| Pages in topic: [1 2 3 4] > | Looking for a career change and feeling "passionate" about languages and translation? Thread poster: Philippe Etienne
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Hello there,
This article doesn't mention the translation business or freelance work specifically, but I find it pinpoints some issues relevant to our profession:
https://www.bbc.com/worklife/article/20221010-the-workers-leaving-their-dream-jobs
Extracts:
"This practice of passion-exploitation is particularly p... See more Hello there,
This article doesn't mention the translation business or freelance work specifically, but I find it pinpoints some issues relevant to our profession:
https://www.bbc.com/worklife/article/20221010-the-workers-leaving-their-dream-jobs
Extracts:
"This practice of passion-exploitation is particularly prominent in creative industries; a 2019 survey showed most creative jobs in the UK – such as journalist, fashion stylist, musician and game designer – fell below the annual average salary."
"the research found that people viewed treating workers poorly – such as asking employees to perform additional tasks or work more hours without pay – as more legitimate when workers were presumed to be passionate about their work."
"A lot of people say, ‘I wanted freedom, freedom away from the nine-to-five.’ So, they got the cool job and they realised, ‘Oh my God, there’s no freedom here. I’ve got to work even harder to earn as much as I did before."
Philippe ▲ Collapse
| | | | | Very interesting! | Oct 21, 2022 |
Great article. Thanks for sharing Philippe!
| | | | Dan Lucas 
United Kingdom
Local time: 15:16
Member (2014)
Japanese to English
| The passion fashion | Oct 21, 2022 |
Philippe Etienne wrote:
So, they got the cool job and they realised, ‘Oh my God, there’s no freedom here. I’ve got to work even harder to earn as much as I did before."
Thank you Philippe, interesting to see this kind of counterblast to an idea that has been orthodoxy, at least in the media, for some years now.
I know a local farmer who is 70, but who looks as if he is in his late 50s. He has lived and worked in the same place all his life, loves what he does, and genuinely seems very happy. I'm sure there are people, like him, who discover their true vocation and find it deeply fulfilling to the point that a relative lack of income would not be a major issue.
That tiny minority aside, this overselling of "passion" is tedious and wrongheaded. I couldn't give two figs for passion when it comes to somebody doing their job, provided that they're competent and conscientious.
Of course, if somebody has a burning desire to engage in a certain career or line of work then I think they should by all means go for it. But most people don't have that kind of drive and clarity. My observation is that most people are content with work that pays reasonably well and that - at least most of the time - doesn't involve experiences that are actively unpleasant. And yet the zeitgeist is such that some (younger?) people seem to feel they need to claim that they feel passionate even when they're not.
I think Steve Jobs is partly to blame, as he was one of the chief proselytisers of passion. Yes, he himself certainly was passionate and took risks as a student, but by the time he was 25 he was an extremely wealthy man. It's easy to lecture others about passion when you have a $120 million (1980 dollars!) safety net to fall into if things don't go well. For every Steve Jobs figure, how many hundreds of thousands of others blight their own lives chasing fantasies?
“We do actually work for money,” she says. “There’s no shame in that. Most of us work because we need the money.” Indeed we do. If fewer translators were "passionate" about what they did and a bit more pragmatic, maybe more of them would actually earn a living wage, or find it within themselves to change to a career in which they have a chance of earning one.
Dan
[Edited at 2022-10-21 20:28 GMT]
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Thanks for sharing, Philippe.
This reminds me of Cal Newport's book "So Good They Can't Ignore You: Why Skills Trump Passion in the Quest for Work You Love".
His other book, "Deep work", is a personal favorite and also pertinent to our field.
[Edited at 2022-10-22 02:52 GMT]
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Michael Newton
United States
Local time: 10:16
Japanese to English
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| career change. | Oct 26, 2022 |
Get an MBA or a Master's in Finance. That way you can exult in your passion for language and pay the rent at the same time.
| | | | David GAY
Local time: 16:16
English to French
+ ...
Michael Newton wrote:
Get an MBA or a Master's in Finance. That way you can exult in your passion for language and pay the rent at the same time.
not so sure. The only thing which is guaranteed is a huge student debt and it s very difficult to find a good job unless you have a certain background. After all, well paid jobs are very sought after and you often need to have connections to land a job. Good jobs are scarce and you ll need to pay a very high rent, you ll have very high expenses . For instance you ll need to buy very expensive suits and dry clean them regularly. Quite expensive
[Edited at 2022-10-26 16:21 GMT]
[Edited at 2022-10-26 16:56 GMT]
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Are there really translators who feel passionate about their work? I find that so hard to imagine.
| | | | Kaspars Melkis
United Kingdom
Local time: 15:16
English to Latvian
+ ...
| I am passionate about translation | Nov 1, 2022 |
Gerard Barry wrote:
Are there really translators who feel passionate about their work? I find that so hard to imagine.
