Molly, a Chinese-English free simultaneous interpreter/writer.
I graduated from English major and am now engaged in localization (multilingual service) industry. I also have nothing to do to translate some literary works to amuse myself. Let's do some analysis on personal understanding. Maybe the vision is not broad enough. Welcome to discuss it together.
First of all, I think human translation is irreplaceable, and translation machines can only do auxiliary translation. The content of many sentences should be inferred from the context, and the translator can never analyze the context completely and correctly. In addition, it is obvious that the translator can't fully understand the modification level of sentences, and the position of modifiers is often wrong (this Google is really a bit? Hey? ; What's the matter with you? Tanning? Peptide? What is this? Hey? Knock? I'm about to break the Turing test. Think again about the subject's question: Is there any prospect for translation? In fact, it is whether translation can meet the needs of life and spirit.
Analyze the types of translated materials: business (interpretation of contract documents and financial statements) translation? Translation of literature (novels, film and television works)? Or translate non-literary books (such as a professional work)? Business translation: Skill requirements: Generally speaking, translation is contract documents and financial statements, and basic English professionals can do it. You don't need too advanced technical knowledge. Look up the dictionary and ask customers for professional vocabulary. The entry threshold is relatively low. Because people can understand the contract documents as the first element, most of them are simple and understandable. Just understand the meaning and then express it. The key is not to make mistakes. Business negotiation interpretation is the main task, which is tiring, but the salary is high.
Market situation: Companies in various industries will have more and more international cooperation, so there will be many translations of contract terms every year, and there is a great demand for conference interpretation. Small companies often do this. Prospect analysis: If you are a translator, you may become a senior translator or manager after two or three years of primary translation (everyone is different). Intermediate and advanced translators have fewer translation errors, smoother expression, faster speed and, of course, higher salary.
At this time, the company will consider using middle and low-level translators to do front-line translation work, and senior translators to do audit and management work, because generally speaking, contract translation does not require too advanced experience. Later it became the management of auditors and translation teams. It is the habit of ordinary companies to become middle managers, and then their career planning will become the development of management or senior technicians. However, it seems that senior technicians in translation are not needed very much, so they will develop into management. In other words, after you become a translator, your ultimate development will be management. If you are an interpreter, you will do conference interpretation first. Then try to develop towards simultaneous interpretation. During this period, the accumulation of experience is very important and I gradually become a senior interpreter. Then you start to earn an hourly wage, which is very high. If the industry has a good reputation, it will be even more NB. Because simultaneous interpretation is very tired. About forty or fifty years old, there may be a state of exhaustion and mental backwardness, and you can switch to translation or management. Of course, at that time, social contacts may let you do other careers and teach? Company? Investment? A book? This depends on everyone.
Literary translation: Skill requirements: First of all, you need a certain re-creation ability (not out of nothing, but alchemy), that is, the ability to choose words and make sentences and transform the source language into a fluent and vivid target language. You should also have a rich knowledge of background culture, slang and verb phrases. This is actually a bit difficult (I always feel that school time is still wasted, and I hate TT when I use books). If you don't read much literature, then this direction may be a bit challenging for you. Market situation: Mo Yan won the prize, and the demand for Chinese-English translation will increase. China has a large population and a large market, so foreign countries will want to come in. However, it seems that most of China people's literary reading is devoted to cultivating immortals. There are really too few works translated abroad (I know there are ice and fire, etc. , but slightly smaller than a large number of novels). But on the other hand, it may be because there are no good translators and publishers to spread foreign good works. This is your chance.
Prospect analysis: One of the literary translations I have studied came from a magazine, such as the translation of the translated version of the science fiction world. Besides, it belongs to a publishing organization. There are full-time and part-time jobs. I don't know much about the composition of full-time salary. Part-time job is to translate the sample chapter, and if the magazine/publishing house adopts it, it will pay the corresponding remuneration. From the perspective of science fiction, a magazine is a one-time deal, and every article counts as money. But there is not much money. From the perspective of translation and douban channels, publishing institutions pay new manuscript fees plus sales dividends. You can send it if the sales volume is good. If it is a best seller, your reputation will soar. But if you want to know before you become famous, are you strong enough? How many jobs can you do? Can you support yourself? Translation of non-literary books;
Skills requirements: solid basic skills, fluent expression and strong self-learning ability, bypassing the market situation by analogy: there are too many professional fields to analyze one by one. At present, many people don't realize that English is a short board until they reach a certain stage in their professional field, so they need to improve their English level and open new doors to acquire knowledge. If this kind of books can be sold with a long tail, it will be very promising.
