Some days, I feel like all anyone wants to talk about is “our changing profession/industry.” Some days I agree that it’s changing a lot, and sometimes I feel like “Yes! Things change…cope or try to stop the earth from turning.” But here’s something I’ve been thinking about lately: as the translation/interpreting professions change, is the career path that most people follow going to change as well?
What about that career path?
I feel like our profession has always had its oddities in terms of getting started and progressing through the ranks. By “oddities,” I mean factors such as:
- A severe lack of university programs in translation and interpreting (in the US at least).
- The fact that clients (like translation agencies) that have enough work for full-time translators and interpreters still tend to use freelancers.
- The resulting lack of in-house translation and interpreting jobs, compounded by even fewer entry-level T&I jobs. At least in the US, the few in-house jobs that exist are often restricted to people who have extensive experience, or who graduated from a T&I Master’s program, or who can pass something like the UN language competitive exams, which few beginners can.
- The lack of a universally-accepted translation credential (like the CPA credential for accountants), resulting in a “no barrier to entry” work environment. And honestly, I don’t see this changing, because it would be nearly impossible to certify translators in every language combination on the planet.
But still…
I also feel like there has been a bit of a standard career path in our profession, in that people either:
- Attended a T&I Master’s program and then entered the working world, or
- Bootstrapped it as primarily self-taught freelancers, who in most cases started out working with agencies, then either stuck with that but moved up in the agency ranks, or transitioned into the direct client market, doing similar work to what they did for agencies.
In a profession (ours!) where few things are standardized, I feel like this is the closest thing we’ve had to a traditional career path: start out working with agencies, then work for better agencies or work with direct clients. That’s how I started out, and how most freelancers I work with started out as well.
And how about now?
Things in our profession, as in the world in general, are changing. Personally, I don’t think they’re changing for the worse (here’s a whole post about that), but they’re certainly changing. My one-sentence summary of the situation would be, “It’s getting harder to make a living at the low end, and there’s more competition at the high end,” and the changes that I see include:
- Agencies that are open to entry-level translators (those that base their hiring primarily or exclusively on one’s results on their tests, rather than on one’s credentials or experience) often pay very, very low rates; much lower than they did when I started freelancing 17 years ago. In some cases and for some language pairs (i.e. English into Russian), these rates are so low that they literally cannot go much lower unless translators are asked to pay the agency in order to work.
- More discerning agencies have a wider choice of translators (because fewer experienced translators want to work for lower-end agencies), and are also under price pressure from their own end clients. They’re looking for higher quality and faster turnaround at lower rates and–I tend to believe–they’re getting it. As an example, I recently received an inquiry from a reputable agency, seeking only ATA-certified translators willing to translate 12,000 words between noon on Friday and noon on Monday, and the request was rescinded just a few minutes later, because they had all the people they needed.
- More translators are aware of and interested in the direct client market. When I started freelancing in 2002, nearly all the translators I knew worked exclusively with agencies. There were vague rumblings about, “You could work directly with businesses, but it can be hard to find them and they don’t know anything about translation.” Even fewer translators did things like attending client-side events. Now, those things (working with direct clients in general and attending non-translation events) are pretty common: attend an event like AMWA or ACES and I’m sure you won’t be the only translator there.
- Advice that one might give to an experienced translator–market to direct clients, target your most lucrative specializations, diversify your range of services, attend in-person client-side events–is less applicable to beginners, because they often don’t know enough about the profession to do those things.
And how about the future?
Well, that’s the question, isn’t it? Here’s the dilemma, and I’m asking this because I honestly don’t know the answer.
If you were a beginning translator starting out in the profession right now, and you couldn’t reach your target income on entry-level agency rates, what would you do?
- Work at entry-level agency rates anyway, just for the experience?
- Work every angle to try to get work from higher-end agency clients? Attend conferences, meet with them in person, try to get referrals, etc?
- Cast your net into the direct client market, even without a ton of experience?
- Pursue a T&I Master’s to make yourself more eligible for in-house jobs or higher-end freelance work?
I find myself recommending a combination of these approaches to the students who take my classes, and many of them are extremely successful at it. Some work the entry-level agency market for a year or two, alongside another job or while setting very modest income goals, then they move on to higher-paying clients. Some do paid mentoring with experienced translators so that they feel more prepared to work with direct clients. Some pursue graduate programs to increase their skills and confidence in preparation for entering the market.
Mostly I’m wondering about the agency-to-direct client career path, now that entry-level agency rates are getting lower and lower. Readers, any thoughts on this? If you’re an experienced translator, how would you start now if you had to? If you’re a beginner, what strategies are you using and how are they working?
