Educational programs for translators and interpreters vary in size, degrees granted and languages offered, and there is a program to suit almost any case and temperament. The younger the student, and the more easily they can get admitted, the longer the program should be and the more should be expected of the student. The American Translators Association publishes a list of schools in the U.S. and makes it available to the public at a nominal fee.
Schools that accept students as soon as they have finished secondary education normally require a number of general courses and a stay abroad of at least six months. These programs take three to four years and lead to a BA or BS degree. Some students prefer to pursue a general BA degree at a regular undergraduate institution and then add translator/interpreter training at the graduate level.
Universities offering an MA in translation or interpretation often include specializations such as terminology or machine translation. PhDs, which are usually sought by experienced translators or interpreters who want to teach at the university level, are also offered at certain schools. Some universities offer certificate programs, which are available to students pursuing other undergraduate or graduate degrees or which can be taken outside the degree structure in a very condensed form, after a careful screening of applicants. Those pursuing certificates are required to take specialized interpreting or translation courses and to pass a final examination.
Any training program should offer actual practice of what is to be learned. Faculty, too, should practice professionally what they teach, whether it be simultaneous, consecutive, escort or court interpreting or any sort of translating. The university should have a certain commitment to the program. (Do any of the professors have tenure?) It should offer appropriate technical installations: simultaneous equipment of conference quality or, if only escort interpreters are to be trained, portable equipment. Such equipment should be accessible to students outside of class hours. Language laboratories can complement, but cannot replace, such equipment. Students should have access to a variety of lectures in the languages for which specialized training is offered. Audio and video recording facilities are also a must. Word processing and correction software should be available for preparing terminologies and for machine translation.
AIIC statistics show that over 72% of its members have attended some kind of school for language specialists. One reason why such a degree makes a person significantly more qualified is that "fluency" and "proficiency" in a language are rather vague concepts. In reality, few people are so fluent in a language that they can follow lectures and talk confidently on the level of a specialist about, for example, solar energy, cancer treatment or preventing soil erosion. Specialized training programs not only verify that candidates really know the languages (and this includes their native language), but they also make sure that candidates can handle the interface between language pairs, so that they do not make French mistakes in English, Spanish mistakes in French, and the like. During training, students learn to handle not only the appropriate vocabulary but also the required subject matter. They learn how to prepare for new topics: where to find information and how to organize it. Above all, students are put in a work-type situation and make their mistakes under supervision in a classroom instead of at the expense of clients.
Other Training Opportunities
Some translation agencies offer internships, usually unpaid, but with the prospect of a working relationship later. The largest ones employ paid trainees who often start at "entry-level" positions doing proofreading and clerical work. Corporations usually lack the time, expertise and desire to train translators on-the-job.
The field of conference interpreting expands and contracts in a rather haphazard way, but, as only 5% of the AIIC membership was under 30 years old in 1983, openings will continue to occur. U.S. court interpreting, especially Spanish/English, is also growing. At present, the more technically oriented organizations offer more opportunities for language specialists.
The UN and other organizations have carried out experiments on interpreting via satellite since 1976. They are now able to transmit both picture and sound to interpreters at a remote location and then transmit the interpretations back to the original site. Like teleconferencing, which is increasingly used in the U.S., remote interpreting saves travel time and fatigue, can reach several audiences simultaneously, and can help when security is an issue. The demand for interpreters is expected to increase somewhat as this technology becomes more available and larger teams of interpreters will be needed (because of time-zone differences). What remains to be solved is the question of cost efficiency.
The media offer other potential growth areas for interpreting. Foreign correspondents for U.S. newspapers and broadcast outlets do not always speak foreign languages well enough to translate comments into English. Media, especially television, therefore use language specialists to translate foreigners' comments, or they simply do not use the comments, which can result in a distorted presentation of the facts. The American media are trying to hire more language-capable journalists for overseas work. The European media have for a long time used people fluent in more than one language and thus represent a source of employment for journalistic-minded language specialists.
Translators' working conditions are also changing. Familiarity with translation aids like data bases and electronic dictionary look-ups, the operation and programming of a personal computer and the technique of post-editing are becoming requirements.
The real satisfaction when you work professionally with languages (and this is just the authors' personal opinion) comes from a job well done, from winning a new client or passing a recruitment test and from mastering the languages.
