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Is it really possible to become a freelance translator? At the moment I have no experience and I want eventually to build that up progressively (anyway we have to start from somewhere, don't we?).

Since I have no certification but I can translate texts between 3 languages, is it possible to pursue such a route??

us er
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Translating is a very competitive field. As a beginner your best options are to leverage your network (if you have one) or do some free localization so you have something to show.

You have a better chance if one of the languages is both in demand and not well known. Governments of small countries for instance often have nicely budgeted localization projects. But they tend to be snapped up by the local academics.

Translation is much more than knowing a language, you normally would indicate certain fields to translate in as they may have quite different needs. Translating medical or legal documents for instance require specialised language knowledge.

Basically, if you're starting off as a translator with no network then don't quit your day job.

Kilisi
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Yes, you can. There are few things that you need to keep in mind:

  1. You have to be completely confident about the languages from/to which you are translating.
  2. You need to have completely grammatical knowledge of those languages.
  3. It's good to have some prior experience of translations.
  4. You'll need to manually translate every sentence, as machine translations are mostly not recommended.

There are a lot of freelancers working as translators and earning handsome amounts. If still any queries, let me know.

MurtazaA
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  • Hi, thank you for your answer firstly. Secondly, I really am aware that machine translator do not do the job, and I also recognise that translation is more than simple changing sentences onto an other language, but as far as I am concerned, I want to build some experience. That's it. – us er Aug 30 '21 at 10:40
  • For building experience, you can try to translate some random documents from the internet, and you can also share them with your clients if they ask for any previous work – MurtazaA Aug 31 '21 at 11:27