I am a beginner: I mostly work with agencies and other translators (99% of my work). Being relatively new coupled with marketing skills that aren’t so great, I’m not exactly surprised that I don’t make enough to live on my own. I wish I had known about translation degrees when I was applying to college, which is why I really want to do an outreach presentation at my old high school. I have been attending local events and networking in-person. It has not resulted in paid work yet, but one center said they would send all translation requests to me; they sent one already, it just didn’t pan out. I need to do more online marketing, but I need to rethink my specializations first. I am shooting for passing the ATA exam, fingers crossed!
Thanks, Jennifer! Really interesting, and good luck on the ATA exam!
I began my career in 2014 (in-house translator in magazine publishing) and my freelance career in 2016. I decided to seek direct clients from the start, and in retrospect, that was no the best move, as the work was definitely scarce and irregular for quite some time, but at least I have been enjoying it. I am not sure what the typical client profile of my classmates who are still freelance translators is, but I think a lot of them work with those very big agencies â I’ll let you decide whether these are low-end or mid-range.
Also, in France, we definitely do not have a lack of university programs, quite the opposite; at least, professional associations in the realm of literary translation or audiovisual translation complain universities are putting to many ENâFR graduates on the market. However, there does not seem to be a problem of the kind for other sectors and languages.
Really interesting, thanks for your comment!
Hi Corinne,
This is a really useful article for people like me, who are going through sort of a career path change, I am a beginner in translation. I have a specialization, yet my language pair is very common. I am not working a as a translator currently (though I have dabbed in it in the past and have a certificate in interpretation, with which I worked in an in-house position). My approach so far has been a combination of what you suggest here: I am taking a T&I certificate program, doing volunteer work in translation, pursuing more education in my target language, learning business and marketing skills, etc.
I agree that it seems like the path to begin is different now. I am very interested in what you and other veterans in the profession would advice in this case.
Thank you for asking the question!
Thanks, Kethrin! That’s really interesting to hear, thanks for your input.
Robin, the Trotsky paraphrase is cute, but misleading. Exposure to MpT spew is known to have significantly deleterious effects on one’s writing skills and very likely on source language mastery as well; encouraging people to engage with such garbage is highly irresponsible. See the old Bevan paper and the recent publication from Groeningen for a few examples, but the experience related by many colleagues and some heavy MpT agency users like Scott Bass further demonstrates the occupational health issues. You might as well be passing out cyanide candies for professional development to university students of translation and others at the start of their careers.
What is unavoidable, I think, to avoid the doom of slavelancing at the bottom of the economic pile is a good understanding of technical processes relevant to content production and management today as well as the obvious need for subject matter mastery. In my two decades of work in commercial translation, it has nearly always been the “Quereinsteiger” – crossovers from other professions – who have been the best and most productive contributors of translated work, the bankers, engineers, chemists, attorneys and others who, for various reasons, shift the main focus of their work to translation. Graduates of translation studies programs without significant other areas of study almost never make the grade, even if they can eke out a living somewhere in the bulk market language services bog.
(Warning: this is a long reply!)
I think your remarks apply primarily to translators in the United States, so Iâll keep my own comments to this group of translators. In many other countries and regions in the world, there are adequate opportunities to study translation at university or college, and there are well-defined career paths for both translators and interpreters. Additionally, there are often far more in-house openings for translators (at various levels of experience) and interns. Iâll also keep interpreters out of my comments, as even in the U.S., there are many more opportunities for education and training (including certification) for interpreters than there are for translators.
Youâre certainly right that âthings in our profession ⊠are changing.â In a big way. In particular the advent of Neural Machine Translation (NMT) is proving to be a game-changer, not just for entry-level translators, but also for seasoned, specialized professionals. To those translators who claim that there isâand will continue to beâa premium market that is reserved solely for highly specialized humans, without support from NMT, I can only say (to paraphrase Trotsky): âYou may not be interested in NMT, but NMT is interested in you.â
So what strategy is right for what I call âearly stageâ translators who are attempting to break into the translation market without any formal translation education? In addition to translation degree courses in the U.S., one option they can consider is to study translation and related fields at, say, Masterâs level: but abroad, not in the United States. Compared with the U.S., postgraduate/grad school degree courses in many countries with source languages for which there will continue to be a robust market in the future cost little or even nothing. And the advantages of living and studying in a source language country are invaluable and can help launch a lifelong career in translation.
