How happy are you with your studies?

A study on how happy translators are with their university studies and how well prepared they feel for the job market.

Sarah Henter www.henter.co info@henter.co @HenterAsociados

I’m currently working as a…

“Fortunately, I choose Computer Aided Translation as an MA (Translation)subject at Westminster. However, nobody at university said that a knowledge of CAT (e.g. SDL Trados) is virtually compulsory for professional translators - without it, you would be lost and would not be accepted by translation agencies.”

“In my view, translating professionally is 50% translation ability / experience + 50% CAT ability / experience.”

“We had CAT tools but only an introduction, too less to understand it well to start working with it in a professional basis.”

“Both translation and interpretation are compulsory even if you don't like one of them. You have a lot of hours of theoretical subjects (i.e. Linguistics, Linguistics Applied to Translation, History of Consecutive Interpretation, History of Simultaneous Interpretation...) and too little time for practical subjects (for example, Audiovisual and Scientific Translation are together in one subject that is taught for only one semester, two hours a week).”

“I would lessen the theoretical part and focus more on practice.”

“MOre Laboratories and marketing”

“Prospective translators should be taught business/entrepreneurship knowledge because:1) many become freelancers and 2) although translation falls under the category of Arts and, at least here in Finland, the general attitude is that Arts students are motivated by passion and not money, everyone should learn how to demand a proper price and conditions for their work and not let language service companies dictate these things to us”

“More subjects in line with the current market needs.”

“More information regarding how to actually become a freelance translator would have been useful, e.g. how to set up and run a business, etc.”

“Add courses on freelancing and running a business - there was almost nothing related to this included in my course.”

“Everything. The course was based on literature, we only studied translation in the last year (4th), and the CAT tools used were limited demo versions that eventually expired before the end of the school year! There were no specializations to choose from and no preparation for the "real world".