I should preface this by saying that I actually like what I do for a living, but sometimes I wonder why I bother doing it – in the “wryly amused” sense, rather than the “throwing up one’s hands” sense.
My job is basically halfway between translation and proofreading, and involves going over press releases and other such things written by Japanese native speakers from Japanese companies, for release in English speaking markets. Fortunately, most of them are quite good writers, so my job is usually limited to making sure their grammar’s on point, their choice of vocabulary is correct, they haven’t made any embarrassing errors, and generally making it seem like a native speaker wrote it.
However, this is a fairly frequent occurrence:
Company: “Can you check this for client (X)?”
Me: “Sure”. (Checks it, makes whatever changes are needed, sends it back)
Few hours later, or next day:
Company: “Client X has made 773743294327 changes to the document we sent them. Could you check their changes?”
Me: “Er, OK”. (Looks at document, realises that client X has basically ignored or changed 99 per cent of my suggestions, and in each case has made them worse. Try to say this very politely to my company)
Company (with “sucking air” emoji implied) “Client X would prefer to use their wording as much as possible”
Me (to self only) “So…why did they originally ask us to check their document?”
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…or is it just me?
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45 comments
Tanaka bucho from client X spent 5 days in Hawai back in 1987. You can’t win, he is always right when it comes to English.
This is ridiculous but still true in many old fashioned companies. Don’t take it personally, it’s not worth worrying about this.
I (native English speaker) work as an writer/editor for a Japanese publisher of English-language learning materials. Since we hire native (US/UK/Aus) English voice talent to record our content, I am usually there in the studio as the technical native advisor. After the voice actor does their thing and the engineer replays the recording for us, I give it the thumbs up BUT my Japanese colleagues always have some worries or doubts as they believe it doesn’t sound the way they learned English in their school days. So we need to re-record it and stress a certain letter, dipthong, sound, etc. Sigh.
There’s a tasty little Japanese website you can refer doubters to. It contains a number of articles on points to be aware of when translating corporate copy into English. It includes things like avoiding ghastly all-caps, avoiding overly long headings etc. [This one is about press releases](https://designcraft-kyoto.com/blog/230530.html).
Certainly not always the case, but sometimes when native Japanese speakers change English to read more like the Japanese, they are well aware that it is less natural or normal in English. It is my understanding that in such cases, the writer is trying to express some Japanese-ness in English, rather than having perfect English. I think this is more common in, say, marketing material than legal documents…
As long as my name isn’t on the translation, I could not give fifty flying fucks whether they decide to not use my suggestions against professional advice.
I’ve mentioned this before, but for me, my Japanese is about as good as the best English speaker in my company. It’s decent business level Japanese.
What I always start by confirming with said person is what they think of my Japanese ability in comparison to their English. Usually I’m about their level or a bit better or a lot better. Then I ask them what they would do in the exact opposite scenario, translating English into Japanese for a domestic press release and if it would be ok if I had final say in the proofreads.
It took a year or so saying this to the various people at my company, but no one questions me anymore unless it’s an issue with technical terminology. It’s all about getting them to understand their linguistic position and their own hipocricy.
Sometimes they don’t want a native sounding translation
Sometimes they will discard your work outright
Sometimes they will ask you for your advice and ignore it
Sometimes they will refuse to change their existing garbage Eigo no phrase
You can’t win as a translator if you take everything personally. Choose your battles and just get on with the job. Client happy boss happy gaijin happy.
Edit ok maybe “gaijin happy” was an overstatement. Let’s run with “gaijin avoids suicidal ideation for another day”
Don’t worry, it happens to everyone. My Russian coworker completely deletes and retranslates my stuff literally daily. I’ve stopped caring and just Google Translate the stuff she’s going to “check”
Whether or not I argue with corrections depends largely on how much I am being paid for a particular job. If the money is low, then, if the corrections are good enough for them, they are good enough for me. If the money is decent, then I will revert any corrections I really don’t like with an explanation.
asking for corrections is just a standard checking of the boxes. I wouldnt’ take it personally when a client doesn’t care to use your corrections. It’s not just you, but at the same time, you should learn to let it go. After all, you’re doing your job by fulfilling the request, and at the end of the day, that’s all anyone can really look back on when it comes to your position.
Some observations from my experience:
* There is probably some person at the client whose job is to check the checkers. The more changes they make, the bigger their contribution.
