What I've Found While Trying to Get a Job in Translation

Right now, my current job seeking strategy involves focusing on the field of translation (while looking out for other opportunities, of course).

For the most part, I believe that the field suits me given my preference toward writing and minimal interaction with people (beyond my co-workers that is). Moreover, I am expecting that the experience that I have working as a translator at Antara will be a point-of-interest for employers. Becoming a translator also happens to suit my major that I was pursuing at my university, which was English Literature.

The road of getting there has been, well, a challenge, to say the least. For one thing, I found that most translation jobs or openings involve becoming a English-Indonesia translator as opposed to other way around. Granted, maybe I'm not looking at the right places, but that has been more or less my experience thus far.

Moreover, when it comes English-Indonesia translation, while it's true that you need some level of understanding of the English language, what is equally, or perhaps even more, important is to have great capability in writing in Indonesia.

Being able to write in Indonesia is arguably more important for this role because as an English-Indonesia translator you only need to able to read English. By comparison, you need a firm grasp on the grammar and language structure of the target language, in this case being Indonesia.

This poses several problems because as an English Literature graduate, I'm hyper optimized to not only read in English, but also write in English (even then, it's not always perfect). 

Moreover, I frequently found that the common way to spell certain words or use certain punctuations in Indonesia to be wrong. For instance, I just discovered yesterday that the word silahkan is actually spelled silakan. For another example, I was told that you do not use comma before the word dan when you're separating two different clauses in Indonesia.

Nevertheless, this is the field that I’ve decided to pursue, so I have to make an effort. I’ve been training myself by attending several courses, reading the EYD and following grammar-related social media accounts. I’m also planning to read more Indonesian books.

Here’s hoping for the best!