I’m a high school student thinking about double majoring in Lingustics and Language Translation/Interpretation.
Does it make sense to double major in those two, or would it be smarter to trade one for something else (Psychology, Business, etc.)?
What is the certification process for a Language Translation/Interpretation major? Are you required to minor in a foreign language? If so, how can you gain certification in, say three or more languages?
Sorry, I’m kind of clueless about how these things work.
Background: I majored in (and now work in) linguistics, and while I don’t work with any interpretation folks at my current institution, I used to.
I’d say it’s a perfect fit, really. There are a number of people (on both sides) who tend to dismiss the other as [insert pointless navel-gazing as a characterization of linguistics, mindless repetition of what others have comes up with as a characterization of translation], but those sorts of feelings are, I think, starting to fade on both sides—there’s a recognition by translators that a background in linguistics can be helpful (as long as you don’t start getting too far into the weeds of things like whether c-command is a universal feature at a D-structure level or not), and linguists are recognizing that a background in actual, you know, languages can be helpful for understanding linguistic issues (as long as you don’t get too hung up on issues of correctness as colloquially defined and such). So yeah—natural fit.
And one of the people I went to school with in my graduate linguistics program has turned her linguistics degree and native/near-native speaker ability in multiple languages into an extremely lucrative high-end interpretation/translation/consulting business, so there’s that, too.