Choosing between technical and medical Master's - help needed Thread poster: Marina Kaffes
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Dear all,
I am relatively new in translation and looking to boost my career with a Master's degree in translations (I have studied languages).
I am working with my 2 mother tongues (Greek and Italian) and English.
The Master's I am looking into offers several areas of specialisation but I'm between medical and technical. Both seem interesting, but is the market more active in one of them? Which one do you suggest me?
TIA
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Whether you go into technical or medical translation, you'll benefit a great deal more from a degree (or hands-on experience) in the chosen subject field itself rather than in translation with this field as a specialisation. If you have already studied languages, one year of real engineering will make you a much better technical translator than three extra years of linguistics with an emphasis on technical translations.
| | | | | My two cents | Jan 31, 2013 |
While I agree with Anton that studying the actual matter at hand for a year would be a very good idea, I also think that it would be a very hard task to study a scientific/technical matter at university for a person whose learning path has been more on the linguistic/artistic side of things. Unless your secondary education was mostly scientific (maths, physics, chemistry), the effort would be tremendous. If you like challenges, this is certainly your option for medical translation.
... See more While I agree with Anton that studying the actual matter at hand for a year would be a very good idea, I also think that it would be a very hard task to study a scientific/technical matter at university for a person whose learning path has been more on the linguistic/artistic side of things. Unless your secondary education was mostly scientific (maths, physics, chemistry), the effort would be tremendous. If you like challenges, this is certainly your option for medical translation.
In my opinion, the Master's would be the best option if you choose to prepare for technical translation: technology is so varied and huge that studying one year of one technical degree in particular would not give you an ample perspective of this world.
In technical translation, you will be forced to learn by doing and by research, and one good option (on top of the Master's of course) is to find technical publications, like engineers' magazines or scientific magazines, both in the source and target languages, subscribe to them, and make sure you read up to the very last comma, including all advertising.
So, as a summary:
- Medical translation? Take a whole year in Medicine (or Veterinary) at university if you can. If you cannot, then the Master's, and read as much as possible about medicine. Maybe it could be a good idea to subscribe to medical publications and study them. Make sure you reserve some cash for good medical dictionaries (monolingual and bilingual).
- Technical translation? Take the Master's and reserve part of your week to read and learn from various additional sources. If you can, enroll in vocational training courses in your area (mechanics, electricity, electronics, machinery handling, welding, machining) so that you get some hands-on experience, get to know how technicians talk about their trade, and can "smell the oil". You do not need to do it all immediately. Just keep it at the back of your head and take opportunities as they arise around you. This will of course some investment, but it will surely pay in the long run.
Now the most important question for you: which of the two areas of human knowledge do you find personally more appealing? Never steer your career towards something you are not interested in! ▲ Collapse
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