Career Opportunities

It goes beyond argumentation that the need for translation studies, translation training and practices is becoming rather urgent considering the changes the world is witnessing these days with concepts of globalization, culture-bridging, and international understanding and communication daily penetrate everyone's world. At a more tangible level, the market exhibits a wide range of occupations that require translators, and a variety of bodies that offer space for translators to conduct translation in different fields. For example, teaching at school levels requires teachers who are informed enough about English and Arabic and are fairly aware of the appropriate ways of connecting the two languages. This is specifically important to eliminate the unfortunate examples encountered at universities of students who would go for word-for-word translation based on what their school teachers used to resort to at some points in the educational process. On a broader level, the private sector institutions including companies, educational institutions, and translation offices seeks translators and interpreters to facilitate its work with international clients, and business bodies. By the same token, overseas business agents have already established professional networks in the Arab world, Palestine in particular, and thus are seeking qualified translators to telecommute, a way to facilitate their work considerably. That opens a great chance for many graduates who are interested in conducting translation online. Also, translators, and mainly interpreters are always sought for at universities to conduct simultaneous interpretation at conferences that deal with a variety of topics. A specialized body of knowledge in translation as well as a reasonable degree of fluency are indeed needed.
Furthermore, many of the community institutions require an official license in translation for those who are interested in working in translation. This license can be earned only upon passing the legal translation test held by the Ministry of Justice. And offering only two translation courses within the traditional plan of the English department at An-Najah University makes passing this test almost out of reach. Finally, based on an informal survey conducted by some teachers at the English department, who were interested in finding out about their students’ plans after graduation, it was obvious that there were quite many top students who expressed their strong desire to work as translators should they ever had the opportunity to gain more theory and practice in translation. They see translation as a window through which they can see the world, learn about other cultures, share different views and as well express their own culture and heritage universally in diplomatically and professionally sound ways.