Translation work

hoey

Hi,
I am just wondering if there is anyone out there who might be able to give me some guidance/advice.
Basically I am getting very fed up in my current (office based) work...getting itchy feet and would like to go travelling for a few months. I would need to be able to have some income while abroad and so was wondering if there would be opportunity for doing translation work while travelling.
I have legal qualifications and am trying to find out about getting some qualifications to translate legal documents from English into Irish. I have a pretty good standard of Irish, but am not a native speaker and am under no illusions but that I will have to make a major effort to get my target language up to standard, but with a lot of hard work I am confident that I could do it...
But before I undertake all that study I have a few questions:

Is this a realistic way to support oneself while travelling - ie is there sufficient volume of work out there, is it possible to do this type of work on a free lance basis, and is it relatively well paid?
Are there any course that would be recommended to get language skills up to standard?
Is there any standard exam/qualification which I should be working towards?

I would be most grateful for any advice at all!

Thanks,
Hoey

simu

Foras na Gaeilge have set up an accreditation system for translators - they run translation courses and there's a qualification you could try for. See www.gaeilge.ie.

There's definitely some work out there but I'm not sure if it's feasible to live off it 100%.

http://www.irish.ie/foras/news/article.asp?id=145

You'd need a very good standard of Irish although I must say I've seen many very poor translations on official documents.

hoey

hi simu,
thanks very much for that information - much appreciated! I will check out those sites