* At the client, there may be somebody in the chain of command who insists that they must be able to understand the English output, so it is fixed for that person. This is common when the release target includes countries where English is not the native language, and they reason (mostly wrongly) that if they can understand the English, the non-natives in X country will be able to as well.
* There may be some “failed artist as art critic” vibe — someone is a frustrated English press release writer and is venting.
* The client probably has some long list of “precedence” phrases and vocabulary. “We have always translated X as Y and therefore we must continue to translate X as Y for consistency.”
* There can be some genuine failure of a native English speaker to catch the desired nuance, but the fix is executed badly.
As others have said, I would try not to sweat it. If you are asked to check their checks to your checks, you can give an opinion–on the clock–but otherwise just let it go.
Dude, I call this being “Charlie Brown-ed.” You know how Charlie Brown tries his best to punt a football and Lucy always pulls it away from him right before he kicks it? Yeah, that’s me—I’m Charlie Brown. I’m the only native English speaker at my company and I get asked to proofread English stuff occasionally. And every time I take the job seriously and spend time making corrections and giving feedback, only for them to completely ignore it and publish some abomination because they thought it “sounded better that way.” Every time. I’m a bit OCD though and just can’t stop myself from correcting the copy that comes across my desk, even knowing that I could just give it a thumbs up as is, because that’s what they are going to press with anyway.
I work as a side gig as a proofreader for textbooks here. The company is fine, just ask if what they have is natural or correct. The problem comes from the people who use the textbooks. They are all JHS or SHS material, and inevitably I will get a message from the publisher along the lines of “a Japanese English teacher thinks….” and ask a pedantic question about antiquated English. I tell them that the teacher should stop thinking and trust the native speaker.
I had that for a commercial for a mascara in French. I don’t remember the brand it was something about panda. Anyway for a part of the translation Tanaka bucho wanting me to use a specific sentence that was technically correct but very very very sexually ambiguous. I would change the sentence again and again until my manager got angry and asked me why I wouldn’t use her sentence. I had to tell him “please explain in you words it basically means “f*ck me slowly” because I cannot tell her that.
She would call me and speak French but it was so bad I couldn’t understand what she was saying. So I had to fake bad reception.
2 of my friends do thwsame type of work and tell me about the situation. I think it is the nature of the role. One friend seems less bothered than the other. I think it is the nature of the person. My wife sometimesdoes transcription from English directly into Japanese ad also sometimes does translations of highly technical information. She often doesn’t want to over correct…so to speak…a senior person. Once I insisted she should correct a part, she did, it came back reverting to the original. Oh well…
I think it’s just culturally not being able to accept corrections as their mistakes, so a cat and mouse is played until they perceive themselves as doing it correct with no corrections. “They want to use their words” which is basically a hammer to the service you provide – it’s just the inability to accept they are not the best at everything. Not all companies are like this but I’m led to believe a lot of salarymen / office workers behave this way – it’s all or nothing.
I had an ALT job like this I dropped faster than a stack a hot flapjacks for the sake being my mental mode couldn’t handle the redundancy.
If you can handle well just keep playing the game because someone is paying you to do so.
That’s not Japan specific. It’s the world of English translation.
Reminds me of being a CIR 😂
site lead micromanages so hard I retorted back by asking her if she’s half way there then why wouldn’t she finish it already instead of wasting time by pushing the simple work to me. Lead took the afternoon off but she should be checking my email already. She already thinks I hate her (I kinda do, since she’s terrible at her job) and keep しくしく about it instead of do better. She also got another 逆ギレ mail from another newbie so I imagine she’s crying about it instead of doing her job properly.
Manager told me it’s “my responsibility.” hell no it’s not only me who is in charge of this place. Even if it is I don’t need a detailed instructed on what to do every single time. So anyway i wrote back a 762 characters response in Japanese in our private Teams chat. Got so pissed my face is hot but at least work finishes in an hour.
Now we know why we have an energy drink in Japan called Pocari Sweat! Have always wondered about the machinations behind that one.
I have an artist in my family and she sells doujinshi somewhere online. I’m not in that world, but I think she’s popular and fans often write to her in English and send her memes. She doesn’t speak a word of English and is indifferent to anything not Japanese. Sometimes she wants to understand a meme or the meaning behind a nerdy email. Everytime I help her, she tells me I’m wrong and then explains to me what she “thinks” it means. LOL!
