"EU translator skills descriptors”
At first sight we can think that to become a translator it is sufficient to know languages, and to transpose the message from one language to another, moreover, most people think that it does not take much effort to be a translator, and if you know two or more languages you can easily do this job.
Nevertheless, as you can see in our history of translation section, you can notice that the job of translator exists almost since the begining of humanity, and it has evolved through the centuries, so we can talk about a fully-fledged discipline. Now talking about translators, because we say that Translation is a full discipline, we understand that the translator need to be more than a fluent bilingual or a polyglot. There are a range of skills that a translator must have beyond the language skills.
Indeed, a translator need to have knowledge about general culture, the current world situation on political and environmental issues, and others subject in the world. But also, about how to use technology to improve his or her work, he or she must be constantly learning new technologies to apply them in his or her work. In addition, he or she has to deal with the clients, he or she needs to know how to talk with them and how to do business.
Because of all of these matters that the translator needs to deal with, a group of expert at the European Commission working on the European Master’s in Translation, have proposed a document with the most important translator skills, with the aim of unifying this area. Here we will present the most important skills presented in this document, that we will aplly in our futur work.
This document is divided into seven competences : TRANSLATION SERVICE PROVISION , LANGUAGE, INTERCULTURAL, INFORMATION MINING, THEMATIC, TECHNOLOGICAL, and RESEARCH. We think that each competence need to be took into account by translators considering that this field is constantly changing and evolving. In addition to that this kind of document can serve to help the reglamentation of the field, and protect both the translator and the client.
For more info here you have the site of EU about translator skills:
