I'm a graduate of Translation Studies (English/Polish) and I'm considering an MA course in Audiovisual Translation at City University in London. (Probably needless to say, this would be to prepare me for a career in the audiovisual translation field, mainly subtitling). I'm trying to gather as much information as possible before investing my time and money into the course.
I would like to hear from:
1. People who had attended the course in any language combination. Any comments? What I'm particularly interested in is how helpful the course is in putting your foot in the industry door etc..
2. Translators working in the audiovisual industry in my language pair (English into Polish). I'll be happy to hear from anyone who's currently working in the field in London - do you find it easy/hard to find work? Do you do it full-time or as an additional income source? I realize there are a lot of factors in play but please do give me some indication on the realities of the job market (I'm writing this in English in case the information is useful for other users).
Thank you,
Dominika
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Przemek Kalemba United Kingdom Local time: 02:09 Member (2011) English to Polish + ...
Not as easy as it seems...
Jun 22, 2011
I did that course in 2008. It was very good, very hands-on as well. However, I have two arguments against doing the course.
First, as it was very much centred around a specific subtitling programme (SWIFT NL), I had a feeling I could easily learn all this myself if I had access to the software (although of course some advice from the tutor was priceless!).
Secondly, I finished the course and although I did manage to get a few jobs (most of them very short term), I must say it is very difficult to get into the subtitling business. And when you do, it's either low paid or, like in my case, you never get a chance to actually do any subtitling. All you get is ready templates and you just translate into your target langauge but the whole fun part (timecoding) is done at the HQ by an army of in-house subtitlers.
So, all in all, I am still looking around, hoping that maybe one day I will find a good client, paying decent rates, sending interesting films to subtitle... But I know it's probably never going to happen...
Good luck!
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