Job Discussion Forums

[Tamago86]

I posted this in the Chinese Job topic too but I'm posting here because I'm especially interested about translation work in Hong Kong, mostly because I was born around Chinatown and have been using Cantonese since I was young, and quite enjoy HK and my friends from there.
Being an international city I realize the competition would probably be quite scary and intimidating, but can any Hong Kong expat here tell me what the Hong Kong translation market is like? To be specific, I mean translating documents, articles, papers, from simplified/traditional characters into English. I know it largely depends on the field of translation (engineering, chemistry etc), but just in general.

Thanks for any help or advice you can give me!

[Zero Hero]

I have never heard of such a thing, and I work at a university here, where, if such a thing did exist, you would expect me to come across it. If a document is needed in both Chinese script and English then the author(s) of the said document will simply write it in both at the outset. Any other incidental translation will simply be completed by adjunct staff, not necessarily translators, but rather people who just happen to be fully fluent in both languages. We do have some translators proper here, though they have to have a minimum of 4 languages which they can translate between. Most have Mandarin, Cantonese, English, and Japanese (or Korean).

[prplfairy]

A friend of mine used to work at a place that was run by westerners and the firm sent out all of its circulars to a firm which translated it because the admin staff while decent English speakers could not be trusted to understand the nuiances of some of the English. So it is out there but not that common. While I don't know for sure I would imagine that the pay would be minimal as the people I know who are fluent in both languages all have chosen to be teachers and not translators.