SURVEY RESULTS: General information

Mentoring for Translators and Interpreters

SURVEY RESULTS - Analysis of the answers

PART I: GENERAL INFORMATION

In the first part of the survey general information, such as the job of the participants, the time they have been in the translation business, the country they live in and their working language(s), was collected. Gathering this information was meant to get a general idea of the profile of the respondents.

There were 547 respondents to the survey, 443 to the English version and 104 to the German one. The German version was launched on request by a German translators and interpreters association, willing to spread the survey among its members, but requiring it to be first translated into German. For some of the questions, the variations in the answers between both versions are somewhat significant. Nevertheless, we decided to re-group all results for this question-by-question analysis. The detailed sheets, showing the original answers to all the questions for both languages, are available on request. If interested, please contact Nancy Matis.

The analysis below was done question by question. With most questions, a chart is displayed, showing the percentage of respondents per proposed answer. The number of persons associated with the various choices, is most of the time indicated in italics within the text itself. Some questions left room for open comments – those have been grouped in a bulleted list with the number of participants, sharing the same idea, which is also indicated in italics.

Also note that bar charts display questions, allowing multiple choice. The number of respondents does therefore not correspond with the sum of various answers, since most people chose several options.

Question 1: To get started please tell us a few things about yourself 

Most participants (287) are working as freelance translators or both as freelance translators and interpreters (85). Freelance interpreters (30) as well as in-house translators (44) and interpreters (3) also took part in the survey. Other professions were also represented, such as project managers (27) or company owners (25). We do not have any accurate information on the professional activities of the “Other” respondents (46).

Question 2: I have been working in the above capacity for (time options)

The answers to this question show a well-balanced panel of people, regarding their experience on the translation market. The largest group (203 equalling 37%) have worked for a maximum of 5 years, and the smallest group for 5 to 10 years (104). The 2 other groups with the most years in the industry count nearly the same number of persons – 10-20 years (116) and over 20 years (124 or 23% of the respondents).

Question 3: I live in: (enter your country name)

60 countries were represented in this survey. One answer was rejected as it stated the answer “Europe”. Some values were changed as they were too specific – like city names changed into country names. The value “mm” was interpreted as the ISO code for “Myanmar”. Answers like “England”, “Scotland”, “United Kingdom” and “Great Britain” were kept as such and not regrouped. 2 answers stated 2 countries – “France / UK” and "Hungary and England": only the first country name was kept for the results-analysis.

131 people, living in Germany, answered this survey – 82 of them filled in the German version of the questionnaire and 49 the English one. 67 participants are from The United Kingdom, 39 from France, 29 from the USA, 24 from Belgium, 24 from Spain, 19 from Italy, 17 from Canada, 17 from Greece, 17 from Slovakia, 16 from Israel, 12 from Latvia, 9 from the Czech Republic, 8 from Switzerland, 7 from Japan, 6 from Brazil, 6 from Slovenia, 5 from Austria, 5 from Iran and 5 from Portugal. The 40 remaining countries were mentioned between 1 and 4 times. The chart below shows all the participating countries, displaying the bars in the same order as the countries listed in alphabetical order.

Question 4: I work with the language of the country I live in

The vast majority of participants (521 representing 95%) actually works with the language of the country they live in. Only 26 people answered “No” to this question.

PART II: Mentor >

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