Doing an Internship within a Translation Agency

If you are looking for a job within a translation agency, or you just want to restart your career, you can always think about an internship before getting started to your new position.

Doing an internship in today’s global market can always put you into reality. In fact it means being able to face any sort of new job environment and job tasks. Instead of just dreaming in our own inner reality about what could be this or that job, it simply and better to just walk into it and start.

You will discover not only the department you are working in but also how the job we have chosen in is whole. Doing an internship means being open-minded and ready to understand the job chain of work and production.

It is for sure that it will give you expertise and the possibility of deeply understand what the real job you really like do to in the future and also give a very clear insight into how agencies work and what type of work is in demand. For example as legaltranslations and technical translation services grow you may consider becoming an expert in these fields.

Internships sometimes are paid or sometimes they cover your travel expenses, this is according to the society you are going to work in. Normally an internship is meant to be training through your work. You will generally have a tutor explaining and introducing you to the new job. Sometimes you could be just surprise you can even have an internship with no tutor and in that case would be just up to you, to your capabilities to sort out what is the best thing to do. Either you stay trying to find out by yourself any kind of solution you may need or you will try to explain that a tutor, a real one, could be helpful together with your capabilities to have a wonderful experience.   

Translation is wrong, Localisation is correct!

You have probably heard translation agencies stress the need to not only translate marketing and ad campaigns but to also localise them into the local culture. However, the notion of localisation can easily be overlooked when launching campaigns between two English speaking countries. For instance the USA and UK are both English speaking countries so the why would marketing and ad campaigns need to be localised? Because making the assumption that what your culture associates with a particular word, character, colour or event are the same as another cultures association is defiantly a school boy error to make.

This is defiantly a challenge for the modern day translation agency, mistakes are made with countries that speak the same languages let alone marketing campaigns that have gone through translation. Research shows that consumers are stubbornly demanding communication with brands in their native language, this is why the jib of a translation agency is not only to translate the words but to recognise the message of the words and portray that in the translation.

Marketing agencies need to recognise that rather than finding single translators (no matter how good they are) simply will not do the job. Rather this, marketing agencies need to outsource international marketing campaigns to a modern day translation agency. The translation agency will use all recourses combined such as translators, cultural experts, graphic designers, native speaking proofreaders and experienced project managers to ‘translate’ the marketing and ad campaigns more effectively.

If you still don’t understand the importance of recognising cultural differences within translating, let me leave you with this thought. Both Saudi Arabia and Spain are religious countries, where giving to charity is a deed that is linked closely to religion. If a charities ad campaign in Spain mentions the name of Jesus, the message of this ad can be portrayed into Saudi Arabia. However a simple translation will not consider the difference in the religious belief, but recognising this difference the name of Jesus can be changed to Allah. Same message but a localised translation has taken place.