Interpreting from Russian or from French? Thread poster: Yamato (X)
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Yamato (X)
Bulgaria
Local time: 10:22
Russian to Spanish
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Hi, all prozian friends
A vital step to get stablished is education.
But since I am faced with a tough decision, I would like to hear your kind opinions.
A friend and I are faced with the same problem: we want to be interpreters and are willing to take as many booth "flight time" as we can, and of course add a master in interpreting to our curriculum.
Our teacher has adviced us to learn French (we don't speak a word of it) and we both are learning Rus... See more Hi, all prozian friends
A vital step to get stablished is education.
But since I am faced with a tough decision, I would like to hear your kind opinions.
A friend and I are faced with the same problem: we want to be interpreters and are willing to take as many booth "flight time" as we can, and of course add a master in interpreting to our curriculum.
Our teacher has adviced us to learn French (we don't speak a word of it) and we both are learning Russian, and we have quite and advanced level, if still we are unable to work with Russian language.
What is your opinion? should we struggle with Russian until we are able to speak fluently and work with it as interpreters?
Or is it a better bet to learn French for the same purpose?
Of course, much better to learn both, but it is even better to be omniscient, you know.
Our language combination is Spanish, Catalan and English as active languages, German as passive, and halfway Russian...
What is your opinion, which language combination would leave us better off?
Thanks in advance for your comments. ▲ Collapse
| | | | | you need a high level | Jul 25, 2003 |
Hello Pablo, I have worked as an interpreter of Russian lots of times. It depends very much on how high is your level and what is the interpretation topic.
If you feel confident enough with your Russian and you think you have a high level, my advice is, go for it.
If you only have a middle level and you are just begining to command Russian my advice is: don't do it.
If your level is advanced and you have experience enough talking with Russians, in that case I thi... See more Hello Pablo, I have worked as an interpreter of Russian lots of times. It depends very much on how high is your level and what is the interpretation topic.
If you feel confident enough with your Russian and you think you have a high level, my advice is, go for it.
If you only have a middle level and you are just begining to command Russian my advice is: don't do it.
If your level is advanced and you have experience enough talking with Russians, in that case I think you need to dive into the swimming pool for the first time.
Interpreting is also a matter of skills: if the job is a meeting where you act as a consecutive interpreter, it is not so difficult. When you work as a simultaneous interpreter with the headphones, that is much more complicated.
I would continue with Russian and at the same time I would begin to learn french. It is not so difficult to learn french. And if you speak catalan it will be much easier (there are many similarities)
Kind Regards willdlp )
Pablo Cañamares wrote:
Hi, all prozian friends
A vital step to get stablished is education.
But since I am faced with a tough decision, I would like to hear your kind opinions.
A friend and I are faced with the same problem: we want to be interpreters and are willing to take as many booth "flight time" as we can, and of course add a master in interpreting to our curriculum.
Our teacher has adviced us to learn French (we don't speak a word of it) and we both are learning Russian, and we have quite and advanced level, if still we are unable to work with Russian language.
What is your opinion? should we struggle with Russian until we are able to speak fluently and work with it as interpreters?
Or is it a better bet to learn French for the same purpose?
Of course, much better to learn both, but it is even better to be omniscient, you know.
Our language combination is Spanish, Catalan and English as active languages, German as passive, and halfway Russian...
What is your opinion, which language combination would leave us better off?
Thanks in advance for your comments.
[Edited at 2003-07-25 12:50] ▲ Collapse
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Pablo,
I was thinking you were facing the decision of whether to take a job or not...
Anyway I think the best shot is to improve your Russian as to get very high skills at interpreting it. And as Tayfun says returns are very high.
And at the same time begin to learn french: you will see that it is easy
Kind Regards willdlp
[Edited at 200... See more Pablo,
I was thinking you were facing the decision of whether to take a job or not...
Anyway I think the best shot is to improve your Russian as to get very high skills at interpreting it. And as Tayfun says returns are very high.
And at the same time begin to learn french: you will see that it is easy
Kind Regards willdlp
[Edited at 2003-07-25 13:07] ▲ Collapse
| | | | Pat Jenner (X)
Local time: 08:22
German to English
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| depends on the market | Jul 25, 2003 |
Does the Spanish interpreting market work in the same way as in the UK? What I mean is, do you work in bilingual booths from and into a pair of languages (e.g. one booth doing Spanish-English and English-Spanish while another does Spanish-French and French-Spanish)? If so, you will never get to use your passive languages. I think it very unlikely that you could bring your Russian up to simultaneous interpreting standard, which is pretty much native speaker standard, without investing a huge amou... See more Does the Spanish interpreting market work in the same way as in the UK? What I mean is, do you work in bilingual booths from and into a pair of languages (e.g. one booth doing Spanish-English and English-Spanish while another does Spanish-French and French-Spanish)? If so, you will never get to use your passive languages. I think it very unlikely that you could bring your Russian up to simultaneous interpreting standard, which is pretty much native speaker standard, without investing a huge amount of time on it and spending some time in the country. You say you also have German - why not concentrate on that, particularly if it's an unusual combination. I would have thought there are fewer Spanish interpreters with German than with French.
