Another polyglot in our hall of fame list, Ben once learned colloquial English from popular sitcoms. Now that he’s a certified Gengo Wordsmith in our German to English language pair, he wants budding translators to know that starting small and staying humble could eventually pay off.

What languages do you speak and what are your experiences with learning them?

I speak German, my mother tongue, as well as English and Spanish. I also speak Latin and Ancient Greek since I was required to study them in high school for nine and seven years, respectively.

I started learning English in elementary school and wasn’t really able to speak very much until I started getting proper lessons in seventh grade. From then on, I quickly discovered my passion for the language and started reading original English books. Most of all, however, it’s TV shows I have to thank for my language skills. I acquired most of my colloquial vocabulary and everyday language through watching animated sitcoms like Family Guy, American Dad, Futurama, and The Simpsons. I was even able to pick up a little bit of medical terminology watching Scrubs.

When I finished high school, my plan to do a gap year as a volunteer in South America didn’t work out, so instead I went straight to university and ended up taking Spanish classes. I only really started speaking Spanish when I took intensive classes during my year abroad at the University of Pennsylvania, which was around the same time I met my wife, Valentina. She also works as a translator and has been teaching me a whole lot ever since. Eventually, I hope to reach a proficiency level that allows me to translate into/from Spanish, too.

What are your favorite translation tools?

My favorite tool is definitely SDL Trados Studio. At first, the price tag kind of put me off and I was working with simple side-by-side Word documents for the first two years. Eventually, however, I realized the importance of building a term base and translation memory, and decided to go with the most established translation software out there, Trados. It also opened up a whole world of new job opportunities for me, since most big agencies require you to work in one of the established CAT tools. Also worth mentioning are Across, memoQ, Wordfast, Fluency, and a host of others, some of which are free and a great way to familiarize yourself with working with CAT tools.

Finally, ever since I started doing freelance translation work, I’ve been working digitally and have never once used the traditional tools of the trade (hard-copy dictionaries, etc). That’s why I’m a little bit afraid of taking the ATA (American Translators Association) Certification Test, which doesn’t allow the use of electronics and only physical dictionaries. My favorite online tools are definitely Linguee, Dict, and the KudoZ forum of the translator forum, ProZ.

What are your tips to become a Wordsmith?

Start out small. Don’t feel above doing standard-level work, don’t feel like you shouldn’t bother picking up small jobs, just take whatever jobs you can get on Gengo—those “peanuts” might very well land you a position as a preferred translator. And don’t feel intimidated by new subjects that you’re not entirely familiar with. If you really can’t find the proper terminology using online resources, there’s always the option of declining a job early on and letting someone more experienced take care of it.

And last but not least, use an RSS feed reader to receive job notifications in time before somebody else beats you to it!

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