Speaker 1: Hello my people, I'm Ricky from Bilingual Vlogs. Thank you for coming back to another video. Last year I made a video talking about how I became an official Spanish to English, English to Spanish translator at my church. And today I want to teach you guys how to become official translators or interpreters. I want to answer all your questions and steer you in the right direction if that is something that you want to pursue. For the people who may not know what the differences are between the two, basically they both do the same thing just in different forms. They're both conveying messages from one language to another language. That's all translation and interpretation is. But more specifically, translation is written. It's never spoken. It's always written. So it could be a document for a legal matter. It could be maybe someone wants to translate their book from English to Spanish or vice versa. It could be working with a business contract. One business wants to work with another business in another country, but the person in the other country doesn't know English. So they need their contract to be in Spanish, but say the exact same thing. That's what translation will deal with. Now interpretation is oral. It's only spoken. There is simultaneous interpretation, which is what I do where I speak into a microphone. I have my headset where I can hear the English and I say exactly what that person says while they're saying it or well, a little bit after because I can't say it while they're saying it because I don't know what they're going to say, but like 0.5 milliseconds after they say it, I had to translate that into Spanish. That's type number one. Type number two would be consecutive interpretation where somebody speaks for, let's say a minute and then they pause and they allow me to speak for a minute in the other language so that so that the other people can understand. When I first got started, I heard that it's best to translate or to interpret from the foreign language to your native tongue. I like challenges. So I was like, I'm not doing that. So I do the opposite. I translate from English to Spanish. I don't really have any problems doing so. It's up to you. You can even do both if you are really good at it. Now that we talked about the prerequisites, let's just get into it. What do you need to become a translator or an interpreter? All right. So step one to become an interpreter or a translator is that you have to know both languages very well. Obviously that's a given, but I will say this just because you know both languages very well does not automatically make you a translator. It does not automatically make you an interpreter. So keep that in mind. The next thing that you have to do is to learn to convey the messages from both languages so that they can be identical. I've seen plenty of interpreters when they are interpreting live, try to say what the original speaker is saying and it turns out horrible because they're not giving it the same energy, the same emotion, tone, attitude as the original speaker. Let me say, you have to learn the idioms that they use in Spanish. You have to know the common phrases, the figures of speech, all those intricacies of language. You need to know them for both languages so that you can go back and forth smoothly without leaving out details. For example, if I want to say, it's raining cats and dogs outside. And then in Spanish, I want to say it's not really the same feeling there. Yes, it's technically correct, but it's not the same feeling. If I have a figure of speech, like it's raining cats and dogs, then it would be better for me to say something like, que esta lloviendo a cántaros, right? That's the figure of speech, meaning that it's raining a lot. It matches up with his raining cats and dogs. Yes, it's not word for word, but that's the beauty of interpretation and translation. I can speak from experience that knowing these things is really important. As at my church, where I interpret, there is a bishop. He's the main speaker. He's in his sixties. He's from the South, has a Southern accent. He uses Southern American figures of speech and things of that sort that I have to know. But his son is about mid thirties. He's also from South Florida, but he doesn't sound like his father at all. He doesn't have that Southern accent and he uses a lot more relevant, commonly known slang, commonly known American slang. Then we have another pastor, 40 something years old. He's very hip using the latest slang that people use and you will hear in rap songs and also other connections from his past. And I have to think about all these different walks of life and know how to interpret those when I'm telling it to my listeners in Spanish. So as I talk about learning how to interpret and things like that, I do have a few books that I want to mention. I chose two books out of each category, my top two for each category for you guys to look at. They're in the description down below. Those are the books that I used to learn the words that I'm going to be using in my interpretation and also to learn how to interpret myself or how to translate myself. So go ahead and check those out guys. The next thing that you have to do after you learn both of the languages, after you learn how to interpret and how to translate, you need to prove it. You've already proven it to yourself, but you need to prove it. I always used to switch when I heard a song on the radio, I would translate it from English to Spanish or Spanish to English, depending on what was the original language, but that's me proving it to myself. When we're talking about music, it's the same thing. Love, heartbreak, drugs, sex, money, material things, whatever it may be, it's all the same thing. That's not going to give me the vocabulary that I need to know to be able to interpret in court or in the hospital, you know, I have to do more than that. So I have to be able to prove it. How am I going to prove it? I mean, there is one way where you don't really have to prove it. And I guess I can say this first and it's, it's, it's not what, you know, it's who, you know, that line again, that we've all heard is very true. When I was first looking to become an interpreter, I went on LinkedIn and I began to network with people who were already in the field and I got some advice from them. Most of them told me that they got their jobs from people that they knew. How did they meet these people? Well, they volunteered as translators and interpreters. So that's what I would recommend for you to do at