Translator Certification Program

Top 5 Translator Certification Mistakes


Below are the top five translator certification mistakes we see being made by both translator and those looking to start their career within the field. If you have 2-3 minutes of your time to invest in reading and avoiding making these same mistakes you could help your career move forward at a much faster pace than otherwise possible.

1. Completing a more expensive on campus translator certification: By our team's estimates and records over 70% of translator certification participants are already working or studying full time while completing such the certification. Due to this it is important to strongly consider completing a certification in translator that is 100% online, meaning that the career coaching, video content, audio resources, forum, customer service, and testing is all online. If it is not you may have to work on another organization's business hours, pay technology fees, or spend your valuable time commuting in traffic to attend in-person sessions or examinations. Even if your time is only worth $15 or $25 an hour these extra annoyances get in the way of learning faster and can add up to a higher cost than what you pay in total tuition.

2. Not investing at least a full hour in learning how to position yourself as being certified: While almost everyone who completes a translator certification immediately adds this fact to their resume, most stop at that point when they could be doing much more. Once you have invested 100 hours+ in earning this type of a certification consider positioning yourself further through one of these methods:

• Adding details about being certified to your Linkedin.com profile
• Adding the certification's logo to your resume to highlight this special training
• Making sure your resume is only 1 page long maximum so it is more likely to be read
• Adding a badge linking to the translator certification program's description on your personal bio website, blog or Linkedin.com, Facebook, Twitter, or Youtube.com Profile page
• Building a one page profile website which promotes your experience and training much like a resume

3. Assuming you are not experienced enough to complete a translator certification program: We get emails from undergraduates, graduate school students, and recent graduates every day who mistakenly believe that translator certifications are only for those with 3, 5 or 7 years worth of experience.

4. Not taking certification in translator serious enough: Everyone is busy and with several commitments to attend to each day it can be easy to put off reading, watching videos, or listening to audio resources for a certification program. It can help if you take a slow and steady approach and invest just 45 minutes a day each business day to covering the required reading and video-based materials for the program. Take notes while you study and start to put together a list of key ideas and pages to review in the future before your test.

5. Believing it is "too late" to complete a translator certification: It is common for professionals with 10, 15, or 20 years of previous work experience or small business ownership to want to re-train themselves to enter the translator industry either at an entry-level or mid-level position. This is natural and more common than you would think. Don't be discouraged by the fact that you have 0 experience in the industry and no training, everyone starts from scratch at some point and your real life experience will pay off while on the job as you hopefully come off as a more respectful, mature, pro-active, and responsible employee who will be able to handle the politics of the work environment much better than many younger professionals.

These translator certification mistakes are taken out of the over 3,000 emails our team at the Global Translation Institute every month. We hope that by sharing these we can add value to your first while you evaluate whether to join a professional translator certification program.

If you are interested in learning more about one option to complete such a program our team offers the Certified Translation Professional (CTP) program.

Learn more about the Certified Translation Professional (CTP) Program.

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Online Translator Training

Online Translator Training

Top 10 Benefits of Completing Translator Training Online


There are many benefits to completing online translator training programs but not all of these are immediately obvious. Completing your training online may or may not be the best option for your unique situation but it is important to at least be cognizant of the differences upfront before you enroll within any program. If you haven't considered these items in the past they may be able to save you over $2,000 over the next few years.

24/7 Support and Learning Resources: Traditional schools are setup to provide you with customer service and support during business hours. Online translator training programs are setup to help you find answers efficiently at any time of the day with online forums, extensive FAQs, click to chat services, and more responsive email and phone call support as well.

More Value - Less Tuition: Traditional schools typically provide a lecture which is 1.5-2 hours in length. Why is this? One of the main reasons is that it takes a certain level of effort to get the professor and all of the students in the same room at the same time, so once this is accomplished you may as well fit in a few hours of training. What is wrong with this is that extensive scientifically backed research shows that most professionals start to lose focus and stop paying attention after 20-40 minutes and no studies have provided conclusive evidence that watching someone lecture for over an hour straight is a productive method of instruction. If you enroll into an online translator training program the host organization does not have to force you to sit through 2 hours straight of lecture, video or audio resources can be broken up into concise, focused 5-20 minute segments which help you learn about one idea at a time or skip over supplemental videos if they cover an area which you are already familiar with. This is just one of the ways in which completing your translator training online can provide you with more value while typically paying 30-70% less in tuition.

Adaptive and Dynamic: Online translator training programs are typically built based on industry best practices, industry demands, and participant requests. This is in contrast to more traditional school-based programs which are provided on-campus and are typically structured around theory, a textbook, or a single professor's knowledge. While most on campus translator training programs completely change their course matter and subjects as professors come and go within departments online training programs typically are constantly building our their coverage of the niche area, always adapting, evolving, and improving. This is possible because knowledge is passed through digital media such as video and audio resources instead of being held in someone's mind and class notes of what "should be taught."

Time is Money: Everyone's time is worth something whether that is $6/hour or $60/hour you need to calculate what this number is in your case and calculate commuting costs to complete an in-person course or examination vs. an online training program. I believe if you take moderate estimates of this wasted time into account you will see that your commuting time is costing you almost as much if not more than the tuition. For example, if your time is worth $27 an hour and you spend just 40 minutes commuting each way to campus every week for 16 weeks that total cost of your time is $576. What is the real cost of not getting trained online?

Superior Alumni Benefits: Since online translator training programs must develop video and audio based resources it is much easier to then offer these same resources or related online training modules to alumni for little or no extra cost. The result is that alumni are actually treated like valuable members of a community instead of just someone that a more traditional school may contact for a donation to their foundation after a few years. Traditional universities and campuses must pay for their buildings, land, and overhead so in the end you are either paying an online training organization to develop great resources or you are paying more for a campus to keep up maintenance on their buildings and land. Which is more valuable to you and your career? A good example of how this is unfolding in other industries can be found in the movie rental business. In this industry everyone is asking themselves: Why pay $5 per movie rental to pay for someone's building, electricity, and overhead when you can pay $10 or less a month and rent several movies through Netflix?

I hope these benefits of online translator training help you decide whether these types of programs are right for you. If you have some follow up questions feel free to contact our team or read more about our Certified Translation Professional (CTP) program on TranslationCertification.org

Register or learn more about the Certified Translation Professional (CTP) Certification.

Related Resources:
  1. Translator Certification
  2. Online Translator Training 
  3. Translator Designation
  4. Translation Certificate
Tags: Online Translator Training, Online Translator Training Program, Translator Training Online, online Translator Training Programs, training programs for translator professionals