London Language Show - Getting Started

I went to the London Language Show earlier in November – a great day out for Modern Foreign Language (MFL) teachers, translators, interpreters and linguists in general – and was pleased to meet lots of people there who were looking to work as translators.

There were two groups in particular I could identify with – recent graduates and teachers (I recently finished my MA and I also worked as a teacher in a past life) - so here’s some of the advice I heard given that I think might be useful for those groups in particular and anyone thinking of a career in translation generally:

New Language Graduates

Unfortunately for you there are thousands of good language graduates, especially in the European languages, and competition in translation is tough. Few organisations seem to take on in-house translators, and those that do generally require specialist subject knowledge – legal, medical, pharmaceutical, technical, business-related.

There is no particular identified career path for becoming a professional translator, but most of the successful translators I know have developed knowledge of a field before going on to become translators. From what they tell me, real world knowledge is often more important than academic qualifications.

So my Top Tip is: Move to the country of your source language of choice, get a job in an area that interests you and develop that subject knowledge as fully as you can before moving into freelance translation later. It will be a lot more fun than sitting in your room with a pile of dictionaries and will vastly improve your life in other ways too!

Here are some sources of appropriate jobs – I met all these providers at the Language Show:

www.adamsrecruitment.com
www.europa.eu/eures
www.bluelynx.com
www.toplanguagejobs.co.uk

Secondary MFL Teachers looking for a career change

This one is harder unless you are prepared to study for a further degree in a subject area, or to up sticks and join the recent language graduates in starting afresh. There is a lot of competition in freelance translating and unless you have something special to offer it can be hard to make a stable living.

However, I have a plan B which might be of use to you. It is still teaching, but without the sneering uncouth adolescents who don’t see the point in learning languages at all.

The government is pressing to move MFL into primary schools, and many schools are eager to have languages taught. You could contact your local LEA or local primary schools directly, offering them your language teaching skills, suggesting that you could work across the age groups and maybe throughout a cluster of local schools.

(We have a teacher who gives French lessons from Year R to Year 6 every Tuesday, a pattern she repeats on two other days in other local schools.)

The enthusiasm and lack of inhibition of the smaller children will be refreshing and might even restore your faith in education!

Here are some links I found at the Language Show that you may find useful:

www.dfes.gov.uk/languages
www.eurobooks.co.uk
www.linguascope.com
www.talkingdice.co.uk
www.language-stickers.co.uk