How to become a translator into L2?

[Cavesa]

Of course there are people earning their living as translators from their native language into English. The quality sometimes really suffers, that depends on the skills of the person and requirements of the company. And they are not used for books, sure. But there are a few conditions that make this work:

1.lack of English natives speaking the other language. That is definitely the case of Czech, not sure whether it can apply to Spanish. There needs to be much bigger demand for translation to English than offer of English native translators.

2.the "reverse" translator is much cheaper, that is another huge reason why companies don't go for an English native instead. A Czech native is several times cheaper than an English native, that is one of the main conditions for this to work. I am not sure about Spain and other Spanish speaking countries. It would be so in some of them, but probably not all.

3.it might be hard to get started and get your first few jobs without connections. The potential employers and/or customers are likely to be vary of someone just claiming they can do this, without past experience. Because they are used to people lying about their language skills (especially English) and everyone knows how badly these translations sometimes go.

A good step forward can be certification. In some countries, it is possible to get a translator certification (a specific C2 test) outside of universities. If there is such an option in your country, use it. If not, I'd recommend a general C2 exam.

[Jiwon]

Jiwon - I commend you for your exceptional level of English. However, there are certain errors/awkward constructions in your translations that belie the fact that you are a non-native speaker.

"Lyrics to this children's song is..." should be "Lyrics to this children's song ARE ..."

"...who longs to go back to his hometown of his childhood memories..." is awkward with the repetition of "his." A native speaker would more likely say "...who longs to go back to THE hometown of his childhood memories..."

"...they had to leave their motherland during 1900's" would likely be translated by a native speaker as "...they had to leave their motherland during THE 1900's."

I'm not trying to be picky as I think you have a wonderful command of English. However, these inconsistencies highlight the reasons why most translators stick to translating into their native language.

Thanks for picking those out. Yes, I still have lots to learn, and do make some mistakes here and there. These mistakes really do embarrass me - now that you picked them out they do look 'wrong' and 'strange'. Well, at least I don't mix up their, there and they're - and that's a mistake even natives make. In my defense, most of us who've spent their formative years abroad do talk about how we are never truly "fluent" in any language. We jokingly call each other "zero-linguals" since our command of neither Korean nor English is perfect.

The point I was about to prove was the fact that there is much more to "native usage of a language" than being "grammatically correct". I never feel comfortable writing in Korean - I just never had the chance to develop my own writing style in the language.