Hello! I was wondering to get some insight from users who are in translation or English or have experience with them.
Currently I am doing the JET program as an ALT. My plan is to do that for a few years and then most likely go to grad school. I have a bachelor’s in TESL.
However I’m considering either JP/EN translation or TESL for my master’s. I do have a passion both, but I’m curious to hear about which may be a better idea for working in Japan longterm. I can only do JET for max 5 years and other ALT dispatch companies dont really look appealing to me. From my time on the teachinginjapan reddit, it looks like teaching an international school is best, but requires years of teaching experience and is competitive
I’m interested in game/manga translation, but I know other areas can have higher demand so I want to be flexible in where I want to translate. With the rise of AI and MTL I also know the industry in general is taking a hit.
So my question is: if it were you, which route would you choose?
EDIT: Thank you for your comments so far, esp those who are in the translation industry.
Though as for the ones who say neither….I’m very much not going to back to undergrad to get a degree in tech or finance. It’s either these two industries since that’s where my interests and qualifications lie. Thank you!
13 comments
Neither?
Translation is a hard market and you need connections to get work. AI is going to make it even harder. Japanese ability, industry specific knowledge and social skills are hard requirements. Very few people have all three.
English ‘Teaching” is for fresh grads that have enough money to waste partying in a foreign nation for a year or two. You being a JET should fully understand the purpose of the “job” and it’s expectations. They told you before you came there is a limit, that means they expect you to go home.
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If you want a future here, go to language school. Learn Japanese and be open to any real job you can find after finishing. Otherwise, you are better going home.
For a long-term career in translation, it’s best to get professional knowledge on a specific topic and become a translator of that area, rather than just a generic translator, e.g. legal translation or medical translation.
Neither, for sure. There are so many of us that wish we could turn the clock back to where you are now. Get a master’s in something that will serve you in the future. Skip JET to get there, it only builds an over-reliance on the domestic broken English teaching industry.
You can translate manga or games as a hobby. There are countless fan translated patches available that were translated completely for free, by fans, that match the quality of what is sold on the market today. Why would you invest in a master’s degree for something you can easily teach yourself? Don’t throw away your future on a hobby industry.
I make over 6 million yen as a translator. Not a lot compared to others on this subreddit, mind you, but it’s enough for me. Started out in gaming translation but slowly transitioned away because the pay is terrible.
Permanent employment with 100% WFH, amazing benefits, flexible hours with no core time, etc. And I only work around 3-4 hours per day.
Between the two, translation is easily the better option.
TESL.
Translation is very specific to individual fields, and very hard to establish a client base.
Get your MA in education with a TESL as a dual degree. This will give you more options. Even though universities pay better, the shrinking number of kids will mean a fair number of schools, both secondary and undergraduate, will be closing over the next decade.
With the TESL, you can always teach worldwide. Just make sure to get your TEFL or TESOL certification, not TESL, which is primarily for teachers in the US, Canada or other English-speaking countries.
I recommend forgetting about translation as a long-term career. Interpreting will stay around for a while, so maybe consider that if you have the temperament for it.
I was a Japanese->English technical translator for over 20 years. I made a good living back in the 90s-2010s. Most of my ex-colleagues who stayed in translation are talking about how difficult it is to get well paid work these days. Many of them are transitioning to other careers.
I moved to software engineering full time a bit over a decade ago, and am very glad I made the switch. When I was translating, the main appeal was the ability to work remotely, but now with so many remote development positions, there was really no reason for me to keep doing translation.
As an anecdote, my current company eliminated its translation department around two years ago, and we use machine translation for all in-house translation. The bilingual PR team handles external communication. We still have a couple of in-house interpreters on the payroll.
I’m a JET alumnus (Nagasaki 92-94) currently working in JA/EN translation in Tokyo. I would really think twice about becoming a translator, you’d better LOVE the process, because you’ll find it doesn’t pay much and its days as a fulltime profession are numbered, thanks to AI.
I started out in IT after JET, where I learned all my tech skills (Dev/It Support) and didn’t get into translation until about 10 years ago. I am making a transition into NLP and MT, so I’m not too worried about the future. But, you probably should *worry*, and not put all your eggs in the translation basket.
I no longer teach English, so I won’t pontificate on that subject😊
Translation requires you have some sort of subject matter expertise. Doesn’t necessarily matter what subject, but some subjects pay more than others – finance, pharma, electronics etc.
You don’t need ‘connections’ – that’s stupid. It doesn’t hurt, but it’s not must. You *do* need to be an expert in something. Do not – I repeat, do NOT – try to break into translation unless you already have a uni degree or higher level of expertise in the subject you want to be translating in. There is *zero* demand – and thus zero money in – ‘generalist’ translation, particularly given how incredibly good even low-end AI engines are.
