Why I'm Qualified for my Potential Career
When you're five years old the majority of a girl's dream is to become a princess, and as you get older from teachers to artists, your dream continues to change. I think I'm not yet done with changing my dreams to make it concrete; however ever since I've started studying English Interpretation and Translation, I've started to have an interest in becoming an interpreter. I do realize that becoming one is a very difficult task and that I am nowhere near enough to become one. But the three abilities that I possess that could be considered as a start are: being multi-lingual, culturally diverse, and having a little bit of experience.
As I grew up, I had amazing opportunities to learn multi languages. The international school I attended in Thailand taught Thai as a mandatory class since elementary to high school. Also, I lived with Thai workers at our house and was always surrounded by the Thai language since I was little. This lead to be to become fluent in Thai over the twelve years I spent there. In middle school and high school, we had to take a foreign language as a class as well, choosing between Spanish, Chinese, French and Japanese. So since eighth grade I started taking French classes until I graduated, which was technically five years. Although I'm not fluent in French like I am in Thai, I think this has given me a good start, and now I'm double majoring in French. And English and Korean basically came along naturally as I grew up being taught in English and growing up with Korean parents.
As mentioned above, attending an international school meant I grew up surrounded by people from all over the world. For example, my friend was born in Japan, grew up in Germany, moved to Thailand, but he's Swedish. My teachers were also very global, having lived in all types of countries. Having an environment with such diversity led to me have a broader mindset, and most importantly, I was able to possess the ability to understand all sorts of English accents. Thai English, Japanese English, African English, French English, etc. Although they are speaking the same language, if they have different strong accents and dialects it's very difficult to understand. I did not know this was a gift until during class in my first year, our professor told us how important it is to have that ability. No matter how good your English is, if you can only understand Standard English, that itself is limiting you as an interpreter.
As for experience, the church I go to is a very diverse church. Our pastor constantly goes overseas on conferences and often times there are a lot of foreigners at our church. But if they're going to understand the sermon and everything else, they would obviously need interpretation. I have had several experiences doing this, often times doing simultaneous interpretation. It was very difficult at first, but as I continued to do it I definitely improved and it seemed like the foreigners were quite satisfied with my interpretation. I think being given such an opportunity is very rare and special since it is difficult to actually use what you've been taught unless you find an internship or a part time job separately.
In conclusion, although I'm not good enough to become an interpreter yet and that I do know it will be a very competitive job, this could be something I'd enjoy doing as a potential career. I'm not quite definite about becoming an interpreter, but some things that I think I possess that could lead me to become one are being multi-lingual, culturally diverse, and that I have had a few experiences interpreting. I hope that one day I'll be qualified in becoming an interpreter and to use my potential to the fullest in the future.
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