If you are a web developer using PHP from small web applications to large corporate portals with millions of page views, you may suddenly find that you need your site or application translated to another language. When your company opens www.company.com.br you need your application in Portuguese, then you’ll need it in Japanese and so on. You don’t have a “translation” problem, you have an internationalization problem.

Author: Luis Argerich (salutia.com)
Publishing date: 14.12.2000 17:53

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Do translators need to be educated in the art and science of translation? Is it possible to train a translator in an academic setting? Is doing so worthwhile, from the translator’s perspective or from that of a potential employer? The current state of affairs in the translation industry in the United States would suggest that academic training is valued but hardly considered essential. On the other hand, a translator with academic training often does find entering the market easier and can command higher salaries or rates, as well as possibly advance in a corporate setting more rapidly. Weighed against the time and money involved in getting academic training, however, the untrained translator may actually do better. So let’s take a close look at the nature of training translators, consider what might make for a quality academic training environment, and assess the value of such training.

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So what can we all do to improve our industry and make it a more comfortable place for everyone to work in? If the preceding articles have been too vague or long, or if ferreting out such ideas is too cumbersome, I present here a list of ideas that translators, translation vendors, and others involved in the translation industry should consider. I hope that these ideas take root and welcome suggestions from readers for additions or alterations to this list. I also know that I can do little more than present this list. After all, you can lead a cat to water, but you can’t make it drink (or do anything else, for that matter).

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If after reading these articles you have decided that translation is not for you, or if after translating professionally for a while or longer you have decided that translation is no longer for you, I’ll try to offer a few suggestions, some obvious and simple, others perhaps less obvious and more complicated, for other careers. Learning another language is a wonderful undertaking, and being able to use it for your career is a wonderful outcome of all that effort. But sometimes a professional pursuit must become a hobby, and so my suggestions will include ideas that have little directly to do with foreign language proficiency. At the same time, as someone who loves languages, I’ll bear in mind the attitude and commitment translators have made to their languages.

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As the World Travel Market opens in London, with over 50,000 representatives from 190 different countries, what better time to consider how travel and tourism as a sector can best respond to the challenge of communicating internationally and growing overseas markets. Travel and tourism is an inherently international industry, and is already one of the largest online market sectors. But companies in this sector could grow their revenue significantly if they were to address the localisation of products more professionally and market themselves more effectively on the Internet.

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