When I first started on my journey of learning Japanese I thought it would be amazing if I could work towards a career that uses the language. I thought about maybe being an English teacher in Japan but heard about all the work and how they don’t get paid much and how teachers have to teach at multiple schools at a time to get money.
Oh well, maybe translating? Would be cool to be a translator for manga and then I hear about how little they get paid.
So my question is, are there any good careers that I may not be thinking about that use Japanese and pay well?
3 comments
So, I’m not sure how other people on this sub feel about this, but translating has more uses than just media. Depending on how proficient you manage to become, TONS of hospitals, clinics. Etc keep translators on a call sheet. Especially in larger, metropolitan areas. Sometimes it’s unnecessary to be local in the case of phone calls or video calls. Being in the E.R. at 2:30 in the morning and having a patient roll in that can’t speak English, a translator is called pretty quickly. Not just hospitals, but large businesses with U.S. branches. It wasn’t that long ago that I saw job listing for Japanese to English translators for a U.S. based Toyota branch. If you’ve already thought of translating text but maybe not doing it for a living, it’s still a great way to practice. I’m not sure if you read manga online, but there are a lot of Scanlation groups always looking for Japanese to English translators to translate the Japanese text from manga scans into an English script. I’m sure a few of them would be willing to take a newcomer on and show you tips and tricks they use to remember compounds, how they detect accents and nuance .etc
Other than that, it depends on your level of fluency but if you’re wanting to utilize Japanese in a steady work environment, you’ve gotta think outside of the box that you would normally apply for a job in. Would you ever wanna work in a factory or manufacturing? No? But what does that company make and where do they ship to? Do they need someone in the office to speak to Japanese clients about shipping or orders? What about large scale media companies? Food and drink vendors like Pepsi, Nabisco, Coca-Cola, Monster, Red Bull .etc? A lot of these companies list these positions under a sort of hidden “Careers” tab on their websites. If nothing else, just start emailing like crazy. If you really wanna utilize Japanese in a work environment, there are plenty of job opportunities out there for it, you just gotta look and do some digging. You may find yourself getting hired somewhere or for someone you never imagined working for.
Gaijinpot has a lot of job listings you can search for based off levels of proficiency. That may lead you towards what you’re looking for. Most have rough salaries listed too.
The unfortunate thing is anything with a technical background may be more difficult. Both with needing to know the terminology and any native born applicants.
I’m a mechanic and was looking into my options last year and found some of this out. So a career change would be too much of a risk for me.
English teaching including being an ALT is still probably the easiest way to get your foot in the door. Then if your Japanese is good enough you can just start competing for regular jobs there as long as there aren’t legal hurdles (such as say entering law enforcement) but it’s easier to find better stuff once you are there.