My reference: 10 years as a C-suite exec for a fintech startup that also has a major AI translation arm.
Doesn’t mean that all AI / machine translation is good – there’s a lot of crap machine translation in the world. Just like there’s a lot of crap human translation. But AI translation, used properly, and based on a solid engine trained on a carefully defined corpus, will give the good translator super powers. Think 30-50% speed boost while translating 30-50% less.
But working with machine translated text is slightly different from working from scratch. Most important – you can’t really work with machine translation as a beginner translator, because you may not necessarily know when the machine made a mistake. Put another way – a bad translator isn’t better using AI, they’re just bad, faster.
There is very little money in gaming / manga translation, mainly because there are a ton of people that are interested in gaming / manga, and doesn’t require any advanced knowledge. Yes, this is a bit of an over-generalization, but after several decades in the field, I’m comfortable with my assessment.
If you want to get into translation and are fluent in Japanese, my recommendation would be to get into programming and get on the other side of the translation fence, where there is a ton of demand and still-limited talent: Building and tweaking AI engines, understanding how to assess an engine’s quality*, interface / UI questions for the translator / editor, how to capture text for building out databases of text to re-train engines etc. In other words, you coudl mine for gold (be a translator), or you could sell the pick axe (language-related technology) the miner needs.
The translator’s job might still exist in 10 years, but it’s going to look radically different from what we have now. A translator 10 years from now might be expected to be fluent in python, etc.
I’ve never worked as an English teacher, so can’t comment on how enjoyable or lucrative it is. I will say that even as AI takes over the world, teaching might be one of the few things we humans will always prefer to be done by another actual human.
* Which is better – wrong words in the mostly right order, or right words in the wrong order?
Those are both horrible choices, you will die in poverty unless you marry a wealthy woman, and YOU ABSOLUTELY GAIN NO BENEFIT FROM A MASTERS IN EITHER.
Learn programming or become a recruiter.
You already said you don’t see yourself in tech – I would ignore the people advising to pursue that. Entry level has gotten saturated enough that unless you’re super driven and enjoy the work (i.e., not just chasing money) enough to go back to school for a degree, it’s just not worth it. It’s also up in the air how much AI is going to turn that field on its head, as well. Maybe IT or devops will be safer bets for now, but still, if that’s something you don’t see yourself doing, don’t waste your time.
Honestly, if you like teaching enough to consider a master’s, go for a master of education. There’s a worldwide shortage of teachers, and your skills will be in demand no matter where you go. Teaching is also one of the least likely jobs to be upended by AI anytime soon.
If you really want to try translation, you might be able to grind out some side gigs to put on your portfolio and try to get your foot in the door somewhere. JET has a career fair / leavers’ conference for people in their last year and there’s always a session for translation/interpretation, so maybe you can build some experience in the meantime and use that opportunity to learn more about the state of the industry and decide at that time if it’s right for you.
Thankfully time is on your side, and I would 100% encourage anyone to explore while they’re still young, but I would hesitate to make as big an investment as a master’s unless it’s something you’re like 80% sure will be worth the time and money (2 years of full-time study is also 2 years of full-time income lost as an opportunity cost, so factor that in) and something you see yourself doing.
The whole translation industry has been decimated by machine translation. There are so many experienced translators chasing less and less work every year.
Unless you have solid qualifications in a particular field, it’s a pretty hard industry.
By the way, game/manga translation seems to be one of the lowest paid fields.
Not my personal experience, but I’ve been told by a couple of people who used to do translation/interpreting that media translation (like games, manga, anime) is poorly paid. I think the money is in other fields like medical and IT translation/interpreting. Throughly my current job, I met a Japanese women who does interpreting for tech companies in Japan freelance and makes ¥15M/yr.
I did JET for a couple years in a mid-sized city and then I moved to Tokyo and worked at a game translation company. JET teaching was ultimately unsatisfying because of the lack of control over the curriculum. Game translation was low paying and felt like doing the most boring part of my prior job, and working at a Japanese company was stupid. I ended up going home, attending law school, and then getting a job at the Tokyo office of a U.S. law firm. My job is still boring and very stressful but at least now I make a ton of money.
I would only choose TESL if you don’t mind the tedium and are willing to be somewhere outside a big city where the low pay goes farther. I would not work in translation, which sucked and I imagine is a dying practice (even though in my experience machine translation is still wrong too often to be reliable, presumably it will get there eventually). If you want to be in Tokyo, go get a JD first (although you also need good Japanese to work here) or maybe you could go get a MBA and get a job in finance.