翻译职业的难题_其他_趣味英语-查字典英语网

翻译职业的难题

Such as?

Well, such as one day, after going about business on a daily basis, I mean, going out of your way to master two languages – which is what translation is essentially about – you’ll become, to borrow your word, famous. You’ll be a translator to the Premier, for instance, and get to accompany him to all sorts of meetings and important official functions such as luncheons at which everybody eats while you do the talk to and fro, back and forth.

And some day, you grow tired of this famous and yet foodless-at-lunch-hour type of life. You quit the job to start your own business, setting up a consultancy because, while lending your brain over the years to others – which is also what translation is essentially about – you have become an all-around erudite over politics, business, sports and music.

And you have all sorts of hobbies, too, movies and theatre, mountain climbing. In time, you’ll quit all business in the ordinary sense and begin to enjoy life as you like it, emotionally and experientially, not just from the point of view of having to eke out a living doing jobs as necessary hardships.

I mean sometime down the line you’ll perhaps realize that what you are is bigger than who you are as a translator, famous or notorious. Your life is more than your career, whatever it is. You are alive and not just alive to achieve professional accomplishments – and certainly not to worry about not being able to achieve even that.