6 Easy And Effective Tips For Translation Students

Tips For Translation Students – How to Get the Best Out Of Your Translation Course

If you decided to read this article, you’ve probably just started a new translation course. It can seem daunting when you’re in the middle of it all: classes, exams, pressure… But worry not! With these tips for translation students you can get the best out of your course too.

I remember when I started my Master’s in translation. The first months I was struggling with English not being my native language, plus with all the translation-specific terms such as Localisation, Source-Text and Target-Text, Source-Oriented and Target Oriented, Source-Language and Target-Language and so on. Even worse, sometimes books refer to these concepts with the simple acronyms, ST and TT (Source Text and Target Text), SO text or TO (Source Oriented text or Target Oriented text), SL or TL (Source Language or Target Language).

It took me a while to understand and feel comfortable with all these terms. So today I’m writing this post to help newcomers who struggle as I struggled at the beginning.

Today I share my tips for translation students to help you get started with the right foot.

6 Tips For Translation Students

1. 1 – Learn the relevant terminology. Have a look at my “Essential Glossary Of Translation” and download the PDF file if you need it. It will save you some time, I guarantee it.

2. 2 – Get familiar with the most used translation techniques. If you haven’t started already, you will soon start learning some translation techniques. I listed a few on this blog, so you can have a look at them:

Translation Techniques 1: Loan Word, Verbalization, Nominalisation
Translation Techniques 2: Chunking Up, Chunking Down And Lateral Chunking
Translation Techniques 3: Techniques For English-Italian Translation
Translation Techniques 4: How to Translate Idioms

3. 3 – Start thinking about your specialisation. Whether you are studying an undergraduate course or a postgrad, you will have to think very soon about whether to specialise or not, and in which field. This is a controversial subject, since many translators suggest you should be, at least at the beginning, a generic translator. I disagree, and I suggest you think quite early about which field to specialise in. You can find some pros and cons of specialisation in these articles. You’ll also find some techniques to choose your specialisation and interviews with translators specialising in different fields such as technical, legal and marketing:

> Do You Really Need To Specialise To Succeed?
> How To Choose Your Specialisation
> Technical Translation (interview with Alessandro Stazi)
> Legal Translation (interview with Tim Windhof)
> Marketing, PR and Corporate Translation
> Anthropological Translation (Interview with Lineimar Martin)
> Interpreting (Interview with Lourdes de Rioja). This is the other big thing you need to decide about: do you want to be a translator, an interpreter or both?

4. 4 – Get some work experience as soon as possible. I suggest you to start gaining experience quite early. This might seem a chicken and egg problem, but all the employers will ask you for experience and none of them will give you the chance to get it, unless you agree to do unpaid work for months. This is not what I wish for you. So my suggestion is to start very quickly to get some experience in other ways. Some ideas are:

• > Offer to translate stuff for free for your friends
• > Translate TED videos (ok, this is subtitling, but you’ll still need to translate it first, so you’ll have the chance to get some experience)
• > Translate for organisations such as Global Voices, or Kiva.org which accept volunteers (read the article about becoming a volunteer translator for Global Voices here or this other article about translating for an NGO)
• > Ask your university to give you some work. When I was a student for example I translated a leaflet for one of my university departments.
• > Improve your writing skills. Learn how to improve your writing so that when you translate you’ll be able to produce better written texts.

5 – Start thinking if you want to become a freelancer or work as an employee. Working as a freelancer is a long and difficult path, and you’ll have to get out of your comfort zone more than once, learn a lot of new skills and be very proactive. But if you do it right, it’s a lot of fun. Start taking some courses, reading articles and books about freelancing:

1. > The online School For Freelance Translator, a school I created to help you get started
2. > The Entrepreneurial Linguist
3. > Interview with Irene Cudich – Argentinian freelance interpreter and translator
4. > Interview with Laura Spencer – Social media and self marketing expert
5. > Interview with Konstantina Drakou – Greek freelance translator
6. > Interview with Catherine Christaki – How to found your own Translation Agency
7. > How To Earn More As A Freelance Translator
8. > Work With Direct Clients or Translation Companies?

6 – Learn how to write a great CV. If you do not want to work as a freelancer, you have to learn how to write a translator CV, and what a project manager is looking for when recruiting a translator for a short collaboration or an in-house position. Take 10 minutes to listen to the interview to Alejandra Villanueva, a project manager who gives some tips about how to write an appealing CV.

The last tip I feel like sharing is to be a self-learner. University will teach you something, but you can learn much faster if in the meantime you read translation blogs, translators associations websites, if you talk with other professionals, take part in webinars, debates and discussion on LinkedIn and so on. Being a proactive self-learner is an attitude that can change your life, and make the adventure much more exciting.