Unbeknownst to me, this year is coming to an end.
Personally, I had various experiences this year as a freelance translator, but I think it was a series of unexpected variables and surprises due to the special circumstances of the coronavirus. It was a year where I thought a lot about how to walk my own path in the future from a more comprehensive perspective of the translation market beyond the job of translation.
Maybe I'm not the only one, but many interpreters and translators have similar thoughts?
Dana
This year has gone by like this. I think it was really eventful. How was everyone?
Santa
If it's been hard, it's been a difficult year, but I feel like there's something to come? In the case of interpreters in particular, it made me think more like this. Being an at-home interpreter is a case I've never imagined before.
LATTE
That's right. I think the real plague (hehe) changed a lot of things. Still, at the beginning of this year, I was worried about what to do if I didn't have many jobs, but they also had new opportunities. Thankfully.
Dana
Me too. I think I was really worried in the first half of the year. As an interpreter, I was worried and actually felt depressed because my work had decreased a lot. Of course, as we entered the second half of the year, we adapted to the new method and gradually increased our opportunities. So I feel like translation was relatively less affected by the coronavirus. The translation itself wasn't originally a face-to-face service, so I don't think they put off the necessary translations.
LATTE
Yes, that's right. In a social atmosphere that encourages staying at home, we did what we used to do, so there wasn't much change in our work. If it were a change, I wonder if the coronavirus often appeared in the translated content? (hehe)
SNATA
I think I've been thinking a lot about how to build my career as a translator in the future, after COVID-19. Especially this year Corpus 1 (corpus) There were a lot of projects, but this one was a bit difficult. I think it would be better if the work itself was boring rather than difficult. What's interesting, though, is that the normal translation is fixed with the help of a translator, or that the result of the corpus work is actually the same post-editing, but the Corpus work is extremely difficult and the progress is not going well. I think there will be a lot of work like this in the future, so I'm wondering if I can keep doing it.
Dana
Oh, that's right. I often think like that too.
I'm not participating in the Corpus Project now, and I don't think I'll do it in the future.
The work itself was very hard, but it was hard because the hard work was not rewarded and I couldn't see the end.
LATTE
Yes. I think it would be nice to experience it at least once. Anyway, as a translator, you should be aware that this kind of work is also possible. Just because we work a lot unconditionally doesn't mean we can build a career. It's nice to try this and that, but after doing it, the first thing I do is think about whether this is something that helps me. I hear so much talk about AI and machine translation these days that it's tiring. At times like this, they often talk about having one's own competitiveness and expertise. Every time I was asked such a question or read an article, I thought, please, stop inducing this confrontation. In fact, even if it's not because of machine translation, it's true that each translator should have their own strengths, and only such experts have always survived.
Dana
That's right. That makes me think a lot about what strengths I can make use of. I haven't had as many diverse experiences as a translator for 10 years, so I think I need to do more. However, if you look closely, you don't have to have a lot of experience to find your competitive edge. I think I can find it in what I originally liked. I once had a graduate school senior who specialized in culinary interpretation and translation. However, he had always been interested in cooking. Le Cordon Bleu 2I even went there. If you look at it in a way, it should be said that they are all in agreement (Hehe) When I saw that, I thought it was amazing. I think this is really my own expertise.
Santa
Wow, that's cool. That's right. In fact, expertise means, “Starting today, I'm only going to sell this field!” If you start with it, it's not something that builds up. The hardest part is finding what to bring to your own competitive advantage. So sometimes when I look at translators who specialize in a specific field, I don't think I wanted to do this from the beginning; I often became an expert in that field by working for an in-house translator. There will definitely be an opportunity to discover such a field.
LATTE
I was also busy simply throwing out incoming translation requests from time to time, so I couldn't really become an expert by doing this until when. In fact, our juniors have continued to be trained since then, and translating is something anyone can do, even if they haven't graduated from the Graduate School of Interpretation and Translation. The translations I did this year were probably translations I could entrust to anyone. Anyone can do a good job at translating, even if it's not me. Therefore, as I get older in the future, I think it should be at the level of “I must entrust it to that translator” or “I want that translator to do it as much as possible.”
Dana
I think this is directly related to individual translators promoting themselves. As before, I don't think it would be an advantage to simply list things such as how long I have lived abroad or graduated from the Graduate School of Interpretation and Translation. Basically, there are too many people with this kind of history, and when you actually do translation, there are many things you can't solve with only language skills once you enter a specialized field, whether it's IT or finance. I first graduated from the Graduate School of Interpretation and Translation, so I thought this might be an expert, but even though I don't know if I'm a technical expert in interpreting and translating, I felt that I couldn't use the technology without a background in that field.
LATTE
It really is. I think the translation market itself will continue to grow. I don't know if it's a problem for a while, but I don't think translators are a career group that will be at the crossroads of survival, even because of post-editing. Instead, I think translators should be able to lead the market rather than keep up with the market as it changes. The market's pie is getting smaller, so I'm not blaming the market structure for adapting as it is or disappearing if I lose my job; to put it in a bit of an exaggeration, I have to make my own reason to survive even if most translators disappear.
Santa
I think that's why we should read newspapers, current affairs, and books together every day and take an interest in new technology. (Hehe) I heard that being an interpreter and translator is a job where you have to study for the rest of your life, but in other words, it's probably a job where you can't survive without studying for the rest of your life. In that respect, I'm really excited to see what we'll be working as translators in 10 years.
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1 Corpus (Corpus)
A language resource that collects texts in a form that can be read by a computer for language research. There are various types of media, time, space, and annotation levels depending on the criteria. (Source: Standard Korean Dictionary)
1 Le Cordon Bleu (Corpus)
It is a French cooking school. It was founded in 1895 in Paris, France. It is famous as the setting for the movie “Sabrina” starring Audrey Hepburn. Sookmyung Women's University has a branch school in Korea, and they operate “Le Cordon Bleu Restaurant Management Major” and “Le Cordon Bleu Hospitality Management Graduate School” together with Sookmyung Women's University. (Source: Wikipedia)
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