Prospect analysis: English majors and related majors have done it. There are two ways for publishing houses to turn over books: translating by themselves or finding someone with good English in this field and adding a translator to publish books. If you are good at a certain field, you will still be rich and recognized by society. At least most people in this professional field want to know something new because of you (of course, some people teach themselves English because they are afraid of the time lag in acquiring knowledge). But in fact, the real example I know is this: someone is an English translator and then works as a translator in a certain professional field. Later, because he translated too many books, he became an expert in this field from a layman and later became a leader in this field. Summary: If you are engaged in commercial translation, you will basically have a stable income and become a management. As for income, it depends on the level of the company's sales staff. If you are engaged in literary translation, you will be pitted in the early stage. If you become an interpreter or get on the clipper, you will surely succeed. However, this direction is the same as a writer. Maybe you won't be famous until you die. If you are engaged in non-literary translation, there are several ways-management, field name translation, cross-field name translation and career change. Personal views are for reference only, and colleagues are welcome to add them.
Yang Guo in translation field;
The translation industry will definitely be polarized in the future. High-level translation will get better and better, and the price will continue to rise. Low-level translation will gradually become leeks and be harvested by the market. Therefore, if you don't have great perseverance, don't consider doing translation. The recent rise of various translation training also proves the difficulty of this industry-I won't tell you, many people do training because they think training is more profitable than translation. And their translation level is often not so good.
Soul singer Altman:
1, income is not high if any industry does not study at the top. Because: there is no shortage of people in China.
2. Then I want to say that translation has an advantage: people in other specialized industries can hardly survive once their industries close down. Finance also has this feature.
3. There is nothing professional except pure R&D department or R&D industry, so the most important thing for an enterprise is business. But the business is very empty. Think for yourself.
4. The proportion of R&D majors is very low, so it is good for 1,000 people to make money, and the rest is unknown.
There is no translator in the translation industry, and there are very few such people, unless you reach the later stage.
6. Please don't think that the translation and interpretation industry is a youthful meal, and hair loss makes a lot of money. Sorry, the actual interpretation industry is not a youth meal, and it takes a long time of experience. People in their 40 s and 50 s are the mainstream, and hair loss is not acceptable. As for earning more, most of the translation income is 6000- 12000 a month, but do you know that this kind of bottom translation income is still there? Interpretation is not as profitable as you think, and the interpretation market is uneven, with a monthly income of 20 thousand and a monthly income of 65438+ 10 thousand.
7. If the translation industry is your main business, you can use it as a platform, which is suitable for any industry. But nearly 30% business owners in the market think that your translation, finance, etc. It has nothing to do with business, and it will definitely squeeze non-business people and even research and development, so people who are professional either don't understand the market or just graduated.
8. Please don't blindly research, the experience project is the most important. As soon as HR meets, you will know your level in 10 minutes or even 2 minutes.
9. The current situation of the translation industry is that the standards are very strict and clear, but the market is very informal. Rather than saying that only cutting-edge translation can make money, it is better to say that only cutting-edge markets are more formal. But, do you know, which industry has no chaos? I feel that there is the least chaos in the translation industry now, because you will or will not. Some people will say that my finances are not chaotic. I want to say that finance is to make false accounts. Tax avoidance? Otherwise, boss, what do I want you to do? Big companies may really let you audit the accounts, but is it really financial? The financial industry is also a lot of chaos, there are high and low, the low is to take money for loans, the high has no background and no one wants to enter? So overall, the translation industry is still relatively healthy.
The wife is Liu Haozhi's translator:
Translation is charged by the word, and the money of one word is the embodiment of imagination.
The income from advanced translation is objective, but few people reach the top of the translation tower.
After all, translation is never a one-off event, but a long-term accumulation.
Working in the translation industry is not just about converting one language into another.
Literature: You need to know the author's writing style, a writing background of this article, quotations involved in the article, etc.
Engineering project category: you need to know the technical terms, how to match the terms, and whether there are fixed questions for individual words.
Law: you need to know fixed legal terms, which is the most basic condition;
Popular Category: You need to know the cultural background, the background of the times, hot topics, and the differences between American English expressions and British English expressions.
The above is just a simple illustration (translation).