Good luck ▲ Collapse
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| I'd go for French | Jul 26, 2003 |
Russian is quite unlikely to be competitive (I mean in high demand comparing, say, to French) soon... you will have time to struggle with Russian.
)Pablo Cañamares wrote:
Hi, all prozian friends
A vital step to get stablished is education.
But since I am faced with a tough decision, I would like to hear your kind opinions.
A friend and I are faced with the same problem: we want to be interpreters and are willing to take as many booth "flight time" as we can, and of course add a master in interpreting to our curriculum.
Our teacher has adviced us to learn French (we don't speak a word of it) and we both are learning Russian, and we have quite and advanced level, if still we are unable to work with Russian language.
What is your opinion? should we struggle with Russian until we are able to speak fluently and work with it as interpreters?
Or is it a better bet to learn French for the same purpose?
Of course, much better to learn both, but it is even better to be omniscient, you know.
Our language combination is Spanish, Catalan and English as active languages, German as passive, and halfway Russian...
What is your opinion, which language combination would leave us better off?
Thanks in advance for your comments.
| | | | | I'd go for French, too, if at all learn a new language | Aug 9, 2003 |
If you are well off, you can learn anything you like. But if you want to start earning your living as soon as possible, I wouldn't advise you to go for Russian. Personally I think that it's a very difficult language to master. Furthermore, again in my opinion, the competition here is very high as Russians are not at all rich (for the most part) and cannot hire an expensive foreign interpreter. So potential employers would prefer a Russian interpreting FROM Russian with his/her comparatively low ... See more If you are well off, you can learn anything you like. But if you want to start earning your living as soon as possible, I wouldn't advise you to go for Russian. Personally I think that it's a very difficult language to master. Furthermore, again in my opinion, the competition here is very high as Russians are not at all rich (for the most part) and cannot hire an expensive foreign interpreter. So potential employers would prefer a Russian interpreting FROM Russian with his/her comparatively low rates and reasonable quality rather than a foreigner... That's the current market as I see it.
If I were you I would only learn Russian for pleasure to be able to read its literature in the original language. It's worth it ▲ Collapse
| | | | Richard Benham 
France
Local time: 09:22
German to English
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In memoriam | Good point but,.... | Aug 27, 2003 |
If I were you I would only learn Russian for pleasure to be able to read its literature in the original language. It's worth it
You can't read classical Russian literature without knowing French anyway. (Often whole letters or slabs of dialect in French are incorporated into the text. In pre-Revolutionary Russia, French was the language of the Court, of the aristocracy, and of learning. So characters belonging to these classes often communicated in French and an educated readership was expected to understand it.)
So I'd learn both, or just French, which I believe is very easy if your native language is Spanish.
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Hello, Richard! and welcome to proz community!
I aggree that there are a number of places in Tolstoy's works where he writes pages of text in French (which are translated in contemporary editions, though), but I can't say that French texts appear so often in 19th century works. What have you read?
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Yamato (X)
Bulgaria
Local time: 10:22
Russian to Spanish
+ ...
TOPIC STARTER
Thank you very much for your answers, trust me, they have been useful.
Now, you might call me naïve, but I believe that one must always do (and work in) what one likes. French has never interested me, and learning it would be going against myself.
Personally I'll stick to Russian. I don't know what my friend will do.
I'll explain the logic behind my decision and share the tip: I think I can have a really good level of Russian in a couple of years.... See more Thank you very much for your answers, trust me, they have been useful.
Now, you might call me naïve, but I believe that one must always do (and work in) what one likes. French has never interested me, and learning it would be going against myself.
Personally I'll stick to Russian. I don't know what my friend will do.
I'll explain the logic behind my decision and share the tip: I think I can have a really good level of Russian in a couple of years.
I have been asking around, and one of the things I've heard more often is that companies that want to make deals in Russia (or in any country abroad) need the interpreter to be more or less able to convey the meaning, but 100% realiable, that is, there should be no chance that the interpreter is cheating.
With that in mind, may they be right or wrong, the always prefer someone of the same nationality.
So, I might not work a lot as simultaneous interpreter (I've been warned) I may not translate Tolstoy a lot, but I think that liaison interpreting is a market where I can be quite well off.
Of course, this is just my opinion.
My best wishes to you all, my friends.
And thanks again ▲ Collapse
| | | | | There are lots of French words and expressions in works by Saltykov-Schedrin for example | Sep 5, 2003 |
Tatiana Nefyodova wrote: Hello, Richard! and welcome to proz community! I aggree that there are a number of places in Tolstoy's works where he writes pages of text in French (which are translated in contemporary editions, though), but I can't say that French texts appear so often in 19th century works. What have you read?
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