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Poll: English is for you: Thread poster: ProZ.com Staff
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Xanthippe
France
Local time: 15:06
Member (2008)
Italian to French
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SITE LOCALIZER
I usually translate from french into italian and from italian to french.
so, for me, english is not a "source" language neither a target language.
for my outsourcers, english is a target language, because they are english native speakers.
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Nesrin 
United Kingdom
Local time: 14:06
English to Arabic
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| A twist to the question | Jul 15, 2008 |
This is an interesting poll - particularly in view of its (perhaps not so surprising) results: Less than 5% of respondents do not translate from or into English.
So the question that should follow up from that is: Is it still possible to make a living translating from and into two languages none of which is English?
I started off mainly as a German>Arabic translator (with English>Arabic as my second combination), ... See more This is an interesting poll - particularly in view of its (perhaps not so surprising) results: Less than 5% of respondents do not translate from or into English.
So the question that should follow up from that is: Is it still possible to make a living translating from and into two languages none of which is English?
I started off mainly as a German>Arabic translator (with English>Arabic as my second combination), but very quickly saw the German>Arabic jobs I get dwindle to something like 5% of the work I do. A lot of this may have to do with the fact that I live in the UK (I may not be the first choice for Germany-based clients), but I can't help thinking that there's just not that much need out there for this combination, and probably much less for even more exotic combinations.
Should we then advise all budding non-English speaking translators to only specialise in English, and to forget about all other languages in the world? It may be sad but keeping the business going is what it's all about, isn't it?
[Edited at 2008-07-15 11:01] ▲ Collapse
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Heidi C
Local time: 09:06
English to Spanish
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| Hold your horses!!! | Jul 15, 2008 |
Nesrin wrote:
This is an interesting poll - particularly in view of its (perhaps not so surprising) results: Less than 5% of respondents do not translate from or into English.
So the question that should follow up from that is: Is it still possible to make a living translating from and into two languages none of which is English?
To be able to jump from A to C, you should first ask yourself: How many people who do not translate from or into English (let alone use English) will answer a poll written in English?
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Nesrin
United Kingdom
Local time: 14:06
English to Arabic
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| Ok, <holding horses> | Jul 15, 2008 |
Heidi C wrote: To be able to jump from A to C, you should first ask yourself: How many people who do not translate from or into English (let alone use English) will answer a poll written in English?
But I'm not really just going by the poll results, but by my own experience and casual observations. I'm sure certain combinations are still in demand. But wouldn't it be interested to know how much of the actual VOLUME of translation work done worldwide is from or into English? (not just how many translators do which languages). I suspect the results may only be slightly less drastic than the poll results.
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