Karen Floyd, director of communications at the Institute of Translation and Interpreting, discusses the potential of a career in translation or interpreting...

The Institute of Translation and Interpreting (ITI) is one of the UK’s primary sources of information on language services for government, industry, the media and the general public with almost 3,000 members who work in a combined total of over 150 languages.

Potential, Variety and Flexibility

A career in translation or interpreting can offer great potential, variety and flexibility - it is a growing industry where no two projects are ever the same. Many professionals working in this field have the luxury of being able to live where they wish and often work the hours they wish. As the information highway that brings nations and businesses together gets faster and bigger, professional linguists who can facilitate communication among people who speak different languages are seeing their careers flourish.

A freelance translator can work anywhere in the world at any time of the day, providing deadlines are met. Many translators specialise in a particular field, such as engineering, law, finance or pharmaceuticals, while others are generalists and will translate a variety of business documents and even personal correspondence on behalf of their clients. For in-house translators it is slightly different – they sometimes work for large translation companies, international businesses such as Shell, or important organisations such as the European Commission. They will generally work set hours from a specific location and specialise in a particular field.

Interpreters are mostly freelance, unless employed by the European Commission, the United Nations, or similar organisations. The work of an interpreter varies greatly and includes general business interpreting, conference interpreting, police and court interpreting and community interpreting.

Current Demand

This varies depending on whether people are looking for translation or interpreting. For translation into English, recent statistics from ITI show the highest demand originates from source – or original – texts in German, French, Spanish, Italian, Dutch and Russian. For translation where English is the source text, the most requested target languages are French, German, Italian, Spanish, Greek and Russian. Other popular requests include translations from and into Arabic, Japanese, the Northern Germanic (Scandinavian) languages, Turkish, and Eastern European languages.

For interpreting the most sought after source languages are English, French, Russian, Italian, Spanish and Polish; while the most requested target languages are English, Polish, French, Russian, Spanish and Japanese. Again we see quite a high demand for certain Eastern European languages such as Czech, Romanian and Bulgarian, but much less demand for the Northern Germanic languages.

British Sign Language is also an important source interpreting language.

Carving A Niche

There is a particular shortage of interpreters who can work with Arabic, Danish, Korean and some Eastern European languages. There is also a growing shortage of interpreters (and translators) whose mother tongue is English, so anyone reading this who is considering a career in translation and interpreting with English as their mother tongue is encouraged to pursue the dream!

For those who pass the necessary exams, the European Commission and United Nations are excellent employers. NGOs such as Oxfam can offer some solid, real world experience. In the commercial arena people need to seek out large companies, such as those in oil, gas, energy and telecommunications.