainly because their job is so hard to do well.
And whenever there's a lull in exciting brain-bending speech translation, you can always translate text for them. If there's one thing government officials have plenty of, it's paper.
But be forewarned: you have a better chance at getting into Harvard than you do at scoring one of these primo UN jobs. Only the true crème de la crème is accepted. Out of 18,000 Chinese-speaking applicants, only 10 actually ended up wearing the "golden headset."
The fate of nations lies within the words that come out of your mouth. Screw up and you could be sending countries into war over inflammatory proclamations that were nothing more than a harmless pun or a good joke.
For those of us who can't handle that sort of pressure but did really well in French or Spanish 3 (and have a knack for capturing the essence of a foreign tongue), don't fret—there's plenty of work to be had as an interpreter or translator outside the UN.
Big businesses all over the world need great interpreters and translators on staff. They rest their livelihoods on their ability to be competitive in a global marketplace and need folks like you to translate the deals for them. They also need someone to tell them where the bathroom is.
Hospitals and other health-related organizations also need lots of medical interpreters to translate the doctor's orders into a patient's first language—and vice versa.
The judicial system has a great need to hire translators who talk the talk and walk the walk as well. You should be able to pass your state's court translator exam, though you can actually skip the test and just register (you just won't be able to complete as many jobs if you haven't passed the test).
On top of all of that, there are plenty of books and texts that need to be translated into different languages, too. Of course, you'll have to contend with discerning the fifty different ways to say hello in Swahili, but at least it's a steady-paying gig. If you're a comparative lit major who happens to be fluent in other languages, this would be especially up your alley. Publishing companies may hire you to translate anything from classics to the latest Cantonese best-seller. You might even find yourself sitting contentedly in your living room, reading and translating the latest John Grisham novel into Japanese, German, or Italian.
And someone's gotta translate the latest Nicolas Cage film into Chinese—we heard he's got a pretty sizeable fan-base over there.