<p>What would it take to be a United Nations translator? (the kind that listen and translate at the same time) And if not for the UN, for Politicians, embassadors, etc. Would I HAVE to go to an Ivy if I want that kind of job?</p>
<p>No. You might want to check with the Moneteray Language Institute or whatever it's called. While going to an Ivy League school or very well known super elite school (such as Duke or Stanford) might help, as far as I know it's not a necessary characteristic. I think your ability to translate is far more important.</p>
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<p>"The kind that listens and translate at the same time" is called an interpreter.</p>
<p>Be fluent in at least one language beyond English (the more exotic the better), live in a country where that language is spoken for a substantial amount of time (at least 6 months, preferably more), get training somewhere. The Monterey Institute of International Studies is generally the best as far as graduate degrees in translating/interpreting go.</p>
<p>However, you DO NOT need a graduate degree to be successful as an interpreter, nor do you need to attend an Ivy. What matters is how good you are at interpreting and how well you can market yourself.</p>
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<p>To work as a UN translator, I'm pretty sure you need to be able to speak three of the six UN languages fluently and be able to translate between any of them without thinking twice. Or so I was taught in IR last semester.</p>
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<p>Ahh that's so cool, what are the six UN languages?
B/c right now I'm thinking french, spanish and italien. I don't know if that's any good. besides, do you know what are the best schools for language majors?</p>
<p>Arabic, Chinese, English, French, Russian, Spanish</p>
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<p>Good language schools: Indiana University, University of Wisconsin - Madison, Berkeley, Beloit, Dickinson, Middlebury. Any large state school would probably be a good choice, and I'd be wary about the language programs in most smaller schools (less languages, less faculty for the languages they do have, etc). Some schools have different specialties (I'd go to UN-Reno if I wanted to study Basque; Earlham for Japanese; University of Illinois-Chicago for Slavic languages), so keep an eye out.</p>
<p>There is always a need for Spanish interpreters in the US, and French would be a pretty useful language to be fluent in if you want to go international. On the other hand, Italian really... isn't. It's a great language with an interesting culture, fun dialects, and it's very easy (e parlo italiano), but it's only spoken in Italy. If you really want to learn it, go for it, but don't expect to be THAT much more marketable if you do learn it.</p>
<p>Hope this helped :)</p>
<p>Thank you atmjunk, it did help :)
Well, I am a native spanish speaker, and I've been taking french since 5th grade, (I'm going to be a senior next year and I'll be taking ap french literature). So yeah, I'll keep it up and see where it goes. :)</p>
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<p>Yeah, atmjunk makes sense. If you're interested in any school, whether small or large, investigate. Don't discount the smaller schools, especially the best 20 or so of them, but some might not have some significant area you may want to study, or have fairly little in it.</p>
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<p>how good is the University of Chicago for languages?</p>