In most fields, the start of a new decade has relatively little significance. Despite this fact, the start if a new decade is an ideal moment for translators and interpreters to reflect upon the discoveries and trends that generate demand for their service and will create new job opportunities in years to come. Within the research arena, some areas that professional interpreters and translators should evaluate at this time are the fields of Medical Translation and Scientific Translation. As a translation worker, you already realize that these fields are among the most lucrative for people with medical and scientific training. As a result, we will devote the remainder of this article to some of the most important discoveries in recent times.

The world is full of people who are skeptical about the future and who believe that there are no more great discoveries that are left to be made. But as translation professionals, we have witnessed a growth in the number of projects that have come from discoveries made in the medical, biotechnology, genomic, and space technology fields that have kept us busy for months and provided attractive salaries. My own experience has given me the opportunity to make translation contributions in the fields of space exploration, DNA mapping, medical technology and green energy. It doesn’t seem like it was that long ago when government officials and leading scientists announced a project that involved sequencing the human genome. The outcome of the mapping has promised to provide cures for the thousands of genetic disorders that affect humans and have profound effects on a person’s quality of life. Another invention of this decade was the Large Hadron Collider that was constructed in Europe and is by far the largest particle collider in the world. Designed to bang subatomic particles together, the particle collider will reveal data that helps scientists explain what nature is made of.

But regardless of how much hype some scientific achievements receive, the results can sometimes be weak. To illustrate, while scientists have claimed to have cracked the code of the human genome, it will take many decades to uncover the mysteries of life and the end of disease that the project was intended for. While geneticists are discovering some remarkable things relative to the intricacies of the human body, they are no nearer, scientifically speaking, to unlocking the mysteries of life than before they started. But despite the lack of immediate implications that the project generated, it still opened the door to huge advances in our understanding of human genetics.

If on the other hand, you are one of the hundreds of French and German Translation professionals who play important roles in the translation of research projects related to the LHC, then you know that the project hasn’t lived up to expectations. Since it opened, you have probably seen news stories calling it a monumental instrument that has been nothing but a letdown in the public’s point of view and the target for bad press. But even if the project takes a few more months before it will be ready to perform testing; it will likely yield some extremely interesting data.

Aside from the LHC, Genome Mapping and new medical breakthroughs, the one project that required the most translation work was global warming.. Throughout the world, research is being conducted and results are being published in virtually every language through the contributions of skilled science translation workers. Most importantly, Language Translators have been able to work in tandem with skilled scientists and have had opportunities to establish themselves while earning substantial salaries and most importantly, job security. According to Natsumi Kimura, a Japanese Translation worker, “Never have the fields of language translation and science played such central roles in the most pressing geopolitical issue of the day.”