Interested in Becoming an Indonesian Certified Translator?

Do I need to be a certified Indonesian translator to translate? What can I do to become a certified Indonesian translator? These are the two most frequent questions I get asked from translators and would-be translators.

Well, it's likely that other translators or those who would like to become translators have the same questions, and so I'd like to answer those questions here in this article.

Do I need to be a certified Indonesian translator?

Many would-be translators are under the impression that in order to translate, they have to become certified. This isn't necessarily true and there are a few reasons why this is so. First of all, merely being certified doesn't make a translator a good translator. Certification is a method that organizations use to determine if a translator meets their standards or their idea of what a good translation should be. While these organizations usually do a good job of determining their standards, these standards universally acknowledged.

This means just because a translator is not certified by this type of organization does not mean he or she is not a good translator. Many translators choose not to take the certification tests administered by certification organizations, yet they still have a great freelance translation business and are able to find clients.

However, that being said, there are some people that only want "certified" translators for their projects, and so for that reason, it might be useful to look into becoming certified. But if you still aren't interested in becoming certified, and want to convince your clients you are able to translate, the most important thing you can show them is a list of previous clients you have translated for. This is what really shows potential clients what kind of translator you are.

How can I become a certified translator?

This second question most often comes from would-be translators who are interested in knowing how to become certified Indonesian translators. First off, there are many organizations throughout the world that offer certification various language pairs. In Indonesia, the most common organization for translator certification is the Indonesian Translator's Association (HPI) or International Language Institute (LBI). This organization offers certification tests in various language pairs, but there is a process for becoming certified. According to the HPI/LBI website, you have to:

Become a HPI/LBI member :
Satisfy the eligibility requirements by providing proof of a combination of education and work experience
Register for an upcoming exam (a three-hour, open-book, proctored exam in a specific language pair)

Hopefully these answers will help you decide whether or not to become a certified Indonesian  translator and where you can go to become certified, if that is what you choose to do.

Accreditation of Translators

Accreditation of translators is the certification of competence of translators by private or parastatal translation organizations in various countries, based on a variety of requirements. These often include a written examination to attest to the translator's skill.

Such accreditations often have no legal effect, and their value lies in the esteem that the translation organization enjoys as an independent authority on good translation.

Most translators' organizations refer to this "stamp of approval" as "accreditation," though the American Translators Association's accreditation system is called "certification."

Source : http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Accreditation_of_translators

What is Translation?

Translation is the action of interpretation of the meaning of a text, and subsequent production of an equivalent text, also called a translation, that communicates the same message in another language. The text to be translated is called the source text, and the language it is to be translated into is called the target language; the final product is sometimes called the "target text."

Translation must take into account constraints that include context, the rules of grammar of the two languages, their writing conventions, and their idioms. A common misconception is that there exists a simple word-for-word correspondence between any two languages, and that translation is a straightforward mechanical process. A word-for-word translation does not take into account context, grammar, conventions, and idioms.

Translation is fraught with the potential for "spilling over" of idioms and usages from one language into the other, since both languages repose within the single brain of the translator. Such spilling-over easily produces linguistic hybrids such as "Franglais" (French-English), "Spanglish" (Spanish-English), "Poglish" (Polish-English) and "Portuñol" (Portuguese-Spanish).

The art of translation is as old as written literature. Parts of the Sumerian Epic of Gilgamesh, among the oldest known literary works, have been found in translations into several Asiatic languages of the second millennium BCE. The Epic of Gilgamesh may have been read, in their own languages, by early authors of the Bible and of the Iliad.[1]

With the advent of computers, attempts have been made to computerize or otherwise automate the translation of natural-language texts (machine translation) or to use computers as an aid to translation (computer-assisted translation).

Source : http://en.wikipedia.org