Doing volunteer translation
Corrine over at Thoughts on Translation has a good post on volunteering your translation services.
I definitely recommend pro bono/volunteer translation, both for experienced translators and people starting out. When I first started volunteering, the head of the NPO told me that it doesn't matter if you have selfish motives to volunteer — in fact it's good if you do, because it makes you more committed.
So if you want to do volunteer translating to beef up your resume or simply because the work looks interesting, those are perfect reasons.
For those of us translating into English though, the sites in Corrine's post are probably less useful sources of volunteer work, because most of the work seems to be out of English rather than into it. One exception I noted is Translators without Borders, but their needs are French<->English<->Portuguese, and since I'm a Japanese->English translator…
If you're going into English, one way to find sources of volunteer work is to find the website of an NPO in a field that interests you — and that doesn't have an English website — and offer to translate their website into English. Another easy way to get started on volunteer translation is to translate Wiki articles into your target language.
A few years back when I was in Japan I contacted Oxfam Japan and offered to organize translators to translate their website and newsletters etc. We did for a while and I had about a half dozen volunteers. It was just when I was starting out as a freelancer, so that makes it four or five years ago and I wasn’t able to keep up with it.
I think a good idea for volunteering is to find a company/organization that you feel passionate about (in my case, a Japanese-speaking organization) and translate some of their website and send it in for free, just to see how it goes.
“translate some of their website and send it in for free, just to see how it goes.”
Thanks for the comment — that’s a good strategy. Some organizations might not show interest if you just come out of the blue, but if you send them an actual sample, that’ll often get them interested.
But don’t think about it as not being able to keep up with it — think of it as X time that you were able to continue your volunteer efforts. Volunteering is hard enough without beating ourselves up when other commitments get in the way.
If you are looking for other options to volunteer as a translator, check out http://www.kiva.org/volunteer.
One of the New York Times Magazine’s “Top Ideas of 2006,” Kiva.org is the world’s first person-to-person micro-lending website, empowering individuals to lend directly to an entrepreneur in the developing world.
The Kiva Translation Program offers the opportunity to use your skills to make a direct contribution, improve language skills, network with other Kiva volunteers and build your resume.
Volunteering from their own homes, Kiva volunteers translate entrepreneurs’ profiles into English, which are then posted for funding at Kiva.org. This provides the key content to connect the lenders and borrowers around the world!
@Tamara
That looks like a very interesting opportunity to volunteer. Thanks for sharing it.