Translators and Linguists

I know how to say I like to cook, but I’m not sure how to elaborate on it as I’d like to. Any help would be appreciated, but please no online translators. It’s easy to tell if you’ve used one.

The sentence is: My favourite dish to cook is spaghetti.

Pirate has some mistakes. It’s not "zu kochen". "Lieblingsessen" is with capital letter.

The correct sentence is:
Am liebsten koche ich Spaghetti.

You don’t have to translate literally this kind of sentences. It doesn’t sound natural.

I want to become a translator for various languages, and am working on learning them while I am on a two year break from school. I am going to look up schools to attend later on, but I wonder if there are specific programs that I should get into in order to be a translator. I am also thinking of teaching languages as well in ESL programs, but that will come later and it isn’t my primary goal.

Thanks!

The TEFL test & certification is normally used as a sign of competency for teaching other languages… especially in formal university and big business environments.

I have an Irish Essay due that is on the education system. I’ve been looking for translating sites but none of them translate sentences. Is there any decent translating sites or is there none?

Google does a decent job. But its good idea to translate back into English just make sure they share the same phrases.

Apparently a lot of them don’t work, because they translate it word for word, and don’t take in grammar to account. I need one to help for my Spanish Coursework, are they any that people know and trust?

I really have found Google Translator to be the best. It is hard to always get a 100% perfect translation from a machine, but it seems to do the best.

As you get better at Spanish you will be able to see the mistakes and correct them yourself. it does get easier!

Are there any professional unions? Are any licenses required?
I am an English-Russian translator and interpreter living in Russia and just wonder what the work of my colleagues in Europe looks like.

Graham H is correct. The Institute of Linguists cornered the market a few years ago by reaching an agreement that only interpreters who had passed its exams could enter the public service interpreting market. However, you asked not about interpreters, but translators. There are several universities offering courses in translation (and interpreting) and most people find that a qualification from one of these bodies is more than acceptable when seeking to appoint a translator. Certainly this is the case with international organisations. Here is a link showing what one such university can offer. http://www.bath.ac.uk/esml/tpls/

I’m just curious. If you went to another country and needed a translator – in order to place a benefit claim, or because you had been arrested etc, would you be provided with a translator free of charge, or would you be expected to pay for the service?

In the UK translators are provided at the taxpayers’ expense to non English speakers who need one.

In the homelands of the ones that need translators, you do not get benefits for a start. If you want anything and cannot speak the native tongue then you are ignored. If you get arrested, you will basically remain locked up until you can get the british consulate (if it exists) to come to your aid.

It costs several millions per year to fund translators. Good work for the few immigrants who take the time to learn english before coming over.

And which foreign languages would be best to learn? I’m thinking about Russian, Arabic, or an Asian language of some sort.

You are asking the wrong question and getting ahead of yourself. Number one question is, are you military material and which service do you think you identify with. next question should be why are you joining. After that, whichever branch you choose, they have to determine if you even have an affinity for languages. All branches of the military use the same school DLI west or east…depending on language THEY give you. your language is determined by the needs of the service you join and whatever score that obtain on the DLAB (Defense Language Aptitude Battery). If you don’t get at least 100 on that test, you can pretty much forget about being a linguist for the military. However, if you are a native speaker of something the military needs at the time, you can by pass DLI. One other thing, if you have a background that will prevent you from getting a top secret security clearance, you can’t be one either. Now if you would still like to be a linguist, the top five languages last I checked were: Arabic, Pashtu, Chinese, Korean and Farsi.

Do you think that translators should correct a mistake if they noticed it while translating from language into another? and why?

It depends, usually a translator and the client stay in touch during the translation process in case something is unclear. It is up to the client; in most cases they just want a correct translation, so without possible mistakes from the source language. If the translation has to be as accurate as possible (for legal reasons for example), they should do that. It’s like in any other job: the customer is always right!

Specifically for Japanese translations. I want to be able to translate an entire Japanese website into english. If it’s not a direct website translator, I would like something I could copy and paste a block of text into for translation.

Google is better, as is Altavista, but none of them are really any good. You’ll always get something really amusing and almost completely incomprehensible. The best ones let you guess the topic and some of the content, but they certainly aren’t smooth. If you want to experiment, and you have Firefox, you can get a Fox Lingo add on that lets you choose many sources for translations from many languages to many other languages. Your best option is to ask for a Japanese friend to help you and pay them a little bit, or, if it needs to be perfect, find a professional translator. Sometimes Japanese departments at universities can hook you up with someone who isn’t too expensive.

Depends on the language. Arabic/Farsi or Chineese 85-100K