first, because when you volunteer, you can add that onto your resume and that's proof that you did this in the past, you have experience and it's, it's documented, you know, you can have the person write you a letter of recommendation or whatever you need to prove that, Hey, this person was a really good interpreter or this person, um, did really good translation work for me. Um, I mean, obviously if you're doing translation, you can, you can save some of the documents for yourself and create a portfolio. What if you don't have the opportunity to necessarily volunteer? There are courses that you can take, um, in college. You can get a degree for translation. You can get a degree for interpretation. That's a really good option. I mean, it's a little more time consuming because you do have to spend the years and the money to do that. So if you want an even faster route, you can go to sites like atanet.org, the American Translation Association. It's a very prestigious association. They give you a certification, but the certification is heavy. It's the real deal. So you would definitely have better opportunities with this certification. I was just looking at it recently and the price has gone up to $525 for this test. And back when I was researching it as well in 2014, 2013, they were saying that 20% of the people pass this test. So guys, this is, this is no joke. I'm not going to say that it's hard cause I don't believe in things being difficult. I'm just letting you know that you need to prepare yourself. Okay? You need to prepare yourself because they're going to throw stuff at you. And if you want this certification, you're going to work for it, but it's not difficult. It just takes preparation. Just like learning the language in general, took preparation, took it was a process. Same thing for this here. Next you have the National Board of Certified Medical Interpreters. So this is for those who want to get into the healthcare or the medical interpretation. You can join this board here. They have it and they have you take an exam as well. You can get a certificate from that as well and you can become an official medical interpreter. All the links for these things are also down in the description. So don't be afraid to head down there and read that. Check that out. See what it has to offer down there. And last but not least, if you are looking to do court interpretation, you can through the government, do the federal court interpretation examination. So I would definitely recommend for you guys to check out these tests after you pass your written exams and your oral exams, and you've proven that you can do this job. You're going to look for work. This is the best part, looking for work. So where do you look for work as a, as a translator or an interpreter? If you're like me and you have an entrepreneurial mindset. When I used to do translation, you know, the written part of it, I used to work online as a freelancer for this website called ODesk, but now they have merged and they changed their name to Upwork. So Upwork is a really good place to do that. Fiverr as well is a really good place to offer your services, you know, make a video talking about what you do as an interpreter or translator, your certifications, things of that sort. Pretty much you just have to sell yourself, sell yourself on those sites and you can make your own rates, which is another thing that I love because I know how much I'm worth. You know how much you're worth. So set your own rate and find work, go out there and do it with those sites. There is a link down in the description talking about a lot of other different sites as well that you can go to that are like Fiverr and Upwork, choose your favorite and, and, you know, look for work there. That's a really good option. But if you are looking for the face-to-face opportunity, I would advise that you go to either the hospital if you want to become a medical interpreter, go to the courthouse if you want to become a court interpreter, approach the business that you will want to translate for or interpret for whatever you're looking for and go to these places face to face, meet with the correct person. This is, this is literally what I did, you know, when I was looking for these jobs, I went to the places and I talked to people, they were passing me around until I, until I finally got to the right person. I don't know a faster way to do that. That's, that's what I did. I'm speaking from experience here. And they gave me the information that I needed, you know, but what if you're, you're like me when I tried to be a medical interpreter and you live in, you live in a place where you don't really have a lot of Spanish speakers there, but you don't want to move either. You don't want to move just to become a medical interpreter or a court interpreter. Well, you do have other options. The other option would be to work for a translation or an, or an interpretation agency. These agencies, there are so many of them links down in the description, just like everything else is that I've been sharing with you guys. When, when, when I was an optician, we had a hotline that we can call if someone came in and didn't really speak English, but they wanted to get their eyes checked out. We could call that hotline. Obviously I never used it because the only people that were coming in there were Spanish speakers. So I took every opportunity to speak Spanish. But the option was there for my coworkers who did not speak Spanish. And if I was not there to handle the problem, they can call that hotline. And there was somebody there that would, um, interpret for them, you know, right then and there I'll be on the phone saying this thing, saying something to pass the phone. And they would talk to the person and we will resolve the problem that way. So you, you do have the option for these things in the description to have the best translation companies to work for. And then I also have the best interpretation companies to work for. A lot of these companies, they're one in the same, they're going to do both translation and interpretation, but some are just translation. So keep that in mind as well. Yeah. That's basically all that it takes to become a translator or, or an interpreter. So if you've liked this video, please give it a thumbs up. It helps a lot with the YouTube algorithm. It helps me to grow my channel and get this video out to more people. Um, also if you have any questions, let me know down below. Thank you guys for watching. Que Dios me lo bendiga, subscribe, y nos fuimos.