Translator as a job

Translator as a job – written by Jenny Park, PhD

I am a college Poli Sci professor and started translation as a side job because there was so much demand for my Korean to English translation. My first job was from Alabama Power Company who wanted me to translate a brochure from English into Korean. At that time I was a Professor of International Relations at Emory University, and they couldn’t find a Korean translator, so they asked Korean Community Center. I had signed up at the local Korean Community Center as volunteers to help Korean people who don’t speak English. The KCC contacted me to do the job, and I did it with pleasure in two hours. I was going to do it for free, but they paid me $80 an hour…this was about 27 years ago….

Then I went back to Korea, where I got married and stayed for 10 years as college professor. I volunteered to interprete Korean sermons to English for foreign visitors to Youido Full Gospel Church, the mega church with 500,000 members.

One day I interpeted for an American professor, and people started asking me for all kinds of translation and interpreting… newsletters, journals, speeches… I was writing speeches for Ministers of Korean government…

The university that I was teaching International Relations had about 40 foreign students, and the school asked me to simultaneously interpret Korean sermons into English every Thursday. And I enjoyed translation and interpretation so much that it became a full time job and my college teaching was like my side job in terms of the time I spent.

When I went back to the U.S. to raise my kids there, I became a State of California court certified interpreter and started my own school teaching translation and interpretation. My translation company was doing so well it was growing 50% every year even during economic recession. So I am a full time translator and interpreter now. How do I like my job as translator?

I love it. I think it is the best job that benefits from the most recent technological developments.

First, I enjoy the freedom it brings to my life. No pressure, no boss, no competitors, and financial stability.

Thanks to the technological development, I can sit in my most comfortable chair, watching my favorite show, and communicate with my employees and colleagues online. Microsoft Word is such a great tool, compared to when I first started translating. At first I wrote down on a paper, and typed on Smith Corona which made so much noise and hurt my fingers. Printing took such a long time all night, and I had to tear off those dotted sides as well as each page.

But now, we have Microsoft. We have laser printer. My project managers receive an assignment from Israel by email and click it off to my translator in Korea, and click off the translation to a proofreader in Germany. No shipping, no warehouse, no custom, no hassle like in other trading businesses. It takes much shorter time to do translation thanks to the help of many softwares such as Trados and Nuance pdf converter. Online dictionaries are great. And I love how much I learn about other fields, how my vocabulrary is increasing, and how fast and accurate I can get. Translation is so much fun like a puzzle game and brings pleasure to my heart.

You do what you like, and what you are good in. Isn’t that the greatest job? This is the greatest time in human history to be a translator.

Translator as a job

Translator as a job – written by Jenny Park, PhD

I love it. I think it is the best job that benefits from the most recent technological developments.

First, I enjoy the freedom it brings to my life. No pressure, no boss, no competitors, and financial stability.

You do what you like, and what you are good in. Isn’t that the greatest job? This is the greatest time in human history to be a translator.

Helpful tips in translating Korean to English

Helpful tips in translating Korean to English

Translation is a field which seems to benefit the most from recent development in technology. Now you can translate 5 times faster than before when you didn’t have those technological benefits.

There is a degree of difficulty in Korean translation. Birth certificates are the easiest ones when you have a templet. It is good to have a templet for various kinds of certificates, basic relations, family relations, family registry, death certificates, etc. Then there are personal letters that are very easy. You can use “Windows speech recognition mode” and translate in very short time since it will type for you.

However “Windows speech recognition mode” is not very good for complicated details. It is rather annoying to be correcting so many mistakes that the machine made. And do not ever use a machine translation. It doesn’t work for Korean at the current state, and I don’t think it will ever work especially for anything more complex than a very simple sentences.

Dragon Naturally Speaking is a great tool when you translate a book or long documents. You can even lie down on your sofa, and read into a recorder. Then connect it to a computer and it types the content. But you have to do a lot of proofreading and correcting which could also be a bit annoying.

A large volume of work with repeated words and tables are also very easy when you use Trados. It automatically translates the repeated words. But it is not very effective for long and complicated sentences.

There are many ways to reduce time and increase effectiveness. One of it that I really like is Review>right click spelling and grammar>Customize Quick Access Tool Bar>Proofing>Auto correct options. Especially in natural science or engineering documents such as patents, there are not too many literary expressions, and the same words are repeated many times. I enter anything longer than 4 letters into 4 letters by typing the first 3 letters and the last 1. For example,

Structure -> stre

Development-> devt

International-> intl

Then when I type those four letters, Word automatically changes it to the original word. You can be twice or three times more productive using this method, especially for patents.

Many original documents these days come into the form of pdf. I use Nuance PDF professional converter to put text boxes and write directly on pdf. It is very convenient especially for legal exhibits when you are required to mirror image the original. It takes a little time to get used to it, but after a while, it is much better than writing on Word. Abbey Fine Reader is also good, but too complicated to manipulate sometimes.

It is helpful to have online dictionary on all the time on the screen, and my favorite Korean to English dictionary is naver.com. Naver is much better than Daum in terms of English dictionary. Usually when I look up some technical words on the net, they are not in any dictionary. Korean dictionary is so outdated it does not have translation for most of the words that I look up. Then search it in naver.com, and they give you currently used translations, especially in expert academic articles. Click open and they usually have at least the title translated. That’s where I get most of the terms that don’t appear in dictionaries. If you cannot find them even there, which rarely happens, then you are the first one to translate that word from Korean to English. Be the first one and take the liberty of using your imagination and creativity.

But the most important source of course is my memory and linguistic intuition which no machine could match up to. In order to optimize my brain condition, I usually watch Korean hallyu dramas from my most comfortable translation chair when I translate. It takes off the pressure of concentrating too much and lubricates the language part of the brain to make the translation flow naturally, and provides fun.

This must be the greatest time to be a translator. Translation is like a puzzle game, requiring concentration and detail orientation, and I enjoy it so much in my spare time. I just love how my speed and accuracy improve over time, along with vocabulary and expressions stored in my language bank. Then you also have access to rich information, not limited to your narrow major field. A translator is a great job!!