A good education, albeit not necessarily in a translation school, is necessary to work as a good freelance translator. General knowledge is the corner stone for every translator since translation projects deal with numerous subject matters.
Since translating is about ideas rather than mere words, it is of an utmost importance to understand the subject one has to translate.
Therefore, while a translation degree will most certainly help you to embrace the career of freelance translator it is not a must. Typically, very complex engineering documents will be better translated by an expert in the field than by a translator who doesn't fully understand the explanations contained in a text.
While the technical knowledge of an expert will help to translate such a technical text, it is recommended to have it edited by a linguist to make sure the text is linguistically relevant and doesn’t contain obvious style and grammar mistales. Style is not always the key for such tech documents, but it doesn’t hurt if the translation is linguistically correct as well.
If you intend to tune-up your educational background, feel free to check the followings sites which may offer online learning opportunities.
- Thanks to its large Campus, the Oregon State University can offer interesting online undergraduate and graduate degrees.
