China needs at least 100,000 senior translators, while there are no more than 1,000 graduates from this field every year.
Currently, there are about 10 universities that offer professional translation courses, and only 16 universities are eligible for issuing master's degree of translation.
There are more than 500 colleges and universities that have English departments in China, but most of them are not capable of training senior translators. For example, the English departments of most colleges in China only have two translation-related courses available: practical translation and translated works review. However, a senior translator must systematically study more than 20 translation-related courses.
Nowadays, translation has become a industry of tens of billions dollars, and China should work hard to take its share in it.
(Chinanews October 30, 2007)
