Hi
Any idea how does one become a court certified translator in Taiwan, and what does it entail? Am I expected to do English to Chinese and back? (I can only do Chinese to English)
Being a court certified translator means I could certify translation of documents (like birth certificates, marriage certificates, etc.) for immigration or governmental purposes, and I would think it’d be mostly Chinese to English if done in Taiwan…
To add to this, how do you become a certified translator here in general??
I have only seen contacts from a Taiwanese translation company who gives tests in both chinese to english and back (it seems you are expected to do both, which is unreasonable because either you can do one way well but not the other way, and besides your target language must always be your master language, otherwise weird translation will come out) but no one seems to know how to become certified.
I have only seen contacts from a Taiwanese translation company who gives tests in both Chinese to english and back (it seems you are expected to do both, which is unreasonable because either you can do one way well but not the other way, and besides your target language must always be your master language, otherwise weird translation will come out) but no one seems to know how to become certified.[/quote]
What? You can’t go bidirectionally perfectly, the way all native Chinese speaking Taiwanese translators can? :roflmao:
So there’s no standard in Taiwan then?
On a side note, I clicked on one of Forumosa’s sponsers!!! Yay me!!!
It seems to be a Proz.com-type set-up … and I must admit, I wasn’t all too thrilled with Proz.com . Does anybody have any opinions on this place - is it worth joining? (Right now it’s free to join as a professional, but you can’t view any of the jobs or rates offered.)
My guess would be that you would have to pass a government exam for certification, regardless of whether you have an applicable degree or not. 
That was what I thought too… I guess there’s a “2-hours Every Saturday for 6 weeks” course out there somewhere.
[quote=“tsukinodeynatsu”]So there’s no standard in Taiwan then?
On a side note, I clicked on one of Forumosa’s sponsers!!! Yay me!!!
It seems to be a Proz.com-type set-up … and I must admit, I wasn’t all too thrilled with Proz.com . Does anybody have any opinions on this place - is it worth joining? (Right now it’s free to join as a professional, but you can’t view any of the jobs or rates offered.)[/quote]
This is not just a Forumosa sponsor…there’s one or two mods and a naughty oldtimer in there somewhere. AFAIK they’re still in their early stages so I don’t know if its at full or even half steam yet.
[quote=“bismarck”]My guess would be that you would have to pass a government exam for certification, regardless of whether you have an applicable degree or not. [/quote]I really don’t think so. Translation companies are free to source out the work to elementary school students if they want to. As a result, “certified” translations are sometimes unreadable.
[quote=“tsukinodeynatsu”]So there’s no standard in Taiwan then?
On a side note, I clicked on one of Forumosa’s sponsers!!! Yay me!!!
It seems to be a Proz.com-type set-up … and I must admit, I wasn’t all too thrilled with Proz.com . Does anybody have any opinions on this place - is it worth joining? (Right now it’s free to join as a professional, but you can’t view any of the jobs or rates offered.)[/quote]
It’s run by one of f.com’s own…but until they separate editing from translation, there’s little point, IMO. I’ve gotten very little from them thus far, and I don’t care to lump myself in with editors (no offense, I’ve been an editor myself and it’s real work, I’m just saying that distinguishing this point is really important for translators these days, given the move toward having translators “just fix the text up a little” rather than doing the job properly from the start.)
That would certainly explain my Candidature Certificate’s translation (Chinese to English). I could have done a better job myself, but I need it to be court certified. :fume:
That would certainly explain my Candidature Certificate’s translation (Chinese to English). I could have done a better job myself, but I need it to be court certified. :fume:[/quote]
You can ask the translation company to revise the document after you edit it yourself. Just be calm and polite when you ask them to fix it for you. They will revise the document to your liking and they will give you a certified copy, free of charge.
[quote=“Taiwan Luthiers”]Hi
Any idea how does one become a court certified translator in Taiwan, and what does it entail? Am I expected to do English to Chinese and back? (I can only do Chinese to English)
Being a court certified translator means I could certify translation of documents (like birth certificates, marriage certificates, etc.) for immigration or governmental purposes, and I would think it’d be mostly Chinese to English if done in Taiwan…[/quote]
When I read the title, I thought it meant a translator in court. When I was in court fighting with the ex, the court appointed a translator for me. He was a Nepalese law student studying here in Taiwan. His English wasn’t that good and apparently his Chinese wasn’t that good either as my lawyer interjected a few times to say that he was not translating correctly. However, the judge didn’t seem too concerned and told my lawyer to shut up or get out. For some reason my lawyer wasn’t allowed to translate for me in the court, so all she could do was to take notes of what was said and deal with anything incorrect later. But luckily, everything went my way and we didn’t need to deal with the weird translations…