When people hear that I’m a translator, they either:
ask me if I work for the United Nations (no, and they usually mean as an interpreter, which is also a no, but more strongly)
guess what languages I translate into and out of, incorrectly (it’s the most obvious one, people: I translate from one official language of this country into the other, with the target language being my first language, i.e. the one I can write properly in)
share with me their deep, penetrating insight into the arcana of the translating profession: that you must translate the sense of the text, not necessarily render it word for word. THANK YOU. In eight years of translation work and two professional diploma courses, I never came across that pearl of insight before.
“Veterinarians are scared of blood” this statement was from a dental student. He still would not believe it after I corrected him. don’t know where he got that idea. :rolleyes:
I’m a prosecutor and I get that one. It usually takes a while, and some careful explaining, in words of one syllable or less, why it makes no sense to put the question to me in those terms. With those people, going one step further and trying to explain the law’s approach to defending the guilty is like trying to teach a pig to sing.
Surprisingly, I come across the reverse - a lot of lawyers insist that interpretation/translation should be an exact word-for-word substitution, like a child’s code puzzle, apparently in the belief that allowing interpreters any room for creativity risks inaccuracy. And some think that “translation” means a word-for-word substitution, but “interpretation” means taking some licence. (As I understand it, in the trade, translation refers to documents and interpretation refers to spoken words.)
It takes some effort to point to the vast array of colloquial phrases in English which are not literally translatable (eg, “Bruce was trying to sleep with Shiela but he kept beating around the bush for so long that Shiela lost it and gave Bruce a piece of her mind”) before it dawns that there is not a one-to-one mapping from words in one language to words in another. There seems to be a misperception that one-to-one mapping is the rule, and any exceptions are rarities to be dealt with on a one-off basis. Unfortunately, it turns out that there are more exceptions than rule.
“Unfortunately” is of course the wrong word - it is the effervescence of language (which prevents literality) that is the source of its charm.
Sheesh. I can hardly wait to begin school in the fall to become a pharmacist. Yippee. The questions I’m sure I’ll get.
Shall I just tattoo on my forehead now that I can’t get the good stuff? Or that I can’t get it for free? Gah.
I majored in Bioethics in university. Glad I gave that up… most people mistook it for Biology or figured I was working my way to an MD.
(no and no… in fact, Bioethics is taught by the department of philosophy and does not require any Biology credits to acquire a degree, and it happens to be a profession in and of itself because someone has to stop some over-enthusiastic doctors from going all Mengele)
Of course, process design isn’t really an easy thing to explain either. Most people seem to think I’m a programmer, for some odd reason (which is funny, because I can’t code to save my life).
Certified Veterinary Technician, I get several responses;
“Oh, so you’re a Veterinarian?”
No, Veterinary Technician, sort of like a Registered Nurse, but for animals (and not really because we are actually more like a nurse, a surgical tech, a radiology tech, a lab tech, a pharmacy tech and a dental hygienist all in one and we have to learn all this in the same 2 years that an RN learns to be an RN.)
“Oh, I love animals but I could never deal with sick pets/putting them to sleep.”
There is a difference between loving animals and actually wanting to help them. And, fortunately, we don’t put them all to sleep.
“What could be wrong with my cat/dog/bird/rabbit/guinea pig/hedgehog/etc. it’s been ___________?”
I answer it if the answer is pretty obvious (like you cat is meowing a lot, rolling on the floor and sticking her butt in the air because she’s in heat take her to a vet and get her spayed) but most of the time I just tell them again, I am not a vet but even a vet cannot diagnose your pet sight unseen, you need to take it to a vet.
Is usually asking about some kid they know who wants to be a vet and should they become a vet tech instead?
I don’t mind this one so much. A lot of vet techs go on to vet school but many are happy staying vet techs. I attempted to go back to school to get in all the higher level math and chemistry that I needed if I wanted to apply to vet school and I made it through those courses but then I realized I was tired of going to school and I was happy as a vet tech.
This year will be a quarter of a century for me. Most of the vets I work with respect my opinions on cases but I don’t propose to know it all and I still ask questions. Being a vet is a lot more education and responsibility. I am happy with not being the one with the burden of diagnosing and I can have fun just speculating on what the dx might be.
So my answer is if they know they want to work with animals but don’t know if they really want to be a vet they could certainly try a vet tech school first. If they know without a doubt that they want to be a vet they should just go for it. In either case they should see if they can work at a vet clinic or animal shelter as a volunteer or employee to make sure they can handle all the icky aspects of dealing with sick animals first because it’s not all cute puppies and kittens. The experience will help them know if it’s really for them.
The “public policy” part bores people stupid, and the “environmental” part makes people expect me to defend any position they’ve ever heard any “environmentalist” take. (I know very little about climate change but am regularly expected to defend one “side” or another in the debate.) Either that or they expect me to listen to them rant for twenty minutes about the latest local environmental problem their community is facing, and tell them how to fix it, because surely it is the most important environmental issue anybody faces, anywhere, and our office should dedicate all our efforts to solving it.
I like to think that if the Book of Job had been written in modern times, Satan would have left all his other stuff intact. But he would have switched Job to SAP.
In this version though, I’m not sure Job would have had the fortitude to stick to his faith.