If that is not an option, for whatever reason, my message is clear: If you want to avoid being trapped potentially indefinitely at the very low end of the market, staggering along at what amounts to a minimum wage income, you will have to bring something to the table right from the outset. In the past, it was possible to essentially turn up with nothing more than a reasonable (e.g., Bachelor-level) knowledge of a foreign language and learn about subject areas and business skills on the job, with income levels increasing over the years to reflect experience and acquired expertise.
That option is hardly available today, and will certainly lead to nowhere in the future. It looks like the market for unskilled entry-level translators in the future will largely be limited to low-paying post-editing of machine translation output (PEMT), offering little or no opportunity for translators to grow their skills and professional portfolio.
So I think many future early-stage translators will have to demonstrate that they already have the language skills and the necessary subject-area expertise, if possible with the appropriate qualifications to prove itâin both source and target languages. In turn, this means they will have to define a professional translation roadmap before they start translating! For example, by ensuring that they have the requisite language and subject-area skills before they start marketing their services. By taking courses that will teach them about the industry and how to market themselves to potential clients, again before they start translating. By undertaking the necessary market research to identify market sectors where demand for their language and subject-area combinations will be strong in the future. This turns the established model (start translating and then find out how and where to do it, and what subject-area expertise is needed) on its head.
Of course even early stage translators with a relevant translation degree will have to invest actively in subject-area knowledge and business skills. But translation will no longer be a ârefuge for the otherwise unemployable,â but rather a career that people will choose after doing a lot of homework and preparing themselves thoroughly. The potential prizes of a successful translation career will continue to be very attractive, but that career will demand a lot more from translation professionals than was the case in the past.
However, to ensure that both early stage and experienced translators of the future are able to rely on a broad range of education and training opportunities, another area that will have to be substantially upgraded is that of professional development for translators. Although professional associations in the United States such as the ATA will need to increase both the quality and the quantity of their continuing education (CE)/continuing professional development (CPD) programs, I think the time has now come to call on the entities that benefit most directly from translatorsâ skills and experienceâthe translation companies (agencies)âto commit to investing in the expertise of their freelance translators. This is particularly relevant in the United States, where the vast majority of freelance translators work predominantly (or even exclusively) for translation companies.
Translation companies derive a significant portion of their profitability from the freelance translators providing services to them, so it is also in their own economic interests to invest in the professional and technical skills and subject-area expertise of their freelancers, for example through a commitment to invest x% of their sales revenue in education and training for their freelancers (âvendorsâ). They donât have to do this directlyâfor instance, they could contribute to a translator professional development trust that would bundle the financial contributions of many translation companies to ensure world-class professional development offerings for translators in the United States. Everybody would benefit from this sort of model: translators, translation companies, and end-clients. But without significant buy-in from the translation companies, it is difficult to see how the wide-ranging professional development programs that will be needed to master and shape the changes facing both the translation profession and the wider translation industry can be developed and implemented.
Wow, thanks Robin for that detailed reply! Very interesting, a lot to unpack there, and I actually think you have better insights than what I wrote in my original post! Thanks for taking the time to write that.
Hi Robin,
I agree with Corinne that your comment includes insights missing from the more US-centric original post.
To take only Europe, translation programs abound, and the EU has attempted to boost quality — and create a larger pool of qualified candidates for its own T&I services — with its EMT (European Masters in Translation) âlabelâ.
Iâm based in France and am in regular touch with univ programs here through SFT + directly, but also got a first-hand look at degree courses in a half-dozen countries when I served as an adviser to one of the Commissionâs programs. OK, quality varies from country to country and university to university, but hey, if you want to be a professional linguist, isnât immersion in your source-language country for several years a no-brainer ? Especially when the cost is dramatically lower than far less focused degrees in âlanguage X literatureâ available in the US.
So for US would-be translators, I see not just a junior year abroad but a full degree abroad as an attractive first option for US students who want to become translators. This may be of interest :
https://www.nytimes.com/2016/11/06/education/edlife/a-guide-to-getting-a-bachelors-abroad.html
But I disagree with your second paragraph, where you fall into straw-man argumentation re âtranslator claimsâ about the premium segment of the market. (Reminds me of a paper published last summer by a translation scholar keen to debunk what he claims are widespread âmythsâ like âHumans will always translate better than a machineâ. (Câmon, ever heard anyone say that?)).
