Which foreign language has the most demand for translators?
Good question, but it depends on the context. If you aren't a native English speaker, then English would be what you want to learn. But if you are reading this, I'll assume you have checked that box.I would not learn a language just for business. You are basically marrying a whole aspect of life, given the amount of time, energy and possibly money, you spend to get proficient and maintain it/them. Choose a language you love, and be somewhat selfish. If people say you should learn Chinese (usually they mean Mandarin) but you cannot stand the sound of tones, then don't feel guilty about it. Plenty of other languages need love, too, and are just as worthy of it. Choose another of our 7000 languages.That said, Spanish, French, German, Japanese, and Chinese, to name a popular few, are huge. But you might have an edge if you study a more obscure one like Hebrew, Finnish, Dutch, or Greek (I'm using obscure in the very loose sense here, as obscure depends on where you live, too).If you can find a field that you enjoy, or at least like enough to work in, look to see what countries and languages are strong in that field. German has a lot of medical and pharmaceutical work, for instance. Japanese, I'm told, produces a fair amount of patents that need translated into English.In short: choose a language or languages, and choose a field or two to specialize in. No one language is going to be the silver bullet.
Can a non-native Spanish speaker be a Spanish translator/interpreter (both active and passive)?
Both my wife and my son are translators, interpreters, and teachers. My son, who’s native language since age three is English, translates (written words) from Japanese into English. He also teaches English to my grandsons, whose ‘native language’ in Japan is Japanese (all their friends are Japanese and they both attend a Japanese public elementary school). —- My wife, whose native language is Spanish, does a bit of translation (which she hates) from English into Spanish, and daily does interpretation (both ways). She used to teach Spanish years ago at junior college level but stopped doing that ages ago because classes were at night.CAUTIONS: (1) It is far, far easier to translate from the language one has learned into one’s native language than vice versa. This is even more so for interpretation, which doesn’t leave time to ‘look up words’ as one can do as a translator. (2) Also, if you translate or interpret some things OUT of you native language INTO the language you have learned, you will make mistakes. With some types of work, this isn’t a big problem, but in others it can be very dangerous. Legal documents and medical issues can involve deaths and lawsuits. In plain English, you can kill people or end up in court. (3) Chinese, Japanese, and several other languages are so far from Spanish that it will take many, many years of study to become proficient. Even as a native English speaker who used to be relatively fluent in Spanish (but not as good as either my wife or son are) I would translate ‘easy’ documents from Spanish — which I learned in college and in Spain — into my native English BUT I’d run my translations past my wife. She would catch mistakes where I’d misunderstood the source (Spanish) documents or answer my question, ‘What does this mean in Spanish?’ (4) The future is hard to foretell, but keep your eye on the combination of computers and artificial intelligence, which may (who knows…) reduce the amount of work available over the next 20 years. That’s not a problem for folks of my age, BUT for someone in their 20’s, it’s one more potential threat.
Japanese translator, a good career choice?
Hello from Oregon! I'm a native Japanese speaker and studying here now. Kon'nichiwa! (= Hello!) As you realize, becoming a translator is not so easy because it requires the ability of a foreign language (in your case, Japanese), and the knowledge of a field you want to work on as a translator. And, of course, becoming a translator also requires the fluency in your mother tongue (English) because you need to change a foreign language into your native language in ways that everyone can understand what you could translate easily. As the answerer above says, I too recommend studying in Japan to immerse yourself in a place where only Japanese is spoken for at least 2 years. I also think you should take Japanese classes at your college if it offers them. If you're thinking about becoming a Japanese translator in earnest, I will back you up. Go for it! I hope you will be a wonderful translator! ;)
Are American degrees valid in Mexico?
Your University degree is valid in Mexico for certain professions, but you must validate your studies at the Secretaría de Educación Pública (SEP). In order to validate your degree in Mexico, you must first obtain a permanent resident visa at a Mexican consulate outside of Mexico. To validate your degree you obtain your high school grade transcripts, diploma, University grade transcripts, diploma and have them notarized by a notary. You then go to a clerk of courts in the jurisdiction of the Notary and have them certify that the Notary’s certification is valid. Once you have that, you take the documents to the Secretary of State in the state where you obtained your degree and have an Apostille affixed to the documents. You deliver these to the SEP and fill out a form and pay a fee. If they accept your degree as equivalent to a Mexican professional degree they will issue you a certificate which you can then take to the SEP in Mexico City and process your Cédula Profesional. Which is a professional license. With that you can practice your profession in Mexico and legally live and work. Certain types of degrees from the US or other countries do are not equivalent, but sometimes by studying a Master’s in Mexico you can practice a profession. For example, an architect can practice his/her profession or a teacher, but an attorney has no equivalent in Mexico. Without nationality, or a permanent resident visa or after 5 years with status of “imigrado” you cannot apply for a professional credential. There are usually additional requirements besides your validated studies. In Mexico, everyone that wants to practice a profession has to do about 500 hours of Social Service and 400 hours of practice with another professional. You must also verify that you speak another language in addition to Spanish. If you are able to validate your studies, you must still complete the social service and practice requirements. It is not easy to comply with the above requirements, but many people do it every year.
Can you refuse to translate in the workplace?
I work as a cashier at a certain electronics store in Las Vegas. We have to stay on our register in order to make money (we get paid 7.55/hr plus .17% of our sales). Many times, some of us who speak other languages (mostly Spanish), are asked to go to other departments and translate for a sales person or we are asked to translate for another cashier. After a while, some of us have gotten frustrated with this mostly because we are losing our own money doing this several times a day or because the cashier or salesperson we are translating for don't even make an effort to communicate with the customer on their own. Can I refuse to translate without being insubordinate? I never refused to translate when a supervisor asked me to but I did let them know that I was getting tired of it. Our manager had to speak with several of us, Spanish speakers, regarding this. In his own words, "If you ever refuse to translate again when a supervisor asks you to, this is called insubordination and you WILL get fired for it." Are there work laws that pertain to this?
Why are english to spanish translations so bad?!?
My guess would be that companies with more money and a bigger footprint in foreign countries are willing to spend more on a great translation service or in-house translator, and companies that are simply trying to keep up with the growing number of people who speak a language other than English (in this case, Spanish) in their country just use the cheapest service they can find. They might even ask someone already working for them who "knows" Spanish/etc. to sit down and translate some phrases, even if that's not in their job description. I don't know that for a fact, but I think it's a fine guess. For example, I spent some time living in Japan and while I was there, I came across a lot of things that had been translated into English. Translations from purely Japanese companies, especially regionally specific ones, were understandable but still really weird. But both the English associated with McDonald's and Starbucks (American companies) and Toyota and Nintendo (Japanese companies - I didn't spend time in these places, but commercials/ads came up frequently containing English) was basically perfect. And no one ever complained about McDonald's and Starbucks' Japanese, so I assume it was fine, too. McDonald's and Starbucks are huge in Japan, Toyota and Nintendo are huge in the US, so accurate translations are probably more important to those companies. Walmart has a ton of Spanish speaking customers in the US, but if it's not popular in Spanish-speaking countries, then they might not feel like they need to put a ton of effort into making sure their Spanish is flawless. Again, only a guess, but I think it's a good one lol. If anyone can give you a factual answer, that would obviously be best, but if not, I hope this helps a little! :)
What is the english translation of the tagalog sentence pag-iinitan/pinag-iinitan tayo niyan?
my friend says it means "they would pick on us"