What certification would you recommend for someone from the US who wants to start in translation? Thread poster: Mariamne Nunez
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Mariamne Nunez
United States
Local time: 03:29
Spanish to English
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What certification would you recommend for someone from the US who wants to start in translation? Is a TEFL certificate seen as useful too?
[Subject edited by staff or moderator 2023-01-30 11:00 GMT]
| | | | Mr. Satan (X)
English to Indonesian
ATA (American Translators Association) certification.
| | | | Liviu-Lee Roth
United States
Local time: 06:29
Romanian to English
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| Get ATA membership | Jan 30, 2023 |
Sign up for ATA certification
Lee
| | | | finnword1
United States
Local time: 06:29
English to Finnish
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| ATA certification | Jan 30, 2023 |
Widely recognized and appreciated.
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I don't believe potential customers are interested in certification. They just want to know if you're any good, which means having a website with examples of your work.
| | | | Mr. Satan (X)
English to Indonesian
philgoddard wrote:
[…] which means having a website with examples of your work.
Or not. Website, social media, certification, translation degree, portfolio, referral letter, WWA, KudoZ points; all of these are merely marketing tools. It's not about what you have, it's about how you use them to advance your business.
| | | | | Disagree: customers don’t really care if you have a website or not | Feb 1, 2023 |
philgoddard wrote:
I don't believe potential customers are interested in certification. They just want to know if you're any good, which means having a website with examples of your work.
My personal experience says exactly the contrary. Every year I get several new customers who contact me because they found my name as a certified ENG>ITA translator on the ATA website. As far as I know, nobody has ever contacted me because they saw our website (fair enough, very few visitors there), or my blog (over 2.6 million page views).
A certification from a reputable organization is way more useful than having a web page. The reverse would be true only if very significant effort was spent in developing a dynamic website and marketing through it very heavily... something very few individual translators can do.
| | | | Samuel Murray 
Netherlands
Local time: 12:29
Member (2006)
English to Afrikaans
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Riccardo Schiaffino wrote:
Every year I get several new customers who contact me because they found my name as a certified ENG>ITA translator on the ATA website.
Are you sure they contacted you because you are a certified translator, and not merely because you are listed on the ATA website? I'm also listed on the ATA website, and clients have contacted me thanks to that listing, but I'm not an ATA certified translator.
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Samuel Murray
Netherlands
Local time: 12:29
Member (2006)
English to Afrikaans
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Mariamne Nunez wrote:
Is a TEFL certificate seen as useful too?
For more information about the TEFL certificate, see here:
https://www.theteflacademy.com/blog/is-tefl-hard-to-pass/
https://www.theteflacademy.com/blog/what-level-should-my-english-be-for-a-tefl-course/
AFAIK, a TEFL certificate shows that you have completed the course (150+ hours) and passed the exams.
An ATA certification, that some people here suggest, is not a course but simply a single, very difficult exam (fewer than 25% of people who write the exam, pass). If you're a beginner, you will not pass the ATA exam. Also, there is an annual fee to keep the ATA certification valid.
Unfortunately, some people in the translation world have prejudices about TEFL, since it is a course that teaches English teaching to foreigners, and not a translation course. People considering a TEFL sometimes assume that it is an easy course that any English native speaker or a good second language speaker would breeze through. It's possible that some of the agencies that you contact, will have this same prejudice, in which case mentioning TEFL on your résumé may not have the effect that you're hoping for. It is unfair, but there it is: for some people, a TEFL says "I think I can translate because I can teach English".
[Edited at 2023-02-02 07:38 GMT]
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