You can do any work just for money, but it is much easier when you have more than superficial interest in what you do. However, I suspect that many translators are passionate about wrong things. They often think that their duty is to protect the language, fight against undesirable language variants and be otherwise a jerk to people whose language use does not conform to their own.
I am not interested in all those things. According to linguistic studies, languages do not get spoiled, they change. There might be many social and politic factors why one language becomes more popular than another, but I am indifferent to this as well. All languages and language variants are functionally equivalent, and I don't really have a preference to one or another above practical considerations.
My interest mostly lies in my work to facilitate communication and translate in a way that is easy to understand by the target audience. I care not so much about “language purity” norms but rather about what the readers expect and can understand. There was a study which concluded that most legal writing is hard to understand by lay persons not because of specific terminology but because it is poorly written without real necessity. The same applies to scientific and medical texts.
Specialists in their fields are not always the best writers, therefore translators can often produce output that is easier to read and understand than original source texts. We have constrains that we cannot depart from the source text phrasing too much and yet we often can make a difference. If we don't care about readability then we stop providing added value and our job gets replaced by machines.
[Edited at 2022-11-01 06:55 GMT]
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Sadek_A
Local time: 18:16
English to Arabic
+ ...
Kaspars Melkis wrote:
There was a study which concluded that most legal writing is hard to understand by lay persons not because of specific terminology but because it is poorly written without real necessity. The same applies to scientific and medical texts.
I'd say "overly," not "poorly".
Kaspars Melkis wrote:
Specialists in their fields are not always the best writers, therefore translators can often produce output that is easier to read and understand than original source texts.
Finally, the honest judgment surfaced!
Similarly, language-degree-holding translators can often produce output that is easier to read and understand than specialist-field degree-holding translators.
I know you will retract now!
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Sadek_A wrote: Kaspars Melkis wrote:
There was a study which concluded that most legal writing is hard to understand by lay persons not because of specific terminology but because it is poorly written without real necessity. The same applies to scientific and medical texts. I'd say "overly," not "poorly". Kaspars Melkis wrote:
Specialists in their fields are not always the best writers, therefore translators can often produce output that is easier to read and understand than original source texts. Finally, the honest judgment surfaced! Similarly, language-degree-holding translators can often produce output that is easier to read and understand than specialist-field degree-holding translators. I know you will retract now!
I didn't read that as a judgemental comment against translators with specialist degrees. Translators do often produce output that is a clear improvement on the original. It takes a mix of subject matter expertise and writing skills to do this.
My field is engineering (which I have a degree in, as it happens). I can confirm that engineers are not always brilliant writers.
| | | | James Plastow
United Kingdom
Local time: 15:16
Member (2020)
Japanese to English
"All languages and language variants are functionally equivalent" misses the beauty and diversity of individual languages. You might as well say "All humans are functionally equivalent"!!
| | | | Sadek_A
Local time: 18:16
English to Arabic
+ ...
Rachel Waddington wrote:
I didn't read that as a judgemental comment against translators with specialist degrees. Translators do often produce output that is a clear improvement on the original. It takes a mix of subject matter expertise and writing skills to do this.
My field is engineering (which I have a degree in, as it happens). I can confirm that engineers are not always brilliant writers.
I know it's a sore spot for you [& the rest of outsiders] because you don't have a language degree; still, I have the right to echo the rule established in almost every white-collar profession: get the relevant degree, then join!
So, let's not lose concept of what is right and what is wrong, just because [we] are benefiting from the wrong.
As for myself, I'm frankly sick to my stomach over that line that says "If they [people w/o the right degree] think they can do this thing, let them do it"!
And, let's be reasonable: Are there special cases of people who would excel at something without having studied it? Yes. BUT, those are SPECIAL CASES, hence scarce, an exception not the rule. And, such special cases almost always don't get into that THING through APPLYING because they THINK they are GOOD, but through RECRUITMENT because others KNOW they are!
Nowadays, even those special cases are complaining about the infestation by regular-outsiders!
For the difference between a translator who relevantly-studied and someone who didn't: Have them both handle the same non template-based, non glossary-associated, creative text, and measure both their performances in terms of speed, accuracy, completion and overall quality.
BTW, here in my country, and I'm guessing in other countries too, barbers (hairdressers) used to [and, perhaps, some still] give injections, put/remove urinary catheters, conduct circumcisions/FGMs [sexist and discriminatory against males who get butchered all the time, btw], drain abscesses, and stitch mild wounds.
