I’m wrapping up my High School. And I always wanted to be a translator. Especially since I took Japanese from my freshman to my senior year. And just seeing games getting localized and seeing how fans make a translation based of from one sentence to a whole cutscene always makes me smile. But I don’t really know exactly what I have to do to become one.
Preferably I want to stay away from the anime/ manga industry, since they’re paid in peanuts. But to work at Sega, Nintendo, Capcom, Square, or some other big studio would be great.
Of course, I would need to have experience prior before I consider. But I would be extremely grateful if you can help me out. Anything would help, specific majors or whatever, personal stories on how some of you may have made it would be very helpful. And I am contacting local colleges to ask about the career, but I figured asking on Reddit would help as well.
Again, thank you
15 comments
Go to college, major in something that gives you marketable skills (since you’re talking about games… comparative literature? Or straight-up programming), keep studying Japanese and get to N1, then go to job fairs and such before graduating.
If no luck there, consider getting a job teaching English in Japan after college for a year or two while you network on the ground here.
You’ll need to study Japanese, first of all. Which ever proficiency metric you use, higher is better: JLPT N1, CEFR C2, ACTFL Superior…
This can partially be done at university, but will also require extended stays in Japan – study abroad, working in Japan, etc. An alternative would be enlisting into military/state service and hoping you get put into Japanese.
Localization and translation for literature, anime and video games pats very low (so the rumor mill goes). You may want to consider areas like law or technical fields which may pay better.
Keep in mind that you must have a very good knowledge of the language and cope with stress and needy clients but if you are good they will come begging to your door. There are a lot of factories which need their new manuals to be translated or you could work with literature texts and so on. I don’t know about your country, in mine even the best ones get paid very lowly compared to their skills so if it’s money you are after check your country’s situation.
Along with the other commenters, get yourself some experience too (even if this is just fan translations, translation competitions, stuff you did as a favour for someone).
I spent five years working an English conversation school while I studied up to N1 and helped students with their translations, etc.
I was lucky in that my company didn’t require a lot of experience in the field (I mostly translate investor relations material), but I think my business-related classes in university helped.
AI will do it better. Japanese is the easiest of the Chinese-derived languages. But definitely a fun hobby to have.
I’m just gonna warn you that the juice is almost certainly not worth the squeeze. However if you truly love it then go for it, you only live once. Like most people you’ll probably end up falling into a totally different career than you ever imagined 🙂
Get a degree. Check out the Jet Programme:
[https://jetprogramme.org/en/](https://jetprogramme.org/en/)
Don’t know about your location, but in London there are Japanese Job Recruitment Agencies that specialise in jobs for Japanese speakers. They absolutely love JET graduates.
Just bear in mind that AI is rapidly transforming the translation sector. Who knows what the sector will look like in five years time.
If you’re already in Japan just network. Go out and meet Japanese people at bars and stuff/if you’re in Tokyo there’s places where translators hang out and network
You can get them to mentor you and move from there. But yeah, N1 at the very least if you don’t wanna struggle a lot at first or don’t have a Japanese wife or something to help clarify weirder stuff for you
Most (all?) professional translators I have met and worked with have native level ability of both languages they are translating between, and have studied multiple courses on translations. Each of them also tended to specialize in a specific field (eg: politics… technical/engineering… medical… etc).
They have shared that the most difficult translation job is “live, on the fly” translations (for speeches/live broadcasts/etc). For those, they usually have 2 translators, who work a maximum of 15 minutes each, before the other person takes over. Extremely high level events could have 3, with each of them going for 10 minutes and resting for 20. They have all said these jobs are extremely exhausting – but does pay well when they finally “arrived”, and was able to secure such jobs.
Slightly easier is “live, but with the script received in advance”, but they still need to pay close attention as the speaker could go off script, and they would have to keep up when that happens.
Then, further down that process would be written -> written translations. Legal texts, books, websites, games, etc. In all cases, having a good command and understanding of both languages is essential – That said, more than one of them has expressed concerns of their job security with the recent progresses in AI and language models.
They shared that, while the (many) courses they have read cover many different aspects of translations, one common recurring theme that makes their job hard is nuances. Understanding them correctly, and being able to correctly and accurately “transform” it so that listeners of the “other language” understands it is not something that you can easily study, and is generally developed over time with exposure to both languages and their cultures.
You might find this article an interesting read:
[New York Times 2019-10-19: Me Translate Funny One Day (by Jascha Hoffman)](https://www.nytimes.com/2012/10/21/books/review/the-challenges-of-translating-humor.html)
(Text is behind a paywall, but I was able to find a copy of it [here](https://m.blog.naver.com/PostView.naver?isHttpsRedirect=true&blogId=thinkuni&logNo=10156320354)).
