By JOSEPH P. FRIED

　　Wanted, and in many instances urgently needed: translators and interpreters of numerous languages into English. Opportunities especially good in New York and other cities with large and highly varied immigrant populations. And in government agencies where certain Middle Eastern and Asian languages have surged into priority in the post-September 11 world.

　　That, labor market and other experts say, sums up the outlook in the United States for translators and interpreters, professions that have grown sharply since the 2001 terrorist attacks, though not solely in response to them. And with the routes into these specialties diverse-they all require a mastery of English and at least one other language-people can enter them with varied educational backgrounds.

　　Take, for example, Ethel Ugbebor, the founder and owner of the Universal Language Corporation in the Queens section of New York. Her company’s stable of more than 60 interpreters and translators can render 28 language into English, including some once considered peripheral to American interests but nowadays crucial, like Pashto and Dari, major languages in Afghanistan; Farsi, spoken in Iran; and Urdu, one of Pakistan’s languages. The company’s clients include the Departments of Defense and Homeland Security and the Drug Enforcement Administration.

　　But such a career was not on Ms. Ugbebor’s mind when she came to New York from Nigeria in 1988. She arrived to pursue a master’s degree in chemistry at City College, having been employed for a decade at Nigeria’s food and drug agency.

　　She was working as a part-time receptionist at the Nigerian Consulate in Manhattan while at City College when she fielded a phone call in 1990 from Federal District Court in Brooklyn, which was seeking an interpreter for a Nigerian drug-trafficking defendant who understood only Ibo, one of Nigeria’s major languages. Thus began her trajectory from irregular ﹩250-a-day courthouse stints to heading a company with ﹩1 million in revenue last year.

　　The Federal Bureau of Labor Statistics says there were 31,000 translator and interpreter jobs in the country in 2004, up 40 percent since 2000, and estimates a further increase to 37,000, or 20 percent more, in 2014. The average full-time salary in 2004 was ﹩38,000, with those employed by federal agencies averaging more than ﹩70,000. About 2,000 of the jobs in 2004 were in New York State and about 500 in New Jersey and Connecticut.

　　But Kevin Hendzel, a spokesman for the American Translators Association, which represents about 8,000 translators and interpreters, predicted even sharper future growth, “based on the current demand.”

　　As for Ms. Ugbebor, 54, she has secretly recorded conversations in drug-trafficking investigations involving Nigerians. In 1993, she said, she earned

　　﹩100,000 from that and her court work. She said that early on, she was concerned that working as an interpreter and translator would not provide as much long-term security as a career in chemistry. “But I took the risk,” she said, “and it paid off.”