| Pages in topic: < [1 2] | New specialist area vs. New language pair Thread poster: Jeffrey Henson
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Jeffrey Henson
France
Local time: 00:57
Member (2015)
French to English
TOPIC STARTER | Not "from scratch" | Jun 23, 2015 |
Balasubramaniam L. wrote: Fiona Peterson wrote:
To me, given the huge investments needed to add a new language pair or specialism, plus all the time you will hopefully be dedicating to the subject area once you're competent, you have to LOVE the language or subject area in question. It has to be a subject area that you're passionate about, or a language whose nature and culture move you enough to want to immerse yourself in it. Otherwise it becomes a bit soul-destroying.
I personally subscribe to the view that new languages cannot be learnt as an adult. To learn languages you need exposure to them in your younger days. If you have that exposure, then it is remotely possible to pick up from where you left at a later stage in life and improve your frozen skills in that language. But learning a new language from scratch when you have crossed twenty or twenty-five is impossible.
I agree, but I never said anything about learning a new language "from scratch", I simply asked if others thought that adding a new language combination to an existing specialist field would be more "marketable" than adding a new specialist field to an existing language pair. You can speak a language without necessarily having the voculary and skills for translation in a specialized area... For example, someone can grow up speaking fluent Spanish and German, but have studied Law in Germany and therefore be qualified to do legal translations from German, but not from Spanish.
| | | | Phil Hand 
China
Local time: 06:57
Chinese to English
| Big chunk vs. little chunk | Jun 23, 2015 |
Jeff Henson wrote:
Hi All,
Thanks for all the input, but please know that I chose the fields of "Medicine" and "Law" strictly at random as examples, just as I chose the language pair "German to English" as a hypothetical example. I realise that both "Law" and "Medecine" are vast fields with many, many sub-sectors to specialize in. I was not asking (at least not intentionally) for advice specifically for those fields. Perhaps my question would have gotten different replies if I had given a hypothetical example of someone specializing in "Wine/Oenology" ?
[Edited at 2015-06-22 14:25 GMT]
[Edited at 2015-06-22 14:26 GMT]
From a business perspective, it's got to be a new specialisation, for the simple reason that you have control over how much work you want to put in. You can always add on a small specialisation, or one closely related to the areas you already know, so you can limit the amount of time you have to put in to get up to professional standard. If you know wine, then going into other types of booze isn't such a big leap; moving into food more generally is a bigger step, still doable if you have the time. Crucially, you can also learn on the job: by carefully selecting the texts you take in your new area, you can ease yourself into it.
If you want to add a language, unless you're already at a professional working knowledge of the language, then there is an absolutely fixed time investment that you have to put in, amounting to hundreds of hours of study. You can't change that demand, and you can't get around it. And time spent learning your second language is time spent away from the job.
So, in business terms, it's no contest.
But I have to second Rachel's answer as well. Another language or another specialism won't make your business better. In almost any language and any specialism, there's enough work for those who are good and know how to look, so your best business option is to plough your existing furrow better. So I would only recommend whole new areas for those who are starting out.
If your business is fine already, and you're just doing it because you fancy a change, then it's not really a business decision, and I'd say do what you enjoy.
| | | | Jeffrey Henson
France
Local time: 00:57
Member (2015)
French to English
TOPIC STARTER | From a business perspective | Jun 23, 2015 |
Phil Hand wrote:
From a business perspective, it's got to be a new specialisation, for the simple reason that you have control over how much work you want to put in. You can always add on a small specialisation, or one closely related to the areas you already know, so you can limit the amount of time you have to put in to get up to professional standard...
If you want to add a language, unless you're already at a professional working knowledge of the language, then there is an absolutely fixed time investment that you have to put in, amounting to hundreds of hours of study...
So, in business terms, it's no contest.
Thanks Phil, this is exactly the kind of advice I was looking for.
| | | | | New specialization | Jun 23, 2015 |
It will take one to two years to learn a new specialization, other than molecular physics, perhaps, and it will take at least ten years to learn a new language well enough to be able to translate from it, translate some more complex and socialized texts.
It may also depend what language—if you speak another language already. Not all languages are the same in that respect. There is not that much work in some language pairs. I think adding a specialization may be safer.
[... See more It will take one to two years to learn a new specialization, other than molecular physics, perhaps, and it will take at least ten years to learn a new language well enough to be able to translate from it, translate some more complex and socialized texts.
It may also depend what language—if you speak another language already. Not all languages are the same in that respect. There is not that much work in some language pairs. I think adding a specialization may be safer.
[Edited at 2015-06-23 15:00 GMT] ▲ Collapse
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Rachel Waddington wrote:
A German to English translator with a medical specialism shouldn't need extra languages or specialisms. I'd invest in more medical courses to deepen the specialism. Or in marketing courses, writing courses or activities to brush up on the existing source language. Adding more options just means spreading yourself more thinly.
I agree with this - brush up on the existing source language or, dare I say, the existing target language.
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