Remember the dull question we all have been asked when we were only 10 years old: “What do you want to be when you grow up? Answers we could think of are ‘doctor’, ‘pilot’, ‘footballer’, or may be ‘mermaid’. We barely find a child who would say that he/she wants to become a translator. Although a translator is one of the most reputable jobs around the world, it rarely comes to a child’s mind to say “I want to be a translator”.
“What do you want to be when you grow up” is one of the most intimidating questions, simply because a ten-year-old kid does not know the answer yet. They tend to give the cliché answers that the elders would love. Children sometimes tend to look for heroes in their small world, so they may pick the profession of their favorite movie character or the profession of their beloved ones, but not necessarily the profession they really want to join.
Although translation seems a simple profession but actually it is too sophisticated for 10-year-old kids to understand the importance of translation in our world. It is too complicated for children to know that translation has been the means connecting the world long before social media and if it hadn’t been for translation, the world would not have survived till the moment. Children need to be enlightened first on the role of translation in our big world and spend long years learning languages and cultures before they fall in love with our noble profession. That’s what translation is a profession for the enlightened ones.