Therefore, this newly-found translator occupation is something that started from the bottom-up. Friends and family members often turned to me to help them translate stuff into English or Italian, or from one of these languages to Romanian, although I had never really considered making a living or a career out of it. But eventually I thought: why not? Even if perhaps I wouldn't do it as a main, or only occupation, I decided to give it a go.
And there I was. Last autumn I passed the certification exams organized by the Romanian Ministry of Culture, both for Italian and English, and today I went to withdraw the certificate. It was an interesting experience, and I wanted to share with you how it went, what I liked and what I disliked.
- You must sustain these official exams, unless you are a languages graduate, specialized in Translation and Interpretation (different from Foreign Languages and Literatures). Otherwise, you are not recognized as a translator.
- You can choose a working domain for your exam: legal, economic, technical, social and political sciences, medical, literature, art, etc.
- Now that we mention, if you want to translate for notaries, law firms or state institutions, you must sustain the legal module of the exam, and afterwards obtain also an authorization from the Ministry of Justice. I didn't go for that one, as it wasn't my priority.
- The exam is not cheap, and I have to say that it is yet another display of useless greed by the Romanian state, but I digress. :P Think about 90 euros per exam (which is quite a lot for an average Romanian), including only one language combination (source language A > target language B) + one domain. If you want to translate from language B to language A, you have to pay for another exam. Not justified, if you ask me!
- The exam itself (or exams, two of them, in my case), were the most enjoyable part, as far as I was concerned. It wasn't too difficult, nor too easy. You have to translate a short text in two hours, which is reasonable enough.
- Be careful about how the text flows, and don't be afraid to play with words, especially if you pick literature or art.
- The text might contain one or two words that you don't know even in your native language what they mean. A good way to escape is to use an alternative that wouldn't change the sense of the phrase very much. ;)
- You will be allowed to have bilingual dictionnaries with you during the exam (but some of the aforementioned words cannot be found in the dictionnary either :P ). Make sure you buy some good dictionnaries, with new and updated terms, and even specialized terms, according to your exam domain, but also to the domains that you intend to work on in the future.
And this was it. I saw it more as a formality (although quite expensive), and a go-ahead to do this activity officially. However, my advice for anyone doing this job is to never stop learning, never stop developing your vocabulary, or even studying new languages. Especially more "exotic" ones, if you are brave enough, as these are better paid than mainstream European languages. Good luck to me and to all those of you who embarked on this path! :)