Client is always right. Make your suggestions, if they don’t like it, so what? You did your job, you have your copy. Give them what they want with a smile. Focus on making the changes you really have to and move on. I see so many people get all hot and bothered by this, and there’s zero reason you should give a shit.
Take pride in the work you submit, and then move on. It’s someone else’s problem that they’ve paid for.
Also note that often, the document needs to be understandable to someone higher up the food chain with limited English ability – ie, they want it checked, but they know it’s a relatively unimportant document in the grand scheme of things and they need to show something to the higher ups. This bureacracy is certainly not limited to Japan – I’ve seen it at every company and country I’ve worked at / in. But the translation bit is maybe unique to Japan.
Either way – unless that press release could potentially kill someone or get the company sued for misrepresentation, stop worrying about it.
A former colleague had somehow achieved a near-perfect score on some sort of English certification, yet could not hold a conversation or write a sentence to save their life.
They would try to talk to me in English and get upset when I switched to Japanese to understand what it was they were trying to say.
They would write up presentations of utter nonsense that could not be interpreted meaningfully, and change back edits I made after referring to the original Japanese version. Edits from the review they had as in your story asked me to make.
The only comeuppance I ever got was when we lost a sales contract over this: we went to the presentation, they put up their original nonsense version instead of my edit. The questions from the prospective client were all “what does ____ mean?” or “what do you mean by ____ ?” or “I don’t understand what ____ means?”
I’d say, “Make sure our lawyers are ready to defend any issues the customer has with our services in the future. Get it in writing”
Happens all the time in translation here.
Variety of reasons including:
-believing bad explanations on chiebukuro or awful ‘learn English just by reading this book’ books written by Japanese people who have no linguistic sense and no practical knowledge
-people not wanting to accept that the outdated English they learned and barely remember from high school is wrong and wasted their brain space
-people learning a few words on duolingo and suddenly thinking they are linguistic champions
-pride in general
-Tanaka wanting to seem like he’s useful by making any edit whatsoever since no one can pick up on how awful it is
Sometimes, showing them what impact their errors will have is good enough to make them back down. Sometimes.
Eg – if you use x word, you will insult people and lose business; if you use y verb, it implies you no longer do x; saying z will get you reposted on reddit and destroy your reputation. Etc.
You get paid right? Let em hang themselves.
Yes, and it has nothing to do with foreigners or even language ability. Like other people have said, it’s totally about not upsetting the client or someone higher up.
I was asked to review/revise a terribly written document created by the client, so I just rewrote the whole thing. Nobody in my company doubts my abilities (Unironically basically JLPT N0, Eiken 0kyu level due to being dual native), but we had to undo a significant amount of my corrections due to 「やりすぎ」(i.e. potentially hurting client feelings). The client was still visibly sad that his English was shit in the next meeting.
Yes, I have much experience with this. If the person has genuinely pointed out an error on my part, I’m happy to oblige and I’m glad they caught it.
More often than not the “issue” is “””nuance””” which can only be explained in a paragraph and I just need to find the one word equivalent in English.
The other times it’s someone who needs to justify their job, so they will say that my English is bad, my translation is bad, my face is bad and therefore the whole thing must be changed.
My reply is with my reasoning and if they still want it changed, “okay.”
Exactly the same thing happened to me. I used to proofread press releases for Mitsubishi Heavy Industries, Electric and Chemical.
Welcome to Japan.
Anyone above you like your boss or your client are always right by default just because they are above you. Even if they are 100% wrong. This must never be questioned.
Enjoy your stay.
At ootaka now. Was going to pick up a few things before I come home – onions, etc from Belc or jusco.
I’ve had similar experiences. Someone with a half assed knowledge of English looks over the document that I completed and then creates more work by adding non native mistakes.
It sometimes feels like they don’t think a non Japanese really understands Japanese. A Japanese worker once went to Hawaii and ordered food in English, so he must be completely fluent.
I have a similar problem where my university writing class will submit a draft for me to check and then proceed to ignore literally all of my suggestions and corrections when they submit the final version. It’s really grinding my gears this semester.
By the sounds of this thread, I guess they’re just practicing for the future! This must be what they’re being taught by their Japanese English teachers.
