Job as a translator: How?

[Azier the Swordsman]

I want to begin a new career as a translator sometime in the future (Japanese to English or Spanish to English) in order to save up money for Full Sail. Question is: How do I do it? Do I have to get a degree?

[andyroo]

Translaters in the United States are particularly useful in Hospitals. If you live in a heavily hispanic area then chances are the doctors are going to need someone to translate since not all of them can speak English or even want to and not all doctors in the U.S. know multiple languages, in this case Español. That's all I can think for now. I guess being some sort of a guide in some industry would be another job.

[Ashley]

Andy hit it right on the head. My mother's a nurse and the hospitals have a huge demand for translators; and they get paid big bucks too. ESPECIALLY if you specialize in a less-than-popular language too, like Portugese or Mandarin. But definately go hit up your local hospitals and I can almost guarantee you'll get a position.

[shooraijin]

Hospital translators usually need some sort of certification, but this isn't hard to come by and many community colleges or specialized medical vocational schools offer them.

For Spanish<->English, usually a separate language degree isn't necessary due to the high demand for translators (and this is also true for Mandarin Chinese and Vietnamese in some areas), but many jobs will require certification or some sort of testing to establish competency, and those that don't usually don't require a full time translator. What languages are in demand in your area depends on where you are

For other less common languages, you will probably need a degree of some sort, at least an Associate's with some sort of certification, or a Bachelor's equivalent. Specialized occupational translators may even need some specific training in that particular field.

[cbwing0]

Español.

What do you do to get the n like that?

[Azier the Swordsman]

I am studying the Japanese language currently, however, I plan on going to college to learn Spanish. Spanish is definately going to be in high demand where I live, where there are a lot of Hispanic people.

[andyroo]

What do you do to get the n like that?

I used & #241;. Get rid of the space between the & and #, then you will get ñ . You can also use the internation keyboard by going to start>settings>control panel>Kebyboard; in Keyboard click on Language tab, click properties select United Stats-International, click ok, and click ok again for the main window. The way you would type the ñ would be by typing ~n which would create ñ . I don't like using it though because it requires you to click the same special character (that would be ~ and ' and `) twice for it to show up. If there is a different way for XP somebody speak. I think Shoo has explained how to do something similar on Mac OS X in another thread- don't know where though.

[shooraijin]

In Mac OS X, go to the System Preferences app, then select International and Input Menu. Click Character Palette, and then you can choose characters of any kind from a list available from the little flag that appears in the menu bar now.

There are other input methods for various languages, but the only ones I use on a regular basis are Español and 日本語.