Have you considered earning extra income with your second language? Be it Zulu, Afrikaans, Sesotho or even Senegalese, your skills are in greater demand these days than ever before.

As a translator you would be required to translate a piece of text from language into another. The emphasis is usually on capturing ideas accurately, rather than on finding and reproducing the most similar words. The work available ranges from translation of new government legislation or reports, to advertising brochures, instruction manuals, newspaper or magazine articles, novels, poems, textbooks, financial texts, scientific research papers and even recipes.

In order to translate legal work, however, you would need to be a “sworn translator”. The South African Translator’s Institute (http://translators.org.za) currently offers an exam to become a sworn translator. It will cost you R550 to apply, but it’s worth the extra income it could bring in for you.

Here’s a brief list of the companies that generally require translation services:

* The South African National Defence Force
* Parliament
* Large municipalities
* State Language Services
* Video production houses (producers of TV ads, corporate videos and documentaries, such as Red Pepper Pictures, Sonovision, and Franz Marx Films)
* Advertising agencies (such as Ogilvy & Mather, Hunt Lascaris and Joe Public)
* News providers (television, newspaper and radio)
* The Chamber of Mines
* Varsities and Technikons (Damelin, University of Johannesburg, Unisa, etc.)
* Publishers (Human & Rousseau, Struik, Penguin, etc.)
* Insurance companies and banks (Standard Bank, FNB, ABSA, Nedbank, Outsurance, Mutual & Federal... the list goes on!)
* Magazine groups (Caxton, Naspers, etc.)

4 steps to becoming a company’s “first-choice” translator

Step one: Study the content of the text and understand its meaning.

Step two: Do some additional reading about the topic at hand.

Step three: Rewrite the document in the specified language.

Step four: Review your writing, to ensure that you have correctly translated the ‘total meaning’ of the text, rather than just a sentence-by-sentence rendition. It is quite possible for every sentence to be technically accurate, while still missing the ‘meaning’ of the original.

I bet you never thought that speaking another language could be such a benefit – but I’m sure you’re eager to get started! Translation services typically charge R850 per 1,000 words. Can you think of an easier way to earn some extra cash?

Useful contact: The SA Translators’ Institute (SATI) PO Box 27711, Sunnyside, Pretoria, 0132, South Africa. Phone:(012) 343-0624