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It's fairly common to switch to translation later in life. If anything having a bit of a career behind you before you enter the industry can be an advantage as it gives you knowledge that other translators won't have. With your background you could be very competitive translating anything related to government/public policy for example. I can't see you making enough to live on with culinary translation alone, but some people do manage to end up with surprising niches (I know of a translator who mainly translates knitting books/manuals). As with any career shift, you'd almost certainly earn less than your current position for at least a few years when starting out. I'd definitely try doing freelance on the side for a while (once your German is good enough) before leaving your current job.

The major concern would be going into translation without being highly confident in your language skills, both in German and in English (assuming that's your native language). In particular, you need to be able to read German texts at a high enough level to pick out not just meanings but also the style/register etc., and write well enough in English to properly reproduce the style/register etc. in translation. If I were you I'd be focusing on reading as much German as possible (e.g. newspapers, novels). Whether or not this is possible in 2-3 years depends on how much you're studying and how good you are at German already.

It's also worth looking into what skills/techniques translation itself involves, for which I'd recommend a book like "In Other Words" by Mona Baker (I can send you a pdf if you PM me your email). If you're looking at becoming a freelancer, there's also the business/entrepreneurial side to think about, for which you could read something like The Prosperous Translator.

If you're really serious about translation as a long term career, and assuming it's financially possible, you could also consider doing an MA in translation, although there are differing views on how worthwhile/necessary this is (search Master's or MA in this subreddit and you'll find discussions on this). I'm just finishing mine now, and I've found it worthwhile and interesting, but it's possible to make it as a freelancer without one.

First of all, congrats on the promotion and the learning spirit. I wish more managers had your attitude.

I had a similar situation where I went from in-house linguist to loc manager, and I wonder if my experiences might be of use to you. Like you, I definitely did not describe myself as "into programming." I'm still not into that sort of thing. But learning as much of it as I could had a direct benefit to a lot of my daily tasks, and I would recommend at least giving the more learner-friendly tutorial sites a try.

I finished a lot of modules on codecademy.com and genuinely enjoyed them because they were not particularly difficult and also allowed me automate a lot of things and also gain a deeper understanding of how things work. I went through Learn Python the Hard Way and gained a lot from that, especially since subsequent projects included quite a lot of assets in Python. I went so far as to plow through the first half of Code: The Hidden Language of Computer Hardware and Software (the latter half too arcane for me) and found that quite useful as well, although in hindsight it was a bit overkill.

Even after my department was given an actual programmer to code up solutions for us, I at least was able to understand how a good amount of it worked. Coding aside, a localization manager is the person that the linguists and testers go to when things break, and man do they break a lot. That said, I would also recommend training of some sort in SDL and Kilgray's products if you use them. In my experience as manager, both broke often or were fussy at best.

A few years later, I haven't really read much about code, but I still try to ask developers as many questions as I can about the technical aspects of their products and find it really helpful to follow up on Stack Overflow or just Wikipedia.

Good luck with your new position!

Do you want to know more about translation theory or translation itself? This sub is called TranslationStudies, but it's really about translation. They're not the same thing. Translation theorists analyze translation. It's very much like the difference between literary theory and literature.

As far as translation theory goes, Pym is a good place to start. I personally really liked Hans Hönig's take on functionalism, but all his books are in German AFAIK. I believe Christiane Nord is a proponent of functionalism. For a good survey, look up the Translation Studies Reader, edited by Lawrence Venuti. There's also an Interpreting Studies Reader, edited by Pöchhacker. I have a book on my office shelf (from when I was planning to do a PhD) called "Translating Cultures: An Introduction for Translators, Interpreters and Mediators", by David Katan. Sounds like it's right up your alley.

I may be in an unusually good position to answer this question, as I spent all day at work yesterday trying to figure out the same thing.

One of the best-known translators of The Art of War is Thomas Cleary. There's a great new edition on the market, however, translated by a student of his, Thomas Huynh. The title of his edition is The Art of War—Spirituality for Conflict and can be found here. The translation project required more than a decade of work and the process involved collaboration with numerous Art of War scholars. Businessweek wrote a short blurb about it, and Huynh himself responded in the comments section to questions and objections raised by other site members. I highly suggest you read his posts, he demonstrates a deep knowledge of the source material and provides great rebuttals to arguments by other members of the site. That page is here.

