On the Russian-language Internet in forums and blogs, you can often find advice to learn rare languages and hindi to english translation:

“If your languages ​​are not rare, but ordinary European (English, French, Spanish, Italian, etc.), then ANYONE will not need you! And if you do, then you will be treated like a service staff (driver, cleaner, translator …) Believe my thirty-year experience as a Moscow translator and urgently get some other specialty in addition to languages. Language is not a profession. Alas(((”

(Source: http://www.woman.ru/psycho/career/thread/3932290/)

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“…recommendation from personal experience: take a rare language, but rather a few. And then English, Spanish, French or German have already completely entered the norm. Knowledge of these languages ​​goes without saying.”

“As for whether it is worth getting a translation education, I join the opinion that rare languages ​​are in demand (today again the Ministry of Internal Affairs and the International Organization for Migration called and asked to send translators) in combination with English. Such a set allows you to earn good money on consecutive and simultaneous translations.”

(http://forum.littleone.ru/archive/index.php/t-432253.html)

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I would like to warn those who decide to thoughtlessly follow this advice. They say, learn a rare language, or even better, several rare languages ​​\u200b\u200bat once.

I do not argue: translators from rare languages ​​are sometimes searched for during the day with fire. But it doesn’t happen that often. It’s not worth learning the language for this. After all, to master the language professionally, it takes not a month or a year, but many years of hard work. And then it will be necessary to maintain this knowledge. Otherwise – without practical application – in six months they will begin to disappear.

I myself am a translator primarily of the German language (English is rather auxiliary). But, as you know, the main shaft of translations is still translations into and from English. The share of translations even from my favorite German has been falling in recent years due to the fact that many German companies prefer to switch to English.

The market for translations from French is also generally not growing. But even if we take, say, Spanish, which today successfully competes on a global scale in terms of the number of speakers of it with English, then in Russia the market for translations from Spanish and into Spanish is also several times smaller than the volume of translations from English.

It may be objected to me that there are a lot of English translators too. But if you are a good translator, you can always find some niche of translations with English for yourself.

The very concept of “rare” changes depending on the market situation and a host of other regional and global factors. Today, in the Russian market, in fact, all languages ​​except English have turned out to be rare to some extent. Germans feel better than others due to the fact that Germany is traditionally our leading Western partner, and German firms will never leave the Russian market.

If we talk specifically about the supply of orders, then many translators whose main working language was, say, Spanish or Italian, if not completely, partially retrained into English.

And keeping multiple languages ​​up and running all the time is not easy. If you work with two closely related languages, then you need to additionally control yourself all the time so as not to involuntarily mix the words of one language with the words of another.

In Moscow, too, once a year they begin to look for an interpreter who would directly translate a presentation or a meeting of the Management Board of a large company from German into English. It’s more convenient for customers. But they do not think about how much labor and nervous energy is required from the translator to directly translate from one non-native language into another non-native language.

The subject of translations is becoming more and more complex, and the intensity and level of requirements for a translator are constantly increasing. Therefore, even when working with one language, the translator is experiencing exorbitant overload today.

In this sense, an additionally learned rare language or just any second or third language is more of a prank for translating simple texts and phrases, rather than for serious work.

SUMMARY:

It is good to know rare languages, but it is rather a luxury and a customer needs more than a translator. A rare language is not good in itself, but as an addition to the main language. And this main one can be English, German or some other – depending on your country and region of residence and the sector of the economy in which you are going to offer your translation services.