2. Have you changed your expectations about being a translator after listening to this interview? Which ideas were the most surprising for you?

Listening 2

While-listening activities

1. Online training program for translators makes interview with a translation expert Paul Eduardo. Listen to the interview and answer the questions. Take notes while listening.

• How many years of experience does he have working as a translator?

• Does he have any formal education in the field of translation?

• What are the day to day responsibilities of a translation job?

• How many languages can he translate into?

• What are the abilities necessary to succeed in this job?

• What kind of work a translator expects to be doing in first 1-2-3 years of their career?

• What should a translator within the industry expect to make after working for three years in the industry?

• Could he notice any difference after 5-6 years of working as a translator?

• What is the most appealing thing about working as a translator today?

• What is the worst and most challenged part about working as a translator?

• What are his top 3 tips for professionals?

2. Listen to the interview for the second time and answer if the next statements are true or false according to what Paul Eduardo said.

1. He has translated from Brazil only.

2. The overall experience of translation is 32 years.

3. He has already undergone the translation program.

4. You need to be able to do administrating of the work you have.

5. The only thing you have to know to be a translator – is the language itself.

6. He doesn’t do any interpretation.

7. He didn’t experience a crises so much.

8. He believes this job is a boring thing.

9. The biggest challenge for a translator is not to overestimate himself/herself.

Post-listening activities

1. Have you changed your expectations about being a translator after listening to this interview? Which ideas were the most surprising for you?

Reading 1

Pre-reading activities

1. Look through the text quickly and find out the next information:

What does the author of the article do? Who does he work for? Which sphere does he specialize in? Is he an experienced professional?

Benefits of Being a Translator

To make one translation as truer as possible to the original version, translator needs to have access to all the relevant resources for translation; to be precise: 1) ______. Moreover, discussions and researches into the topic that we are translating above is the most important strategy to professionalize our translated version.

Let me bring my personal example of being a freelance legal translator for the Asian Human Rights Commission in Hong Kong. In March 2007, a senior researcher of the Asian Human Rights Commission, based in Hong Kong, assigned me to translate a book, 2)____________. This book was within the field of international law and human rights. To legally professionalize my work, I gathered all relevant international and national legal instruments in English versions and those that were already translated into Khmer (Cambodian vernacular). I even gathered the documents that were translated into Khmer by the UN Office of High Commissioner in Cambodia and those translated by the Senate. Furthermore, I even accessed the online documents,3)__________.

4)___________translated by different official institutions, I found the inconsistencies in using the words, phrases, paragraphs, legal terminology and other literary mistakes within the United Nations Cambodia Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights, the Senate and the National Assembly of the Kingdom of Cambodia.5)____________, translator shall have the obligation to make the national legal document consistent. Not just translation related to laws, but just any field of translation. To me, translator shall officially report the inconsistencies to the institutions concerned, via the national press or online media, until you get the response for measures to rectify such the mistakes. Cambodia does not have some kind of “Translation Association” or 6)___________. The process would go faster, if all the translators in Cambodia have an institution, representing them.

The above argument has initiated another argument: “the benefit of being a translator.”

Personally, I think being a translator is like being paid to critically read the material. Why? As stipulated in the third paragraph, translator needs to access to different documents to critically (or comparatively) read the document that we are doing the translation on. In short, reading to translate means we are discussing with and criticizing the authors, which is the best reading skill I have learned.

Lay Vicheka is a Content Manager of Search Newspaper and Manager-General of Cambopedia Translation Co. Ltd.

While-reading activities