How would I pursue a career as a translator?

Question

I speak English and Irish as my native languages and am proficient in Spanish and Italian. What is the best degree to get in college? How many languages do translators generally have to speak fluently? Also, is the Rosetta Stone worth the money to help learn a language? thanks!

Answer 1

Here is a website that might be helpful.
http://www.atanet.org/careers/index.php
And also:
http://www.atanet.org/careers/school_outreach.php

As I know, Monterey Institute of Inernational Study offers translatioin / interpretation master degree, you may go to
http://www.miis.edu/ for details.
NYU also offers translation / interpretation program. Here is NYU website:
http://www.scps.nyu.edu/departments/department.jsp?deptId=11

You speak a lot of languages, English, Irish, Spanish and Italian, wow! If you can speak,read and write those languages pretty good, then you are qualified to be a translator.

I don't have any experience on using Rosetta Stone, sorry can not offer any suggestion regarding this software.

Answer 2

I tried Rosetta Stone for Spanish. It was effective to learn basic words and sentences. It does not have any grammar or conjugation instructions though so it will be very hard to go beyond the basics with it.

My college uses another software called TeLL me More, by Auralog. I found it more complete and less repetitive. It covers not only the basics, but also intermediate or advanced level. My goal was to become fluent so it was perfect for me. It has a lot of different activities: picture/word association, videos, dialogues,..., includes also grammar and conjugation. It has also more content than Rosetta Stone as far as level and number of hours of learning and is cheaper. Their speech recognition is great so you can have a dialogue with the computer. You can check out their website at http://www.auralog.com for a free demo and compare too. I found that site of reviews as well http://learn-spanish-software-review.toptenreviews.com/

The best way to learn a language would be through immersion, visiting these countries. Learning a language will require some time. In addition to software, you can have books which are useful as well. Audio CDs like Pimsleur for instance might help you out but you cannot get any feedback on your pronunciation so I did not like it so much.

Answer 3

if you want to be a translator its best for you to tke up linguistics. but in any case you can also take foreign studies and tourism. only, tourism is basically for stewards. about the rosetta stone? i dont think so u are 1 out the millions who aspires to do the same.