I was happy to find this community, and I realised I really could do with having fellow pro translators to chat with. Commiserate and bitch, sure, but also help out, take wild guesses about a weird turn of phrase, find the niche cultural reference from that Turkish TV show nobody knows outside of Turkey, and so on.
Who else? And hi!
Life Tends to Happen indeed. One of its least endearing qualities. What are your languages?
I’m native German so it’s mainly English (my first translations were Sailor Moon fanfiction into German when I should’ve been doing maths homework, heh). One reason why I never “went pro” is that everybody thinks they can translate English so the rates are abysmal, especially for beginners (not to mention automated translation is a thing that exists…). I see things that were obviously badly translated from English almost every day and it hurts my head.
Technically I also studied Japanese before having to drop out (cf above Life) but I’m very rusty. Also too lazy to maintain any Anki decks (・_・;)
Anyway, yours?
English to French. I actually spoke German quite well back then (and loved the language), and found English very meh, but I really wanted to study lit translation and at the time the only graduat program was in an English department… I switched tack, and nowI haven’t used German in 25 years.