By stupidgov - 13/09/2014 11:03 - Italy

Today, I'm precisely one month away from graduating with a degree in translation for the sole purpose of becoming a state-authorised translator. Today, I also discovered that my government has just decided to abandon the concept of authorisation for translators. FML
I agree, your life sucks 43 326
You deserved it 3 321

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I wrote this - just in an FML mood. I'm the OP, and this is precisely the point. I already did some translation (mostly unpaid, but was getting experience) before I started this degree. Translators without this authorisation can also get work, but that takes more experience. I figured with the degree I would actually get paid for doing what was otherwise my hobby. Now any motivation to finish writing my thesis seems to have disappeared.

Top comments

At least you you can tell them " **** you," in more than one language now!

So the government made you waste your whole education good job government

Comments

who would regulate this? either way, translators are going to be fully replaced by robots in ten years. I vote I to call the first one c-3p0

I don't think there's much need for people or robots that speak Bocce.

You sir, are an idiot. Authorised is correct spelling in most parts of the world. Maybe you should use a dictionary before speaking, so that you don't sound stupid.

I feel sorry for you OP.. no other words to describe a crappy government decision..

Denmark, actually ;) I'm currently in Sicily to work on... my thesis, technically, which is probably why it auto-positioned me in Italy.

conpkete the degree. You'll get a higher pay and more opportunities where they still need authorised people.

Well, now you have a nice life skill to put on your resume!

Well life's a b*tch but at least with a diploma like that you'll have a LOT of job opportunities. Maybe you can work for the EU? They need a lot of translators. Strasbourg and Brussels are pretty nice cities too :). PS: Get used to having to switch careers. Since the development of IT a lot of people were forced to change their careers. How do you know that in 20 years speech recognition and AI won't allow us to buy relatively cheap electronic translators able to understand and translate almost any language? Things like that are already there but of course they are very inaccurate. Most people change their carrers at least once or twice in their lifetime.

Like I commented above, I probably will end up in the EU. Likely Luxembourg, though, as that's where I did my internship (so they know me there, and the department was really great). I wouldn't need the 5-year degree in translation for that, though, and I'm 33 years old, so this is already a change of career. I started out in astronomy. I'll never *love* translation, but it's all right. It'll be a few more years, though, before the EU has another competition for Danish translators. (And since I'm really more of a science geek than a language geek, I not-so-secretly hope that we'll get to see a functioning universal translator someday ;))

Garnetshaddow 30

That really sucks. I study history because I want to teach. If that field of study vanishes, I'd be crushed. (I also think it's a bit of a shame our politicians don't use historians....) It seems odd that they'd get rid of translators in as diverse a location as Europe! Many people are multi-lingual, but formal translation seems important.

Well at least you have the papers to say you are legitimate