This document analyzes job advertisements for translators and interpreters from 2009 to 2011 in Serbia. It found an increase in the number of ads and employers over this period. Most employers were located in Belgrade and Novi Sad, and sought translations primarily between English, German, Russian, Italian, and French. In-demand skills included translation, interpreting, writing and proofreading abilities. Advertisements also emphasized characteristics like organization, precision, willingness to learn, and being a team player. Common tools listed included MS Office, CAT tools like Trados and Wordfast, and subtitling software.
Market Demands for Translation and Interpreting Competencies
1. Which Competences does the
Market Demand?
An Analysis of Job Advertisements for
Translators and Interpreters
Borislava Eraković
Faculty of Philosophy,
Novi Sad
3. Belgrade 41%
Novi Sad 23%
Work from home 13%
Another country 9%
Niš 4,8%
Kragujevac 2,7%
Subotica 2,7%
Bačka Palanka, Brus, Ćačak, Kraljevo, Kruševac, Novi Bečej,
Pančevo, Senta, Smederevska Palanka, Smederevo, Svilajnac,
Temerin
0,69%
Location of the employer / where the professional
translation activity is carried out
4. finance
civil engineering
law
electrical engineering
marketing
health services
mechanical engineering
media
tourism
automobile industry
furniture production
education
food indurstry
mining
metalurty
textile industry
home appliances
music
Domains
5. Pakistani
Latin
Greek
Hebrew
Japanese
Belorussian
Ukrainian
Finnish
Czech
Danish
Norwegian
Arabian
Turkish
Portuguese
Dutch
Chinese
Spanish
French
Italian
Russian
German
English
0% 10% 20% 30% 40% 50% 60% 70% 80%
Languages
6. 25
20
German
15
Russian
10 Italian
French
5
Spanish
0
2009 2010 2011
Demand Direction for
German, Russian, Italian, French and Spanish
7. Greek
Rusyn
Romany
Czech
Slovak
Macedonian
Hungarian
Romanian
Bulgarian
Albanian
Slovenian
0% 1% 2% 3% 4% 5%
Languages of the Region
8. English 30 40
Italian 17
German 16 30
Russian 11
French 10 20
Spanish 5
Slovenian 2 10
Ukraine 1
Alabanian 1 0
Hungarian 1 2009 2010 2011
Arabian 2
C language/2nd foreign language?
9. % of employers
translation 69
business letter, contract, invoice, business documentation, report, web
site, catalogue, advertisement/commercial, instruction, regulation, specialized text...
interpreting 42
writing 11
proofreading 9
revising 6
project coordination 3,2
audiovisual translation 2,4
localisation 1,6
court translation
& interpreting 1,6
not specified 16
Type of assignment
10. organised and efficient
precise, attentive to detail
hard-working
ambitious and willing to learn
creative
not prone to criticism
tactical
team worker
communicative
0 5 10 15 20 25 30 35
Which Characteristics?
11. MS Office
Internet
CAT Tools (Trados i Wordfast)
DTP software
(Photoshop, Dreamweaver, InDesign)
Subtitling software
Which Tools?
My colleague from the National Employment Service, Tatjana Arsić Milanović, and I are going to present results of a market survey concerningcompetences which are demanded in job ads for translators and interpreters. Our surveysare complementary, in the sense that we analysed different sources, and covered different time periods, but with the same purpose.
What I will present today are the competences demanded in the ads that were published via business portals infostud.com, poslovi. rs, and best.jobs.com, which in the meantime has changed its name intoceevee. I have been following the ads biweekly and these are results for the first three years, starting with January 2009. As we can see from this graph, the demand has been rising, although probably not as dramatically as one could conclude from this graph, because internet portals became popular for job ads only in 2008, so this dramatic rise could be ascribed to more and more employers becoming aware of this new mode of advertising job ads, rather than to the actual rise of translation-related jobs. Still, what it does show, is that the demand is there, and we have found an effective means of following it, as these ads are in fact a rich source of data regarding the competences the market needs. We should however, also bear in mind, that shortness of the period (3 years) implies that the employers looking for long-term employees are mostly absent. This is probably one of the reasons why we didn’t see many ads of publishing houses and embassies.So what we have here in our corpus are employers from all sorts of industries, and they are often very specific about the kind of translator they want tegarding their personal and professional characteristics.
So, lets start with the location of the employers. A vast majority of the employers is located in Belgrade, as expected, to be followed by Novi Sad with half the figure. Other than these two locations, there is a prominent demand of translation agencies for the freelancers, people working from their homes, and there were quite a few employers who wanted their translators go work abroad, mosty norhtern African countries. A small percentage of employers came from Niš, Kragujevac and Subotica, and there is a number of cities which figure in the ads in just a fraction of ads.
Concerning the domain of the prospective employers, most came from the field of finance, civil engineering and law, then electrical eng., marketing, health services, mechanical eng, media and toursim.
Regarding languages, most employers, as expected, needed translators and interpreters for English. There is, however, aconstant, albeit considerably smaller, demand for German, Russian, Italian French and Spanish.
The demand for four out five of these languages, (i.e Spanish), has constantly been rising in the previous three years.
Regarding regional languages, there has been a small but constant demand for Slovenian, Albanian, Bulgarian ,Romanian, Hungarian ,Macedonian, Slovak, Czech, Romany ,Rusyn and Greek.
Since 2010 there has been a noticeable rise in the demand for translators who have a second language, and most often it has been English, then Italian, German, Russian and French.
A number of ads are quite specific about the type of activities the translators are expected to perform if employed and this is what they specified most often:Their translators were supposed to translate and or write......42% of employers specified their need for interpreters (usually they do not mention whether they need consecutive or simultaneous or both, but it seems logical that the greatest need here is for the consecutive interpreters in businsess and community environment)11% of employers specified writing of original texts, 9% of employers, and these are usually translation agencies, want their translators to be capable of proofreading, revising, and project coordination. Agencies that specialized in the fields of audiovis. transl and localisation looked for these skills Whearas court transl.a nd interp. are demanded by the courts.
Regarding attitude toward work which prospective employers would like to see in translators, these areability to organise one’s own work and the work of others,ability to prioritise, attentiveness to detail,ambition and willingness to learn, and creativity.Regarding personal traits, the most common demand is for translators to be communicative and team workers.Some ads even went as far as to specify the need for translators who are constructive and not prone to criticism, but tactical in their revising and project coordination functions.
Regarding tools, depending on the type of the employer, they demanded familiarity with the general word-processingsoftware and the ability to use the internet for research and communication purposes. Localisation and translation agencies more and more often in their ads expect translators to be knowledgeable of CAT tools such as Trados and Wordfast, bot also more specific software used in DTP such as Photoshop, Dreamweaver, InDesign etc. Few also mentioned subtitling software. This has been a very short presentation of some of the results of the present market survey, i.e. the demands most relevant for our new MA in C I & T. We had them in mind when we planned the learing outcomes and wrote specifications for the courses. I will now let my colleague from the National Employment Service present their data. Thank you for your attention.