They picked up those skills from Health-Care workers, i.e. doctors and nurses, probably to help cover a demand in uncovered/overwhelmed areas and/or for "simpler/softer" prices, and some of them really excelled at those [lower-level] Health-Care tasks; however, they never dared to collectively call themselves Doctors, compete with them, nor do/undo any complicated procedure they [the doctors] did.
And, whenever things would go wrong during one of those tasks, those barbers would immediately instruct "take him/her/them to the doctors"!
I'm seriously worried, so should be every other sane person, because right now Doctors of Translation are being industry-wide replaced with Barbers.
Having the former totally alienated, cast-away, and intentionally forced to completely leave the profession, there will come a point where no one will be able to say "take those failed texts to the Doctors"!
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Kay Denney
France
Local time: 16:16
French to English
I always wanted a job I could be passionate about because I saw my Dad trudging off to work every day and hating it, and I told myself I wouldn't do that.
I'm good at my job precisely because I'm passionate about it. I really really want to find the best possible words to translate the source text. Apparently the hormone rush you get when you learn a pithy new word involves the same hormones as a roll in the hay, which could explain quite a bit.
I don't fall into the trap of being ... See more I always wanted a job I could be passionate about because I saw my Dad trudging off to work every day and hating it, and I told myself I wouldn't do that.
I'm good at my job precisely because I'm passionate about it. I really really want to find the best possible words to translate the source text. Apparently the hormone rush you get when you learn a pithy new word involves the same hormones as a roll in the hay, which could explain quite a bit.
I don't fall into the trap of being prepared to do the job for little money though, because it's the money that proves to me that my work is valued. Compliments help, but people who are free with compliments and stingy with money are among the most hypocritical of abusers IME. ▲ Collapse
| | | | Kaspars Melkis
United Kingdom
Local time: 15:16
English to Latvian
+ ...
| I love linguistic diversity | Nov 3, 2022 |
James Plastow wrote:
"All languages and language variants are functionally equivalent" misses the beauty and diversity of individual languages. You might as well say "All humans are functionally equivalent"!!
Language is a collective phenomenon, not an individual one. Surely, some people, native speakers or not, have worse language skills than others but collectively all languages are functionally equal, probably in the same way as humans of all nationalities or races are functionally equal. That's what linguistic studies have taught me anyway.
Beauty is a subjective judgement. If it seems that some languages are inadequate in expressing certain scientific or artistic ideas, then it is only because we haven't sufficiently tried to translate these ideas into the given language.
| | | | | "Passion" and "passive" are related, after all | Nov 3, 2022 |
So if you're happy to take a passive stance by being passionate about something, it's no wonder someone will want to exploit that. I'm not saying nobody has ever exploited me, but when they did, it wasn't because of passion. I make conscious decisions to do my best in any job assigned to me, to keep improving, to work as if money didn't exist. I never asked anyone for a pay rise. If the employer does something I find seriously inappropriate, I just quit (most of my employers have been smart enou... See more So if you're happy to take a passive stance by being passionate about something, it's no wonder someone will want to exploit that. I'm not saying nobody has ever exploited me, but when they did, it wasn't because of passion. I make conscious decisions to do my best in any job assigned to me, to keep improving, to work as if money didn't exist. I never asked anyone for a pay rise. If the employer does something I find seriously inappropriate, I just quit (most of my employers have been smart enough to know how deal with me). The article from the original post suggests that the times of unselfish servanthood are gone. I don't even think I can describe this part of my value system in a way that wouldn't make joke material out of it, so I'd better leave it.
As for translation, it does bring you the joy of creation from time to time, but it's not something that can properly fuel a passion. Channeling your creativity into texts that will sell products and services for someone else (which is a big part of many translators' lives) is not a motivating factor for me. I prefer to feel good about my humble role in big industrial projects and scientific research, but that comes at a cost of having to deal with engineer speak a lot. My first jobs were almost exclusively legal, and when I was first tasked with making print-ready translations of articles, I had to admit the fact that I'd picked up some nasty language habits from lawyers, which made my texts stodgy. So, all in all, this profession throws all sorts of things at you; even if you're passionate at first, you'll probably dump your passion soon, and if after dumping it you still have something to keep you going, then you're probably in the right place.
Oh, and I'm on the 'beauty over function' side. If a language has no word for something, it borrows a word from another language. However, some languages in some fields do it gracefully while others corrupt themselves with borrowings. And it takes tons of sound judgment to distinguish between language ideas that are brilliant and those that are simply functional (and will probably be discarded later on through natural selection). I believe most people here are familiar with the sheer pleasure you can get from listening to a masterfully worded speach or reading a masterfully written book.
[Edited at 2022-11-03 11:40 GMT]
[Edited at 2022-11-03 12:28 GMT] ▲ Collapse
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