Translation jobs

[ConstipatedVigilante]

I'm planning on studying language in college since that's what I was good at in middle school/high school (good essay writer, good at spanish). Does anyone have any experience as a translator? I was looking around online and the online jobs to translate people's documents don't offer very good pay ($0.003 per word or so), so I'm wondering if the professional sector is better. I'm thinking of studying Arabic, since I'm betting that would be pretty useful if I were to go after a government job, and possibly Mandarin for business/trade purposes (although it would be fucking hard).