TOP 30 LANGUAGE INTERPRETER/TRANSLATOR INTERVIEW QUESTIONS - ANSWERS

LANGUAGE INTERPRETER/TRANSLATOR INTERVIEW QUESTIONS - ANSWERS

Are you trying to make your career as an Interpreter/Translator, Then this article for you, here we come-up with Interpreter/Translator job interview questions with answers. Best thing to know is that these days this job in boom and in coming days it will be more, and if you can translate/interpreter Spanish to English then this is very demanding language these days, So prepare for following questions.

1). Who is an interpreter?
Ans: Interpreter is a person whose job is to translate languages in the form of a spoken communication.

2). Who is a translator?
Ans: Translator is a person whose job is to translate languages in the form of a written communication.

3). Why do you want to join this translator's/interpreter's job?
Ans: Companies are searching for people who work with full efforts and are passionate about their job. Tell them about how your skills are best for this job.

4). What have you learned from your mistakes in your last job or project taken?
Ans: Don't say you never committed mistakes, be honest and just share a small mistake which is not more related to your job and share about what all positive things you learnt from it.

5). Do you find this job challenging?
Ans: Say that there are challenges in this job, but you will work hard to overcome them.

6). How many languages do you know?
Ans: Mention only those language in which you are completely confident.

7). Describe about this object in two different languages.
Ans: They will give you an object for  eg. pen, book, file, etc. and ask you to describe about it in one language. And then they will test your skills how good can you explain the same object in some other language.

8). How good are your speaking skills?
Ans: Tell them you can speak languages such as English, Spanish, etc. (Any language you are comfortable with) fluently. You can also share about a few debate or declamation competitions that you may have participated or won.

9). How will you like to work with us, as a part timer or a full timer.
Ans: Tell the way you are comfortable with so that it will be easier for them to assign tasks to you in future.

10). Tell us about your education.
Ans: Tell about the education degrees you have completed in your past. You can also mention the status of your current education if you are doing some higher degrees such as PhD. or some other.

11). Do you have any certification as a translator or an interpreter?
Ans: Explain about the courses you did and the share the certificate details such as the information about the institutes, course outcomes, time period of course, etc.

12). Describe about your typical work for the position of an interpreter.
Ans: As an interpreter I will be given some content which may be one language and I will have to translate it orally into some other language, Relay the style and tone of the original language and Render spoken messages accurately, quickly, and clearly.

13). Why should we hire you as an interpreter?
Ans: Tell them that you are very good at your speaking skills. You comfortable is fluently speaking the languages you know.

14). What are your strengths?
Ans: Tell them that you are a good communicator, you are hard working and try your level bests to complete your tasks.

15). What is your biggest weakness?
Ans: Don't mention anything that can take your job away, a few suggestions from my side are: talkative, can't say 'NO', etc.

16). What resources do you use for translations?
Ans: Tell them that you use CAT (Computer assisted translation) for eg.  Google Translate and you also refer dictionaries for a better vocabulary content.

17). Tell us something more about how CAT tools works?
Ans: Computer-assisted translation (CAT) tools, in which a computer database of previously translated sentences or segments (Translation Memories) may be used to translate new text. CAT tools allow translators to work more efficiently and consistently.

18). Describe about your typical work for the position of an translator.
Ans: The job of a translator is to convert a given content from one language to another in a written format, Convert concepts in the source language to equivalent concepts in the target language and Compile information, such as technical terms used in legal settings, into glossaries and terminology databases to be used in translations.

19). Suppose you are very good in your job and you boss assigns you a big load of work, how will you manage?
Ans: Tell them that you will do it only if you are sure that you will finish it. Else you will ask the boss to assign some juniors to help you and you will work as a team with them.

20). Why should we hire you as an translator?
Ans: Tell them that you are good at your literary and vocabulary skills which fits you best for this job.

21). What have you learned from your past experience as a translator?
Ans: Give some better example about how your past experience made you learn new things and how did it help you to improve yourself even better.

22). What salary do you expect?
Ans: Do some research about how much other people in the same profession are paid and then put some numbers which are reasonable from the starter's point of you.

23). Suppose there was some mistake done by you in misunderstanding things, What would you do?
Ans: I will make sure that I verify things before sending them further. But in case if there is any such situation then I will come forward to apologize and correct my mistake.

24). Suppose you got a client who wants the things translated from Spanish or any other language to English, but you don't know that language. What would you do?
Ans: Say them that you will use some CAT tools such as Google Translate, understand and simplify things and give it to the client.

25). Tell us about a time when you failed to complete a task assigned to you on time.
Ans: This is a pure behavioral question. Give them an example where you failed to do things on time due to some external problems or issues. Do not mention the examples which can ruin your job.

26). Do you have any questions to ask us?
Ans: It is recommended to ask questions, Ask something related to your job. Don't ask about the salary.

27). What do you know about our company?
Ans: Please note that you should know at least 80% about the functions performed by the company. You need to do a little homework well in advance.

28). What kinds of people do you have the most difficulty working with?
Ans: Tell them you manage to work with almost all kind of people. You can add that you sometimes face problems working with people who have arrogant behavior.

29). What would you do if you were interpreting and a person said something that you did not agree with or found upsetting?
Ans: Don't say that you will start argueing with that person, tell them that you will understand the problem and then try to correct yourself.

30). What, if anything, would you do before an interpretation session?
Ans: I will make sure that I am comfortable with both the languages, I will also keep some reference sources such as a dictionary for technical words.