The field of language translation has remained robust despite tough economic times. Embarking on a translation career can be a wise decision for young people who love languages. Hundreds of colleges all over the world offer translation programs. In the US, the American Translation Association has approved over fifty programs so far. Translation programs at conventional and online colleges vary in size, languages offered, and specific coursework, but they all cover the same fundamental topics.

Students studying to become translators must first gain a solid foundation in language and culture. College language courses teach vocabulary and grammar, but students must achieve superior levels of language fluency in order to succeed in the translation industry. They must also understand their chosen languages’ cultures on a deep level. This understanding comes from exposure to the literature, visual arts, music, and even film. History courses also play a role in cultural understanding. Most US colleges strongly encourage study abroad, although most don’t require it. In the UK, and most of Europe, however, a period of study in a country where the language you are learning is spoken is a compulsory part of the course.

After a linguistic foundation is laid, students can learn advanced translation techniques through practice. Just speaking a language well is not enough to make someone a good translator. Translators must know how to select the appropriate style, tone, and voice when translating documents. Vocabulary choices and sentence structure greatly influence these three qualities.

Knowing which words to use in a translation isn’t as simple as it seems. If the task were straightforward, computers would be able to take the place of humans. Human translators aren’t in any danger of losing their jobs because each language’s subtle nuances of meaning make translation a complex subjective process. Translators can’t simply rely on a dictionary to make their vocabulary choices.

Some idioms don’t have obvious target language equivalents. Individual words don’t always have corresponding one-word translations. Sometimes five different words might be technically valid translations, but only one will sound right in context. It takes extensive study to get comfortable choosing which words to use. Colleges provide examples and exhaustive practice sessions to help students learn how to accurately match any document’s style and tone through word choice.

Sentence structure also receives a great deal of emphasis. A document’s overall tone and voice is influenced by the length and complexity of its sentences. Translators must be able to replicate tone and voice by manipulating sentence structure as needed in the target language.

For instance, sometimes a sentence from the original work must be split into two sentences to achieve the best result. Beginning translators are often too faithful to the original sentence structure, and insist on producing overlong, awkward sentences in the target language. On the other hand, translators should refrain from unnecessary changes to sentence length and flow. Translation instructors take great pains to help students strike this proper balance.

Colleges translation training programs understand it isn’t enough for most translators to be generalists. The most successful translators have subject area specialties. For example, some translators focus exclusively on legal translations, while others focus on finance, business, or technology documents. Most colleges let translation students pick their specialties early. That way, students can earn minors or additional majors to support their translation specialties. Having credentials in both general translation and a specialty makes students more competitive once they graduate, as well as simply better prepared.

Translation and language study in college is rigorous and challenging, but also highly rewarding. During their time in school students gain invaluable insights into other cultures, their worldviews are expanded, and they become better communicators. When they graduate, they have all the skills they need to succeed.

Written by Marina Salsbury

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Marina Salsbury planned on becoming a teacher since high school, but found her way into online writing after college. She writes about everything from education to exercise for various websites.

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When foreigners learn Chinese, they often struggle getting to grips with writing the characters. There are around 50,000 characters in modern written Chinese, but in order to be considered literate, an adult needs to know only 3,000-4,000 (a 1,000-2,000 character vocabulary would allow you to comfortably read a Chinese newspaper).

However, more and more Chinese citizens feel they are losing the ability to write by hand, and many are signing up for exams to try and combat this.

The HSK (Hanyu Shuiping Kaoshi - literally Mandarin level exam) test was originally aimed at foreigners learning Chinese, but was introduced for Chinese nationals in several cities and provinces in 2007. Because so many people use computers in their work and hardly ever pick up a pen, their written literacy skills are in decline - this is true all over the world, not just in China.

When typing Chinese characters rather than writing them by hand, a person types the sound of the character (a bit like spelling a word out) then the computer suggests possible characters for that sound from which they choose the appropriate one:

It’s a bit like multiple choice, whereas if you were writing the same word by hand, you would have to think of the character yourself.

The Shanghai Language Commission conducted a survey among university students, which found that while many know what the characters should look like, they are unable to handwrite them.