Bryan Parker <puntspeedchunk@yahoo.com> wrote:

> >> If you had any professional advice to offer a
> >> charming 17 year old Japanese girl with dreams of
> >> becoming a translator, what would it be?
> >
> >Bizarre ambition, but who am I to persuade her otherwise?
> >
> >Um.... What field is she planning to translate in, or is she under the
> >impression that merely studying two languages at college would somehow
> >make her employable?
> 
> Translation is just an elective course at the Jr.
> college that she'll be attending. 

So it's probably just textbook stuff, translating well-edited text both
ways, to produce painfully accurate translations? First big surprise in
the real world would be to find that authors never write that well....

> We only talked
> about this for a few minutes tonight. I'll see her
> again in a couple of weeks and we'll have a lot
> mor etime to chat. What field would you go into if
> you could start over again now, knowing what you
> already know?

Uh.... You mean what would I have done if I'd developed an ambition to
be a translator at age 17? For a start, the idea would have been shot
down as being unsuitable, backed with yet another long rant on how I
shouldn't settle for a technician's job when I have the abilities and
backing to chose any career I want. Then I'd've had to be more forceful
with the Careers Mistress who laughed at my suggestion of going to Japan
on a Mombusho scholarship at age 18, on the grounds that I'd already
failed Latin and only scraped a bare pass in French. 

But I'd still go through with the engineering degree and I'd still do it
_before_ doing any formal training in translation (not that I ever got
such training, of course). But doing the degree in the foreign language
while reading around the subject in my own would've been so much more
useful. 

A better field at the moment would be bio-chemical or medical or
economics, I suppose, but I doubt I could've ever got up to speed there,
since I have little interest in them. As Ryan says, it has to be
something you're interested in. 

________________________________________________________________________
                   Louise Bremner (log at gol dot com)
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