*[Former United States President Jimmy] Carter was perplexed to find his opening anecdote in a speech to a college in Japan greeted with uproarious laughter. When he asked why the joke had gotten such an extraordinary response, he received this reply from his Japanese interpreter: “I told the audience, ‘President Carter told a funny story; everyone must laugh.’ ”*
There are universities that offer a degree in Japanese Studies, e.g. University of Hawaii.
The first step is to gain N1 level proficiency in Japanese. That’s a minimum.
Also, be aware that your competition is often Japanese people who have perfect English from living abroad but being brought up in a Japanese family and Japanese schools.
n.b..These days there is much less of a demand for translators as machine translation is so good. Paid translations are probably only done for documents which must be 100% correct.
The highest paid translators are those who have an additional skill, i.e. can translate engineering or bioengineering documents or other specialist fields like tech or finance. So aim to be proficient in on of those too.
None of the above. Translation will become obsolete bc of deep L. The best you can do is get a job where you use deep L and then change a couple words. This is what they do in research, engineering and most fields now. It’s just so damn accurate. I actually did translation work for a company as an engineer. Maybe in manga and some areas it will be left over but it’s going to low pay scarce work. I recommend this as a hobby. If it’s your absolute dream, don’t let my logic hold you back, there is still probably a way, just want to be realistic. Even natives in both languages use deep L a lot of the time bc you don’t have to think about it. My last company had natives in both and there was struggle. It’s just too easy and convenient for the computer to do it for you.
on other (Japan-related) subreddits, this question has been answered by currently working translators: at this point do not enter the field, due to AI it wont be sustainable.
example:
[https://www.reddit.com/r/japanlife/comments/xrssjn/how_does_one_become_a_translator/](https://www.reddit.com/r/japanlife/comments/xrssjn/how_does_one_become_a_translator/)
[https://www.reddit.com/r/japanlife/comments/onv90r/advice_for_a_future_translator/](https://www.reddit.com/r/japanlife/comments/onv90r/advice_for_a_future_translator/)
I am all for learning lanugages for fun or for living outside your birth realm, but be aware that technology had a leap these days and translation is one of those jobs that very likely wont make it to the other side.
I don’t know about America but I can tell you my experience working in Japanese manufacturing Company in South East Asia as Translator/interpreter.
Let’s talk requirements:
N1/N2 minimum. I did not graduate from Japanese major but I did graduate from Japanese university so my degrees were in Japanese and I have N1. They look for people who spent times in Japan for a while and can speak close to native level.
My colleagues all took Japanese major in university and they all have N1.
My tips is: if you have the budget. Take language school and go to japanese university majoring in either interpreting or translating.
Then, go look for interpreting jobs. You can do this in Japan (they always need interpreters) by going to job fair or overseas in Japanese companies where they always have Japanese advisors who come and need interpreters. They don’t usually asks for your niche but if you can stick to one like manufacturing/law/finance, do it.
One more thing: Good japanese speaker DO NOT EQUAL to good interpreter/translator
Job prospect:
I see people saying translator gonna be obsolete because of AI but I concur.
Anime and manga translators might be but manufacture and other industries still need interpreters and translators.
The reason is each companies have their own vocabularies which only employers know (different departments might not even know the words even if they are in the same company). Second reason: if you think people on manufacturing industry can speak in a way easily understandable by google translate you are very much wrong. They can say A and then it actually mean B. Learning nuances and interpret that is the hardest part of the job. They might say the pipe is broken but you have to look at the documents and how he speaks and then describe that the pipe is broken like it dried up and broke not because of cuts on the pipe or other reasons.
The job:
Just an insight on what a day as interpreter/translator is like.
We learn on the job. Follow our seniors when they go to meetings and try to do it ourself later. NOTHING AND ABSOLUTELY NOTHING can prepare you for Japanese language and words used in each factory. The only thing you can do is to learn fast.
I see someone mention “live” translating and switching every 15 minutes. I could only wish we switch every 15 minutes. 1.5 to 2 hours of straight up live translation is the norm when you got assigned to big meetings where they just keep discussing things.
Documents come and go at my place but the hardest thing is the technical documents writing about technical failures and things like that. You can have time to translate and fully concentrate on that but sometimes people will give you the documents on 10am and ask for the results 2 hours later. 🫠 be prepared to speed translate documents.
ACCENT! hard to get but You get used to it. You might not only translate from native English speaker but also people with English as their second language and damn it is hard to understand what the heck they are talking about.
The pay:
Manufacturing give GOOD salary for interpreters since they rely on us to communicate with their Japanese counterparts. My starting salary was at least 2 times higher than other fresh grad.
The downside is you might not advance career wise but it depends a lot on which company you enter. One in my company did achieve managerial role and actually switched to engineering project leader later. Others switch to freelance because the pay is better.
As a translator what matters most is your language ability, everything else is secondary. I’ve been translating for many years and nobody has ever asked me for my degrees etc.
Basically if you can read anything Japanese that a native can read fluently, you have a good base to start translating.