One comment of his you might find particularly relevant is his discussion of other translations:
> After 10 years of public discourse on Sun Tzu's The Art of War, I find the one factor that's most important is the level of familiarity the reader has to the book. In other words the best version depends on what you expect from that version. If this is your first Art of War book, I would highly recommend Thomas Cleary's (along with my own version). That's exactly how I started 20 years ago. If you're very familiar with the text, try Minford's. His translation is extremely succinct and can confuse first time readers yet is a delight to old timers like me!

>So here is a listing of Sun Tzu versions ranked from the beginner to the advanced reader (DON'T confuse "beginner" with "less accurate"; it is how clear the book is in explaining Sun Tzu's concepts):

>Cleary (with Huynh)

>Wing

>Giles

>Huang

>Sawyer

>Griffith

>Ames

>Sonshi

>Denma

>Minford

I picked up a copy of this edition yesterday, which features the Minford translation (the one discussed in the quoted text above). It is an enjoyable read, but I understand completely Huynh's comments on the difficulty of this translation due to the succinctness of the language used. I picked up this copy because I knew the Minford translation is a trusted one and I liked this edition. More importantly, I'm reading quite a few books right now and I didn't want to be weighed down with annotations and commentary. I just wanted the source text.

Hopefully this helps you make a decision.

I'm actually trying to compile a list of websites or books like this one which both aspiring translators and professionals can use as grammatical resources when translating. The site you linked mainly looked like a site where people can find translators/work. I'm sure it's great, but it wasn't quite what I was thinking of.

If you know of any grammatical resources for Polish that you consider essential to translation, then please share the links!

One of my favorite books is the Routledge course in Japanese Translation and Theory. Of course, the examples are only in Japanese and English. It's basically an exercise in small doses.

https://www.amazon.com/Routledge-Course-Japanese-Translation/dp/0415607523/ref=sr_1_28?keywords=translation+textbook&qid=1554303493&s=gateway&sr=8-28

There is a lot of lit written by Japanese/English language professionals on translation in particular. I'm curious why (though also grateful), but some of the ideas in the books can probably be gleaned and applied to other languages.

I just realized the price on this guy has jumped up insanely since I picked it up. Surely there is a .pdf floating around somewhere online. D:

Here's a better link : http://www.amazon.com/Introducing-Translation-Studies-Theories-Applications/dp/0415229278

I didn't read this book but it could be a starting point for a thread about good books for translators.

I'm just going to recommend two books: After Babel, Aspects of Language and Translation. I think it's a must read if you're interested in translation studies.

My second recommendation is specific to your 2nd language, French. Le Bon Usage by Maurice Grévisse (and André Goose) is probably the most thorough, precise, detailed prescriptive grammar you can get. It covers pretty much anything you could find yourself wondering about. Even if you think you know French grammar, you should consider this, a former teacher of mine who was also a translator (literary translation) and whose knowledge of French grammar was outstanding still kept it at hand's reach at all time while working, he called it his bible.

I know prescriptive grammar is sometimes frowned upon, sounds like a bad word, but at some point we all need to learn some rules.

I can recommend Heisig's Remembering the Kanji to you, if you don't know it yet. It was incredibly helpful to me for remembering kanji and to also understand the different parts that a kanji consists of. To find kanji you don't know, you can either search them by radicals or you can draw them into this online dictionary. There are also apps that let you do this so you can check on your phone while reading.

Hi! I found this book to be a very good introduction to theory. Another one I read was German-English only, so is probably irrelevant :=).

Entertaining and informative: Eco's Experiences in Translation.

IDK much about the Japanese market, but from my experience with US/European agencies and my pair, that MA in Japanese is gonna be plenty. I don't think an additional masters is not gonna help you for a freelance job, unless it's some weird hoop Japan-based agencies make people jump through. Freelance is not like a salaried job where an additional degree is gonna get you an automatic raise – an agency just wants people they trust can get the job done and the rate is based on the supply of such people.

The following link should be in the sidebar because it contains everything you need to know. Another degree would be an enormous waste of time and effort IMHO.

https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B01CDAB134/ref=dbs_a_def_rwt_bibl_vppi_i0

When I wrote my dissertation on this subject, I used heavily this book which may even have some mentions of Asterix comics, IIRC.

Here you go.

No simple way to answer this. I recommend these books:
Vinay and Dalbernet
In other words