Stereotyping Translators
Tell me what you translate and I’ll tell you who you really are!
I’m a translator who specializes in marketing. This means I am rather on the creative side of the craft. On top, I specialize in IT and digital media and, well… Let me say that I’ve been translating a lot of marketing materials related to the Internet of Things, Industry 4.0 and Smart Factory lately. So when I uploaded yet another blog piece to my CAT* tool tonight, I was like: OH EM GEE, I can’t take it anymore! Guess I get bored pretty fast…
This realization made me think about myself and other translators who specialize in different fields. Here’s my take on eight of the most common stereotypes among translators.
*) CAT: Computer aided translation tool. No, it’s not machine translation!
“I do marketing translations. Does that make me hyperactive?”
Let’s be honest. The typical marketing translator rarely has extensive documents to translate. The elaborate jobs will be your occasional complete website. Or an expensive brochure. Otherwise, the projects range at an average of 500 to 2,000 words. When we do get a larger project (in my books, anything over 8 standard pages is huge!), it takes quite a lot of effort to stay concentrated (read: feeling satisfied). While I’d describe myself as a…
