[docintrans]

hello everyone,

I need some expert and honest advice from people in the forum about starting MT as an alternative/parallel career. I am a doctor by profession working in a hospital on a day job but because of health constraints, I need to stay at home apart from my working hours. I cant afford too much physical activity and would be comfortable with a desk job, hence the decision to join MT. I have complete knowledge of medical terminology because of my background and full professional proficiency in english and good understanding of UK and US accents albeit few mistakes with very fast conversations. My typing and computer skills are good too.

Kindly advise me on
1. An online MT training program as a starting point for my career. I have searched quite a few online courses, all of them claiming to be the best in the market. Kindly suggest me a program which has a proper training structure, a wide industry accepted certification and will ultimately help me in securing jobs and sitting for the CMT and RMT exams with AHDI
2. I would prefer to do home based MT jobs exclusively, so kindly advise the way forward so I can train myself for HMT jobs from the very beginning
3. Do I have any advantage in learning MT/getting jobs because of my medical background, or i need to train extensively like a regular fresher?

thanking everyone in anticipation. Your help will be very much appreciated

[anand33]

It is not clear from your post that you are willing to take MT as a full-time career or only part-time career. As far as my knowledge in the MT field (about 7 years) it is not worth career to take it as full-time career because the pay is very low and competition is very high in this field. If you have no other career then only you may take this as a career that is my opinion. I am working from home from about 5 years and total experience of MT 7 years I am getting average 12 to 14,000/per. I do not what others are getting with same experience. I am working day time. I do not find working night comfortable, so I do not go to night-time work. Now a days US MT work comes in mostly at night time. If one is comfortable with night-time work he may earn more may be 20 to 30,000 Rs/month with direct upload work with several years experience. I do not how many year's experience is needed to get direct upload work, after 7 years of experience I still did not get direct upload work.

As far as home based job in MT companies will not give work without having one or two years experience as an in-house MT. In MT there is a possibility of misunderstanding words (that is dictator is saying a word and MT is hearing like some other words). This only improves with experience.

You have some advantage of medical background regarding understanding medical words. Online MT courses claim they will give 100% home job after successful completion of training but they usually do not give home MT job. One needs to work at least one year or more of in-house MT work to get home MT jobs. If you are ready to go in-house most big companies have their own in-house training that is free of charge but you need to give bond to work for certain amount of years for those companies.

With regard to home MT job companies usually now a days not giving easy work to home MTs. They only give tough work to home MT and they give work on line count basis. So line count becomes less with tough dictations. Companies claim to give home MT work on salary basis also but they restrict MTs salary on the basis of quality based incentives. They give a basic salary which is 12,000 or 13,000/month.

Again based on my personal experience MT work is not a rewarding job now a days and one can do it if one is not getting any other field jobs.

[docintrans]

Hi anand,thanks for ur reply and advice. I intend to do MT on a part time basis in the evenings and night shifts. The present scenario u gave seems a bit difficult for mt s as fresher's. But isn't there scope that you can get into a better profile with experience such as QA s and proof readers where u r entitled to a better exposure and pay package? Also, do you have any idea about the prospects of working freelance working on projects posted on online sites such as freelancer and up work etc? Thanks again for your reply.

[anand33]

QA and proofer jobs need high experience, one needs to give 99% quality. Giving 99% quality with tough dictations is difficult. Even very experienced people also sometimes understand or hear differently and there mistake comes in and quality drops.
I do not have any idea about working freelance working on projects posted on online sites. In those sites also competition is more and so rates dipped now a days. Those sites bid for freelancers and they take people who are ready to work for lower rates. You may try yourself on those sites to work if available but I think there is not much expectation to get good rates due to high competition.