The reasons why you are not confident doing your job
#1. You have not pay enough respect to your profession
If you don’t take your work seriously, you may become distracted or lose focus. Worse, you don’t strive to improve your performance. Being a translator takes real brainwork, so you need to have more capacity – which usually only comes when you make an effort.
As with other professions, translation can bring you good social status or income. For example, you could become a senior interpreter for United Nations or government delegations. You can also translate major credit contracts or medical documents that can help save hundreds of lives. Or if you are passionate about games, you can choose to work in game translation or game localization to help millions of players have a great experience with a trending game.
#2. Your language technique is not good enough
When you are an English to Vietnamese translator, it means you need to have a deep understanding of English. You may not need to memorize all the English words, but you must understand the rules and structure of English sentences. It’s a way to give you confidence when dealing with difficult translations for e.g. an economic contract with page-long sentences.
#3. You have poor command of your native language
Have you ever written something yourself on paper? For example, a poem, a small story or a few lines of confession. Do you have difficulty drafting a form or a letter? These are such odd questions, but in translation, if you have difficulty expressing something, it means that your writing style is not that good. Let’s start from lessons on making sentences to practicing writing blog posts. They may be more effective than you think.
Moreover, each major also has a different way of expressing the language. For example, in the field of Legal, the language seems to be more rigid and strict than the field of marketing.
#4. Your background knowledge is insufficient
You graduated valedictorian in English, but do you understand anything about the medical field? Surely you can’t use your outstanding English command to translate an academic medical translation. That is a common difficulty for any translator, so don’t worry, start learning something.
Culture is also a form of knowledge that you need to acquire. Sometimes you have to learn the corporate culture of a customer or a certain locality to be able to convey targeted messages.
#5. You are a slow typer
Translation is not a jigsaw puzzle, your translation performance will suffer because you have to type your text. You will have more time to think if your typing skills are quick enough. You can also translate more words in an hour with greater accuracy. Learning and practicing typing skills is not difficult if you have 10 flexible fingers left. Be patient and work hard.
Conclusion
If you are thinking of becoming a professional translator, start today and consider the above issues. To succeed in translation industry, you must first take it as a serious profession and work hard to overcome the obstacles you face. You deal with them one by one, acquire necessary skills as you go, because simply no one can know it all and do everything perfect at the beginning.
Issues that cause you to lack confidence can be challenges you need to overcome. Do not hesitate to share with us your difficulties, we will help you with the experience of adults in the translation profession.