Re: OT: Paging linguists

In article
<9723cf17-f181-40e3-8232-967677134205@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>,
Henry <snogfest_hosebeast@xxxxxxxxx> wrote:
On Mar 1, 6:32 am, des <d...@xxxxxxxx> wrote:
In article <70qqb2Fhm7s...@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>,
Paul Carmichael <wibbleypa...@xxxxxxxxx> wrote:

Looking at this:

<http://www.iol.org.uk/qualifications/exams_diptrans.asp>

...with a view to going back to work in the not too distant.

Anyone here had any experience of this? Is it a widely accepted
qualification?

More to the point, will a 47 y/o somewhat unacademic bloke stand any
chance of passing it? ie; I don't remember studying English grammar at
school, which probably means I didn't. I know more about spanish grammar
than most spanish adults that I know (admittedly I live in a rural
backwater), but this qualification requires an equivalent knowledge of
grammar in both languages.

I'm thinking 2 years of fairly intensive studying ("intensive" by my
definition ie; a couple of days a week).

As long as you know that there's a difference between translating
(written word) and interpretation (spoken word), and you know which one
to go for.

You can forget about translating into Spanish; at least for another 25
years. It is _very_ rare to be able to translate into a language other
than your first, unless you started the target, i.e. second language
relatively young. By 'translate', I of course mean 'translate to the
standard required of a translator'. There are far too many idiomatic
expressions for you to be able to translate them as a native, and your
work would suffer.

The only work you can really anticipate getting is translation into your
native language.

As for whether it's worth it, only you can answer that.

a (English) mate of mine translates German to English for a living,
been doing it for about 15 years. Technical stuff, mostly medical and
insurance, but car stuff too.

I considered going into translation about six or seven years ago, but
it's (IMHO) boring as ***. Who wants to sit in front of his computer
every single day?

Won't do English ==> German, "too hard" (what other language besides
German has 9 words for "the" ?!) though to me his written and spoken
German were as good as a native German's.

It can't be 'too hard' as the Germans do it all the time.

I believe that it's also about saturation, maybe if my friend was
living in Germany he'd "go the other way" too.

That depends on whether he started it young enough. If he came to the
language as an adult, then he's always going to make mistakes. He might
get so good that the mistakes will be few and far between. But he'll
still make them, and thus shouldn't try a target language that isn't his
native one.

D.

--
des | 'what does it matter what he posts?'
.

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