Hi all.
I’m (29M) looking at changing my career from a freelance video editor into something (hopefully not freelance) involving interpreting.
A bit of background: I graduated from university in 2016 and worked for an animation company in Texas until I got fired. I had taken some Japanese classes and so decided to pivot to that and attended a Japanese language school in Kyoto from mid 2019 to early April 2020, when the world stopped thanks to COVID. So I find myself back in the USA and I’ve since been working various freelance jobs as a video editor and animator but I think I’m just not cut out to make this gig work.
I’ve kept up with Japanese in the meantime and I’m planning on taking the JLPT N2 this year. The practice tests I’ve taken tell me that I will likely pass. Then I’m onto N1.
Since Japanese is really my only other potentially marketable skill, I have been looking into jobs that would involve exploiting that.
*I know the general advice for people looking to go into translation is “don’t” because of the recent strides made in AI and machine translation.*
But does that also apply for in-person interpreting? Are there even enough jobs to sustain a full time career as an interpreter? I wouldn’t be opposed to moving to another country but for simplicity’s sake let’s focus on the USA. Maybe working for an auto manufacturer?
I’m looking for someone (hopefully in the business) to tell me if it’s even worth the investment in an interpreting course in order to get the skills necessary.
I have done some preliminary research that makes some very positive claims about translation jobs generally, but they’re from sites that are trying to sell a course so…you know, grain of salt.
Thank you very much for your help in advance. I would really like to hear what people have to say. I am sort of dog paddling here, career-wise, and I just need to change SOMETHING.
12 comments
If you want to I’d say get a good understanding of your native language. And it has as worth as you think it does
Interpretation or technical/legal translation are probably more futureproof. Nobody will trust business critical stuff to a machine.
N1 won’t be enough. You will need good business language skills and some technical words etc. depending on field.
29 isn’t old by any means, but best-case you have career figured out at that point already and you don’t have that
let me say that the people I know who do work in Japanese with Japanese businesses which involves interpreting among other things, are bilingual, and this makes it really hard to compete for the best jobs, because N2 or N1 or whatever level you’re likely to achieve soon is nowhere near people who are bilingual from birth and grew up in both the USA and Japan. N1 even, as hard as it is to get, is not at that level
I’d say go back to what you are trained in (video editing and animation) and get really, really good at that.
put those thousands of hours you were gonna spend getting to N1 into your core skills
Start interning at the best companies that have full-time employment. Work your ass off and make yourself absolutely indispensable and they may take you on as a full-time employee.
I’m going to be as honest with you as I can: No. Maybe if you were younger, but not for you now.
Reasons:
– You will need beyond N1.
– Interpreting is its own skill vs translation and has its own certifications, and is expensive to train for.
– Interpreters are not well-paid.
If you had your current level of skill at around 21, maybe you could get there bit by bit through your twenties but even then if you could become an interpreter you’d need more money than what that career could give you as the years go on.
Of course, being able to interpret as a secondary skill will be useful to you, but I cannot recommend it be your primary vocation.
Why not try to leverage your existing skill set to be an in-house video editor somewhere instead? It’s in demand, and the compensation seems to be about the same and maybe higher than any interpreting role you could realistically hope for.
(Sorry to be a downer. All the best.)
The live interpreters at Japanese conferences seem to be totally bilingual IME; grew up in two countries and half-Japanese people. I have done some live Euro-language interpretation at Conferences (which I think would be much easier work), but even that is tough and tiring work. That live work requires very high levels of fluency, good short-term memory, and ability to translate instantly.
Document translation is a different business; I suppose it does not require the same level of language skills but has different pressures. I have worked at big companies that use in-house translators, bilingual staff, and external translators. The translations always need some editing by the end-users IME.
Real translation professionals will have more helpful advice on the markets, career opportunities and paths.
stick to video editing. go where the majority of the work is, network with unionized video editors.
or, if you want to really try it, look up simultaneous interpretation work. I used to be an audio tech for a company that contracts equipment SI gear for translations in live events. I’ve worked with those SI interpreters- it’s not an easy work.
