Working as a translator can be an attractive profession

It’s work, but it doesn’t feel like work because it’s something I really love doing,” says 34-year-old Pritha Bhatnagar, who has been working as a translator since 2006

The Demand
“Businesses between cultures is growing and so is the demand for translators and interpreters,” Pritha tells us. Neha Mohan, who gave up her job in the banking sector to take up French, seconds this, “The need for translators is growing with globalisation. Given the increasing number of countries that are collaborating, the requirement is quite large”. The demand for a particular language over another depends on businesses and the language combinations. While, according to Sandesh Raju who has been in the industry for 13 years, there is a vibrant market for French and German, other languages such as Japanese, Chinese, Korean, Spanish, Portuguese, Hungarian, Italian and Polish are in demand as well. “Certain languages have fewer translators than others, but if you’re excellent in one of them (Hungarian, Korean,
Japanese...), you could even charge ₹9 per word. Wondering what you would have to translate? The domains could include anything under the sun, such as IT, medical/pharmaceutical, engineering, legal, aerospace, aviation, tourism, NGOs and software.

Job Satisfaction
As with most careers, “If you don’t have a passion for it, it is not fulfi lling. You need to be passionate about translation as well as the languages you work with,” says Neha. 20 years in the industry is proof of how satisfying Sharmila Bhushan finds her career. The 44-year-old, who translates Spanish and Portuguese to English and vice versa in addition to interpreting Spanish-English-Spanish, tells us, “it gives me the flexibility to work out of home. As a translator I get to work on documents on a wide range of subjects, which I fi nd very interesting. As an interpreter I can travel, attend interesting and important conferences and constantly challenge myself. It is a well-paying career option if you are good at your work and at building a good portfolio of clients”. While it may be mentally exhausting, “you get a lot of satisfaction when you see that you have successfully translated a text completely,” adds Mark Pinto, a Portuguese translator, who hopes to work with refugees one day. But freelancers have “to be prepared to give up weekends, holidays may get ruined and you have to work all alone in your room very often,” says Neha

Time to Learn
Expertise in a language comes with the amount of effort you put in outside the class and varies from person to person. “If you just attend class and do your basic homework, it could take forever. You could
finish the entire course and you’ll still be at a basic level. You have to practice speaking, listening, reading and writing outside the class. It might take you around two years to start conversing without hesitation and fumbling. Doing the course does not mean you become an expert; fi nishing the translation course is the start of acquiring basic skills. Expertise comes through work experience,” says Neha, who spent half her day at Alliance Française and spent at least five hours daily improving her grasp of French at home. For Pritha, “I could actually understand complex conversations by the end of Diplome Supérieur. Translating a book from French to Hindi and translating an IT document will not be equally easy or take the same amount of time”. At the Masters level, students are also taught techniques to translate documents from different fields that they don’t know anything about.

Basic Pay
While the pay may vary depending on the situation, country, regions and content, many translators believe that people know little about what goes into translation. Neha tells us, “There’s a lot of analysis and research that goes into translating any document. Negotiations can be harrowing, but from a freelancer’s perspective, if you set your standard and know your quality, you can command a certain price. Multinational companies have dedicated translation departments, where you will get perks like in any other job”. According to Pritha, who works full-time as a translator at Capgemini, “If you’ve done a diploma course, graduation or masters, you can start with ₹4.5 lakh per year”. For freelancers, it depends on the number of words in the source text, your experience and skill; you could get paid anywhere between ₹1
per word to ₹5 per word, while conference interpreters get paid about ₹15,000 to ₹18,000 for eight hours of work.

Where to learn
French—Alliance Française, Jawaharlal Nehru University (JNU), English and Foreign Languages University (EFLU)
German—Max Mueller Bhavan
Italian—Indo Italian Chamber Of Commerce & Industry
Spanish—Instituto Cervantes. JNU
Portuguese—Don Bosco School, Panjim; St. Xavier’s College, Mapusa; University of Goa, University of Lisbon, Universidade de Coimbra in Portugal

Cost to learn
Of course it will vary across institutes, but it could cost around ₹6,000-₹8,000 per level.

Learning tips
—Read a lot, use audio guides, watch movies in the language you are learning, write...
—Ensure you are thorough and professional in terms of quality and delivery.
—Have a general idea of a broad range of subjects.
—Don't use Google translate. Do your own thinking and translate.
—The more you speak, the better you will get at it.
—Ensure your vocabulary—in the languages you’re translating from and to—is good
—Use online language partners like www.livemocha.com, www.buzuu.com, where people will help you with the language you are learning and you can help them with the language you are familiar with