But I’m aware, too, that references to a premium market rub lots of people the wrong way. đ
So… what about those who welcome advances in technology, not as cribs/crutches/productivity tools, but as a way of shifting markets onto a healthier footing? I wasnât able to attend BDĂâs excellent conference last month, but was intrigued by Nina Sattler-Hovdarâs closing remarks, which you can read here : https://www.transcreationexperts.com/my-closing-statement-at-the-2019-bdu-conference/?fbclid=IwAR17k8fAujFBmh9jQLwekweuGmZ1AaqGpJyhvPavJEpMr5CaftqMtmIoY5Q
Some pretty hard-hitting stuff in there, including: âHuman translators whose performance and deliverables donât significantly surpass those provided by machine-translation systems will soon be replaced by those systems and hence, disappear for good. Consequently, the market will be cleansed from the many poorly qualified or poorly paid translators whose sub-par work has damaged the reputation of an entire profession over the last decades. Finally the time has come for the highly qualified specialists among us to prove how much valuable multilingual and multicultural communication support we can offer our clients. Finally there is a chance for the best of us to be adequately recognized as the experts that we are.â
Which brings me to two Qs for you. In the past weâve discussed how beginners build and consolidate their skills.
I stand by my comments, to wit: no magic bullet. If a would-be translator wants to go the translation course route, get into a demanding, selective program, then, once out of university, figure three to five years of full-time work to master the basics (assuming constant revision during this time). Bingo, youâre launched.
But Robin, youâve argued very persuasively that the minimum-wage in-house jobs young translators need to acquire those skills are evaporating, replaced by pitifully low-paid gig work with no meaningful revision. So the big Q becomes: how are young/new translators going to survive while doing the time they need to acquire serious skills?
I do think thatâs an issue, although I see most EMT programs require serious in-house internships for their final-year students and was recently told that fully one-third of translation jobs in France are salaried, not freelance. So there are solutions out there.
Now on to your call for translation companies to step up and provide training.
âDream onâ was my immediate reaction, until I recalled that when you were based in Europe, Fry & Bonthrone organized a training day at the Frankfurt Stock Exchange one year. It was great, with the market crash that day adding a touch of hair-on-fire. But you only did it that once â why was that?
By contrast, SFTâs biennial three-day UETF (summer school for financial translators) has been running for nearly 20 years at this point, partnering with the Paris Bourse or Ministry of Finance or private-sector banks. Likewise SFTâs SAM (sĂ©minaire dâanglais medical). And the âTranslate inâŠâ series for Fr/Eng translators has been organized on a rotating basis by SFT, ITI and Anglocom, in partnership with Ottiaq. As you know, I’m involved with two of those three courses, and participants will confirm the bar is very high indeed. For translators who want to develop the skills to break into the high end of the new market awaiting us out there, I think you could make a case for this type of event being far more profitable than, say, an annual conference — but since professional associations are collecting the profit anyway, there isn’t a conflict of interest.
This to say that unlike you, I would tend to see professional associations â not agencies — as the natural home of high-end translator training.
Enter the fact that weâre writing these comments on the blog of a site called âTraining for translatorsâ. For me, that underscores a fact of life in the US: CPD appears to have been largely privatized, targeting softer skills on the whole, with passing references to a premium market but a lower bar for the craft itself. E.g., Corinne, youâve offered a âtasterâ course with one-week specializations in three or four specialty areas â for the same core group of students. I admit that had me baffled, until I realized that some of the âmodulesâ found in European universities’ translation programs are no doubt in place for the same reason (albeit running over a full year).
I have one more point to make about T&I courses being a first step toward something else, but that will have to wait until tomorrow. đ
Corinne, I returned to this discussion following your latest post (March 2020) on the evaporation of “entry-level clients”. And right now I’m feeling curiously “neglected” that you didn’t respond to the points I was trying to make.
I realize that life goes on, but wanted to let you and your readers know that I stand by them, not least because for me they encapsulate the kind of approach that beginners and more experienced translators should be thinking about right now. But I would say that, wouldn’t I. đ
Thanks, Chris! I don’t think every comment necessarily needs a detailed response from me, but thanks for taking the time to add your thoughts.
Regarding credentials… I would guess that for translators in the U.S., ATA certification will become more important as the market gets more competitive. When I was starting out a few years ago, the impression I got was that it was a credential you might try for when you’re a more established translator and that it certainly wasn’t necessary for launching your business. ATA itself describes it along those same lines.
I think we need to rethink that perspective, though. If you are starting out today and there is an ATA exam in your language pair, I think you should take it toward the beginning of your career if you want to have a viable business. If you are in a master’s program, I think training and preparation for the exam should be a central part of that program. As Chris and Robin pointed out, the jobs beginning translators used to do in order to build experience are disappearing or paying so little that you can’t make a living. I am a good translator. I am certified in one of my language pairs now. But for me, getting started in this field has been like trying to climb a ladder whose bottom rungs are disintegrating one by one as I go.