For context: I work in translation and editing. The problems I’ve had with this in my own job aside (if you’ve seen my previous post), I’ve noticed a lot more freelance translation work is being done by Japanese translators who do not speak fluent English.
Of course, back in the day this was common (and still happens a lot to this day if people just don’t realise or want to cut costs), but in the freelance world at least, it was becoming more and more the norm to have professional Japanese to English translation done by native English speakers. The quality was genuinely going up! (And it is generally accepted in translation that really you should translate into your native language, as you understand the nuance best).
But now, it seems we’ve taken two steps back again. A lot of native translators are being eschewed for Japanese ones, and the quality is once again rolling down the hill. It seems even native checks aren’t being used on a lot of these either!
It just seems like a bizarre trend and I’m wondering why it has happened. COVID? Cost cutting? I’d love to know people’s thoughts!
7 comments
Arrogance and ignorance. Plenty of Japanese companies and clients think that a native Japanese person who scores well on IELTS or one of the other tests is adequate to translate into English. Hint: they aren’t, and when you need to it done right, you should never translate into a language you’re not native in.
On top of that, companies are cutting the rates they’re willing to pay, and the yen has gone to shit, so instead of hiring native English speakers who can translate from Japanese, lots of people are turning to less qualified translators here in Japan who just don’t do a great job, or worse, just put it through DeepL and call it a day.
Probably just DeepL is easy to access, generates basically useable English, and companies are too stupid to vet their translators so they hire any old shit (preferably Japanese cuz obvs best am I right?) and these guys are just gaming the system to make a buck. put the doc through deepl, wait two weeks, send it in, roll in monies.
JPY exchange maybe?
I suspect these kind of translation gigs rely heavily on steady stream of English-speaking foreigners, and a lot of that stream has dried up in the last 2½ years.
Even if they can’t afford a native-speaking translator, I will never understand why companies don’t have a native speaker just *look over* their Google “translation”. You don’t need to speak Japanese to suggest something like [“Caution: Pinch Hazard”](https://encrypted-tbn0.gstatic.com/images?q=tbn:ANd9GcQk9bvd04IW3VOPrt7DgtSVpmsAUuJM5a9QAA&usqp=CAU) or [“Remove Shoes Here”](https://encrypted-tbn0.gstatic.com/images?q=tbn:ANd9GcT1gwl3Vjtg_8_D1UMb4VDN6wYX2KVor1N-wQ&usqp=CAU) or [“Cell Phone Use Prohibited” ](https://jref.com/data/xfmg/thumbnail/2/2781-41058f3fe8386a57014e2f20c8c7fff6.jpg?1544754788) sounds more natural than the “English” they ended up using.
I think we’re cheaper than native English speakers. Or at least some of us who are willing to work for 1200 yen per hour are.
How does one get into the proof-reading side? Just correcting an already translated document for grammatical and spelling errors?
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Sorry to hijack a bit.
I don’t have an answer to your question but I’m sure it’s due to many reasons including cost, old styles of thinking, and lack of English ability of people asking for translations.
Anecdote time.
When I send out documents to be translated into English, they’re more or less good quality. When I see a well-translated document, I make a note of it and ask for the same translator for future jobs.
The documents other depts, which have only Japanese natives, send out come back in wildly varying quality. Some of that English comes across my desk and when I see bad translations, I advise our depts to not work with those translation companies and/or individual translators. (We work with a total of three or four companies for various reasons such as areas of specialization and long-standing relationships.) It’s obvious those depts don’t take my advice because low-level translations still get through.
We don’t know exactly who the translators are but some are certainly non-natives of English (but not necessarily Japanese natives). In an ideal situation, we’d work with a single company that employs natives and we’d have some control of translation memory. But such is not the way.