The heart of the craft of translation hasn’t changed in millennia: It’s about finding the right words to convey an existing expression in a new language. But in recent decades, technology and globalization have opened up many new opportunities for freelance translators. So how can you cut yourself a hearty piece of the international language pie?

"It takes more than just speaking the language to be a good translator," says Steven Bammel, president of Korean Consulting & Translation Service in Irving, Texas. "It takes an analytical mind, to zero in and get the exact meaning every time."

A specialist in translating between Korean and English, Bammel says that he can be a jack-of-all-trades in this linguistic niche. He translates texts ranging from immigration documents to patents to software users’ guides. But, he says, "in European languages, you need to specialize" in a narrower area of subject matter if you want to develop a thriving business.

Morry Sofer puts a finer point on it. "You’ve got to have a technical subject to really make a good income," says Sofer, whose firm, Schreiber Translations Inc. of Rockland, Maryland, has jobbed out work to thousands of translators. According to Sofer, medicine, engineering, finance, legal, technology and Web-site localization are all good areas of specialization. In the United States, languages offering the highest volume of translation work are Chinese, French, German, Japanese and Spanish.

Many translators truly lead the life of the free agent, even though they get work through agencies. "Most of my clients are translation agencies," says Bammel, who was employed as a translator in Korea for five years before opening his solo practice in 1999. He’s on the short list of a couple of dozen agencies whose varied customers require translations between Korean and English from time to time.

Agencies add value by doing the marketing and invoicing clients; agencies may also proofread translations and enter them into typesetting systems. The firms charge a substantial markup -- usually 50 to 100 percent of the translator’s per-word rate. But according to Sofer, "The translators who make the most income work through agencies, unless they have one big client like IBM or Lockheed."

Two technologies have begun to change the translation industry. Machine translation, the holy grail of engineers who work with human languages, is now cheap and widely available. But in many cases, these totally automated translations are of mediocre to poor quality. So human translators will not become obsolete anytime too soon.

However, computer-aided translation is another story. PC-based programs such as Trados and SDLX take care of some of the repetitive tasks that have burdened human translators tackling long documents. "As you work, the software will memorize your translations," says Bammel. The software automatically recalls translated phrases or passages and "helps you with similar language elsewhere in the document." This can substantially increase the translator’s efficiency while improving the translation’s consistency.

You won’t get rich as a freelance translator, but you can make a decent living. You’ll probably need to keep your day job for a while after launching your translation business, says Sofer: "It’ll take a few years to really get there." But many freelance translators make $45,000 to $65,000 annually by the end of five years. If you’re a whiz at multilingual wordsmithing, those figures can translate into a satisfying career. Just be sure to keep on top of the technologies that can help you mind your P’s and Q’s.

The Translator’s Handbook by Morry Sofer

Becoming a Translator: An Accelerated Course by Douglas Robinson

American Translators Association

Translation Zone

Translations.com

Babel Fish Corp.

Trados Freelance Edition

SDLX