posted 09 January 2001 18:43            

Alicia

posted 09 January 2001 21:10            

quote:

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I have just logged in and I am eager to work in the translation world. Unfortunately, I have very little experience which poses the question: how can I make people trust me if I have no experience or better, how can I get experience if nobody trusts me?

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Welcome to translation!

That's a very good question, and I'm not sure there's any one correct answer to it...

To an extent, you need to be in the right place at the right time. Sometimes the best jobs come about by accident! (That's certainly how I got into the business...) Occasionally agencies need a less experienced translator just to help out in advisory capacity, so it might be worth sending out your details to a few translation companies within relatively easy reach of your home who specialise in your languages. You never know when they'll need someone in their offices to help out with some copy-typing or phone calls or something.

Another way of going about it is to have a job doing something else, and translating for fun in your spare time. At the end of the day, all people want to see is that you have the experience - not that you got paid huge amounts for it!

Finally, another option would be to work for a translation company - project management is always a good option because companies always need good project managers. That way, you get to see how it all works, maybe get a little experience of translating professionally too (some companies encourage their project managers to do occasional translations), and ultimately you get your name known. Which is what you want.

Of course, the ideal would be to get an in-house trainee translator position, but these are very few and far between and loads of people apply because it's a popular job (and hence the pay isn't always that great either...).

This really is a huge question to answer, and I'm sure other people will have Views on this. I hope so - the more the merrier!

I wish you every success in translation!

All the best

posted 10 January 2001 20:03            

In fact tomorrow I am delivering my CV to a few agencies in Seville, my hometown. I must sell myself, in the best sense of course! I must look self-confident to let people know that they can trust me, donīt you think? That will be my first step!

Again, thanks a lot for your advice and cheering!

posted 10 January 2001 20:46            

Self-confidence is the key to quite a lot in the translation world. As is believing in yourself - when you go out there tomorrow, tell yourself that you can do this! In my experience, the people who succeed in translation are the ones with a very positive self-image who come across as nice people to know as well as true professionals.

In fact, so self-confident am I that I deleted the long quote from me at the end of your mail - hope you don't mind. I just thought I'd save the bandwidth for something more interesting than me nattering.

Good luck tomorrow! I hope it all goes well, please keep us posted!

All the best

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Apollo