After your educationalal path, you will have to spend your abilities in the professional world. Regardless of having just received a Languages and Translation degree or a specialized course certificate, like a video game localization one, the first step is to propose yourself to translation agencies. GLOS will explain you how.
Why Should You Propose to Translation Agencies?
After having finished your educational path, what people usually lack is experience in their own working environment. Even if they did some form of internship, a broad experience in that field is essential and it what makes the difference. Especially with freelancing and commissions in specific sectors, like the medical one, to be selected among many experienced candidates will be difficult.
A translation agency can be an essential connection for your first job: they are more easily found compared to clients. They know their sector, have constant amount of work and are more inclined to work with unexperienced candidates. Moreover, the experience and the commissions gained by working with an agency can be essential to fill your personal portoflio.
The Importance of Your Portfolio
Sending your curriculum vitae, where are listed your experience and your educational path, is as essential as providing your professional portfolio. This is a professional list of the jobs you have made, with useful extracts to show your abilites to possible clients. There are many ways to build one and you should consider to make even more than one in order to meet your client necessities.
How Should You Propose to Translation Agencies?
The list of thing you should send to a translation agency is quite short: your curriculum vitae, your professional portfolio and a concise presentation in the body of the email. However, there are various details to which you should pay attention:
- Translation is a job full of responsibilities. A professional translator should aim to translate from a well known source language to their first language. It is not useful to lie on your certifications: it is better to translate perfectly from just one language than translating from many but with poor quality.
- Each of the texts that will be sent to the agencies will have to be edited in all respects. In fact, they will be the first evaluation of your writing skills.
- Just as for the languages, the best thing is to specialise yourself in just one field, like the video games or the medical ones. Professional fields involve facing specific terms and expressions that the translator must know.
- One of the most positive factors for being selected is the ability to respect deadlines. If you have clients or professors feedback about that, it is wise to include them in your portfolio.
- The ability to use CAT Tools, while not essential, is surely very appreciated.
- Lastly, flexibility and willingness to accept sudden commissions are very valuable factors in the translation world.
In Conclusion
You can not improvise yourself as a translator, especially with the excessive help of automated translation softwares. Education, experience and professionality are essential element for a localizator. Translation is not just a circumstance service: it helps cultures and people to get closer, even though they are geographically and linguistically distant.