You might be able to get a job working for a Japanese multinational corporation that needs people who can speak some Japanese to communicate with HQ and English to communicate with local employees etc. so some of your work might be interpreting but there would also be other office tasks. Look into what Japanese companies are in your area – could be automotive, trade, food, manufacturing, who knows – and see what sort of jobs they have. Maybe try talking to someone there. I know people who have gotten these sorts of jobs with limited Japanese skills – you learn the rest on the job. Every company will have their own lingo and way of doing things. They won’t expect you to know everything before you begin.
I am personally convinced that it will be replaced by AI in all but the most important meetings (think meetings between head of States) in less than 10 years.
Therefore I would say no, especially if you don’t have the current skill and need some additional training.
The two big questions here before we can give you really concrete advice are these: How much money do you want to make (now and in the near future) and are you willing to move?
To give advice more generally, based on my personal experience and what people have told me, your N-level is almost irrelevant except for maybe getting in the door. With that said, the N1 will help you stand out in the sea of people on the various recruitment sites.
For interpretation, I’ll refer you to what SoftProgram said above.
For translation, it’s a little tricky. I’ve known a number of people who have gotten translation jobs with their N2 doing stuff like manga, but the pay tends to be pretty rough (4 million yen per annum is basically the hard upper limit starting out, and you often start lower). The truth is, translation and interpretation are often a side thing you do for a company that needs someone to take care of “English Stuff” for the company. Bilingual hr people, salespeople, bilingual office staff, they often get tapped to also do translation/interpretation.
I don’t know the US side of things as well, but from what I’ve heard, your Japanese doesn’t have to be as high a level as it does in Japan, but there tends to be more of a focus on someone having prior experience in the field. In Japan, they’ll want someone whose Japanese is more refined, but they tend to be more willing to take on someone inexperienced in the field and train them.
Some final parting pieces of advice: 1. Developing you speaking ability is the most important skill. Even if the job is mostly about reading and writing, being able to speak well will get you through an interview. You don’t have to be grammatically perfect, just generally able to smoothly explain yourself with out a lot of long pauses for thought (once in awhile is probably fine). 2. 29 is young. If you were ten years older, and looking for your first job in tech, I might be worried about you, but otherwise, as long as you have the skills, your age likely won’t be a significant factor. 3. Start trawling through the job sites now to get a sense of what’s out there. Linkedin and Indeed are probably the best for the US, and CareerCross is probably the best for Japan.
Edit: Two things I forgot:
1. Everything I said here assumes that you’re a native English speaker. My friends from southeast Asia, even though their English is often very good, have a tougher go of things and often have to accept less money. This isn’t as relevant if you’re in a skilled field like finance or tech (and maybe video editing).
2. Just anecdotal, but I’ve seen a lot of video editing job openings in Japan, and you usually only need your N2 for them.
Your Japanese level isn’t nearly close to good enough and even if it would be (post N1 several years of professional experience in Japan) you would also need intensive training for interpreting as it’s another extremely cognitively demanding skill to layer on top of already high language requirements.
Fully bilingual (raised native in both languages) cannot get properly compensated for their translation work and language skills. Anyone on the N-scale is simply not adequately skilled to expect any pay at all.
How you can get work in translation is to be an expert in a field, and add translation on top of that. (Or to be natively bilingual).
I have been hired for translation (spot work, and not anything close to a main source of income). But that is because the number of people with my specific qualification are few and far between, and then being even very non-natively bilingual makes me the entire list to call for a few very specific translation tasks, where I know the jargon in both languages. And I still make a terrible daily rate to do it, and do it more for the professional contacts I make , and background info I glean from it than anything else. It’s interesting which language side has looser lips on certain details.
Or to be employed in customer facing jobs where personality is your main skill, and your language abilities are just icing on the cake.
I live in the Pacific Northwest and know two native Cantonese speakers who do medical interpreting for in-patient and over-the-phone doctor visits. One did it as a full-time career for couple decades but has retired, and another one did it to pay the bills as she was finishing nursing school, so I’m not sure how financially viable the market is today. My impression is that the job has less to do with native-like fluency and more about whether you can remember a list of couple hundred medical terms. I don’t think the job will be replaced by machines because it’s really about adding a layer of comfort to a sixty years old lady who’s afraid to go visit the doctor, even if the interpreter sometimes still need to look something up. However, you would need to live somewhere with a sufficiently large local Japanese community such that local healthcare would offer such service.