Running head: What is an interpreter 1

What Is an Interpreter?
Sayaka Smith
Field Kindley High School

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An interpreter is person who translates words or text from one language to another. This
job requires a lot of learning and excellent communication skills. This career requires a lot of
time, writing, and reading; all of which are important in the future because the world is changing
daily and most countries are trying to connect with one another. Different people come from all
over the world that have different lifestyles, food, languages, names, and skin color. Interpreting
skills can change the direction of your future due to being able to have a job as a teacher,
working with the government, or being an educational administrator. Many people can learn a
new language but to be a successful interpreter you must love languages, like to travel, have
specific characterizers, and be willing to work in a changing environment.

Interpreters should love languages. Loving languages helps an interpreter to keep a job because
interpreting becomes harder to do every day due to the world changing and more people coming
to the United States. In 2013, over forty million foreign-born people represented thirteen percent
of the population residing in the United States (R. Cort Kirkwood, 2012). Count all the foreignborn people living in the U.S. along with all the foreigners that visit here or want to move here,
that makes up more than half of the people that already live here. The point of interpreting is to
translate one language to another while communicating with a lot of people. This is why
interpreters are needed in the world. Connecting with other countries is key to connect the world
together, but someone must know the language to communicate.
Good things about being a translator one meeting a lot of people and learning new things from
them such as their culture. Meeting new people can be more stressful than being with friends.
The first time trying to translate can be nerve-racking but talking to people as naturally as

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possible can make it less awkward. Interpreters can have opportunity to go to travel for their job.
They are a lot of countries that need translators or interpreters including of the united state of
America. On average, interpreters made $49,320 in 2014 while the average salary for all jobs in
the U.S. was $51,939. From this data, you can see an interpreter, makes less than the average
salary. However, an interpreter chooses this career because not for the money.
The University of California, Los Angles (UCLA) is a great place for the people who
want to learn new languages. The school offers forty modern languages and more than forty
ancient languages, though not all languages are offered each semester. They offer foreign
language courses that study all of the Eastern Europe and Eurasia languages and they proudly
offer course in seven of those languages (Bosnian, Croatian, Serbian, Czech, Hungarian, Polish,
Romanian, Russian, and Ukrainian) (Best Colleges, 2016). UCLA is the perfect place to advance
in education and knowledge in the foreign language field.

The characteristics is necessary to be an interpreter include patience and knowledge of

languages. Patience is difficult thing for many but learning a language takes a lot of time.
Languages are difficult to learn. For most people, it takes around two years to learn a language,
but some people take more time since each human brain is different. Another aspect to the job is
that you may have to leave your country to go study overseas. This can result in missing your
family and friends in addition to food and culture. However, immersion will help you learn the
language better and faster. Learning a language may not be hard for some but for others it is
extremely difficult to learn and communicate. Interpreters usually work alone which can cause
pressure from tight scheduling. An interpreters hours are not always regular daytime hours. You

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may receive a call from the government about a lot of translating papers, and you wont have set
hours. An interpreter can be under a lot of pressure and that can be stressful.

Interpreters should translate accurately. If they dont translate without errors this could
cause problems with the communication process. When you have to translate, you cannot make
mistakes because even one missed word can change the entire meaning of the massage. This
could cause big problems to some people or hurt people in general. This is the thing you have to
be careful for when you want to be interpreter. Make sure all the interpretations are correct when
you translate a paper and talk clearly when translate verbally. If people to misunderstand even
one things, they might not understand at all. An interpreter must studying for the language till
you understand correctly and learned a lot of words; both their spelling, how to pronounce them,
sentence structure. You need to know how to write papers, how to read, and how to speak to br
an interpreter.
If you dont like to speak you can always translate books, articles, and music. The world
has been changed by learning new languages and having different ways to communicate.
Translator dont just have to speak the language. If they enjoy more the translate books or
reading books, there are always specific jobs available for reading or writing that dont require
speech.
As an Interpreter it is easy to find a job but the on other hand it is hard to keep up with
grammar or the specific work environment. An interpreter can work anywhere like a hospital,
airport, local schools for foreigners or as a government translator; there are a lot of option to
choose from.

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A person who wants become an interpreter should love language, be patient and have
good writing and reading skills. An interpreter should love language because it is a career and
interest in a career will motivate one to do his or her best. To be an interpreter one must to learn
new languages which can take a lot of time. One must have accurate reading, and writing skills
and cannot mess up documents with spelling or sentence structure errors. An interpreter know
the language, must love language, needs to be patient, and have to have good reading and
writing skills.

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References
Average Salaries for Americans - Median Salaries for Common Jobs. (n.d.). Retrieved November
27, 2016, from http://www.foxbusiness.com/features/2015/07/09/average-salaries-for-americansmedian-salaries-for-common-jobs.html
Foreign-Born Now 13 Percent Of U.S. Population. (n.d.). Retrieved November 23, 2016, from
http://www.thenewamerican.com/usnews/immigration/item/11377-foreign-born-now-13-percentof-us-population
"Interpreter and Translator: Salary Details." Interpretre and Translater. N.p., n.d. Web.
@. (2015). 10 Most Innovative Colleges for Foreign Language Study - The Best Colleges.
Retrieved November 23, 2016, from http://www.thebestcolleges.org/10-most-innovativecolleges-for-foreign-language-study/

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