For everyone who celebrated U.S. Thanksgiving, welcome back to work! I always find that a vacation is a good chance to develop some new insights into work and life in general, and this one was no different. My family and I spent the week on a mountain biking and hiking vacation with another family, and on this trip I was confronted with a new realization about translators: we know a lot about a lot. This isn’t to say that translators are more intelligent than mechanical engineers, energy consultants, systems administrators, etc. (to name a few of the people on this trip!), but because of the documents that we read for work all day, we learn a lot of specialized facts about a wide variety of topics.
Personally I think this is a really appealing part of the profession, and one that hasn’t often occurred to me. For example on our trip, the subject of Native Americans’ use of horses came up, which prompted me to comment that horses were actually introduced by the Spanish in the 16th century, before which time many Native American tribes used dogs to pull their belongings around on sled-type devices called travois (I learned that while translating an atlas about Native Americans). Not that people’s eyes didn’t glaze over when I got to the intricacies of how a travois can be pulled either by hand or with a harness on a human, but it was still a fun moment! I also learned that translators know a lot of the answers to the Discovery Channel quiz show Cash Cab (maybe I never realized his before because we don’t have TV at home!).
In sum, although it sounds trite to say, translation is a great job because we’re always learning; and as compared to people who are always learning about a very narrow subject area, our knowledge allows us to be familiar with a wide variety of subjects that sometimes come in handy. Have fun with it!
I always tell folks that I’m good at parties. 🙂 I can talk to anyone about just about anything – in their own vernacular. Doctors don’t have to dumb it down for me because I immediately know what they are talking about. I noticed this again when my mother was in the ER over the weekend, and I started discussing the possible causes of her peripheral neuropathy with her – without any research.
Exactly right – it’s the opportunity to get paid to keep reading and writing about fields which interest me and to learn new things that makes me enjoy this profession so much. Now if I can just get the ergonomics of it sorted out a little better, all will be perfect.
It’s so true. That’s one of the things I love most about my job. I always enjoyed playing Trivial Pursuit back in my youth, and now I love being able to translate different kinds of documents about all kinds of bizarre and fascinating subjects (although I don’t personally recommend files on urogenital necrotizing fasciitis–a big problem in some homeless populations, apparently). The two other great things about this are 1) getting to see everyone’s highly confidential documents (that’s just fun!) and 2) getting paid to read up on and learn about different subjects and look up the words I don’t know. I mean, for Pete’s sake, they’re paying me to become faster, better and more efficient at my job. Which is awesome. Great observation, Corinne!
So true! That’s one of my favorite parts of the job; learning something new! It’s always a huge challenge and a lot of work, but totally worth it. Today I spent 45 minutes looking for the Spanish version of “Southerly International Boundary”, which I traced back to a 1964 water treaty between Mexico and the U.S. Not sure all of this will go into my long-term memory, but some of if definitely will, and I can use that to entertain at parties and hikes. 🙂
I completely agree with this, actually it’s one of the reasons I got into translation in the first place! It’s also one of the reasons I get somewhat frustrated with always being told to specialize: specialization is fine, but the amazing thing for me about translation is that you can cover so many fields through the same activity, which you can’t do as much once you narrow your focus down to only one area.
I agree on the whole, but we shouldn’t consider ourselves omniscient by any measure. There’s a lot that we don’t know, too.