I now & then do freelance jobs to “brush up” English lyrics written by Japanese lyricists worth mediocre English skills. They might be fine lyricists (although probably mediocre there too) in Japanese, but as they spent 8 weeks on a homestay in NYC 20 years ago, they and the music composer considers them fluent in English and hires them to write English lyrics. ><
My main is to make sure it makes sense as in a grammar check, have all the song in correct tense for the meaning flow, view remains the same, no made up words. It is helpful if the lyricist wrote in English first or if they have their Japanese language draft so I can compare the JP and story flow to what they come up with in English.
Many a time I correct the grammar and the lyricist and composer change it back. Or they will change the phrase back to the words they wrote that sound stupid.
As an example, I adjusted a line to “Baby…forever you’ll turn me on..”
They decided their line was preferable: “Everyday my buddy, you light my gas.”
Yes, and after the first year, I stopped giving much of a damn. Of course, I’ll always give my two cents at the beginning and put brakes on anything that really can’t go out because of profanity, etc. But if they ignore my advice, they can do what they like, my name isn’t on it and I can point back at chat and email history if ever blamed, which has never happened up until now because they had to stamp their approval on the final result. 😉
Lots of reasons why they do this sort of thing, such as there’s someone in the middle that needs to make a paycheck, and the more they criticize even when nothing’s actually wrong, the more they look like they’re doing their jobs. I’ve also noticed over the years that many people don’t know how to actually edit something constructively. They want everything in their tone, their way, and that means something that is actually perfectly fine gets put through the wringer. But, of course, they won’t tell you any of that beforehand, because they’re unaware of any of this. Just part of the job.
Try being married
As someone who has battled with this for many many years, my best advice is to choose your battles carefully.
If you are a chef and someone orders their A1-grade Kobe Beef steak well-done with ketchup, you just have to let it be.
As long as you are not directly responsible for any complaints and there is no chance that an inaccurate translation could result in death or injury, you are fine.
I had a great one the other day. The Japanese instructions were 「インターネットエクスプローラーを開いて。。。」 so I wrote “Open your browser and …”. I was corrected and told to change it to Internet Explorer. I could have caused a fuss and told them that Internet Explorer is depreciated and most users would not even be able to install on their computers, but I just accepted and let it be while adding a quick note.
It’s not just you.
Translation and proofreading can be particularly miserable work, especially if you aren’t dealing with the client one-on-one.
They don’t know you exist, let alone your qualifications.
This client sends their documents to a black box they expect to produce a specific, ego-gratifying result.
Failure to produce the result will eventually result in them finding a less professional alternative.
oh man, I totally feel you. Happens to me all the time in my job too. Its like they think just beacause they can put words togehter, they’re some kind of literary genius, lol. You’re there doing all the leg work, tuning up their grammar and style and then boom, they just bulldoze right over your edits. Talk about too many cooks in the kitchen, right? Makes you wonder why they even bother asking for a review if they’re gonna ignore what you suggest. But hey, guess it keeps us in business, eh? Just gotta roll with it and keep on correcting, even if it feels like a drop in the ocean of words.
I’ll be recording one of your scripts tomorrow morning. Shoganai.
Well, OP, as the Japanese say (in “English”): Let us all strive to take action to continue to try to do better than we have in the past to make a future society in which all of our client and customer and family can hope to be proud while enjoying the day of tomorrow! SDGs.”
Yes, all the time. Gotta learn to not care. Old Japanese men will always think their English is better than yours. Just gotta let them embarrass themselves.
Save corrections you made and if it’s important eventually you’ll get cc’d in because the client couldn’t understand the Google translated mess they insisted on sending.
You’re on point here. I’ve had one of these jobs forever. Luckily, they all regard me as having the final word. But I have come across what you are talking about. My boss said he thought I was using “too many commas.” I’ve never been the same. It was like getting knee-capped. Now I always ask myself if I am “using too many commas…”
To be honest, my attitude has really changed since coming to Japan over 20 years ago. Where I always thought “the Japanese are a bunch of idiots” or “these fuckers….” I now have real respect for the Japanese. Whatever faults they may have, I respect them for their sincerity, toughness, strength of character. Usually, I seek to have relations of respect with others, but sometimes, I still find myself reverting to “bunch of assholes” mode.
The truth is that we all exist in a state of tension with each other, and we have to struggle not to give in to anger or self righteousness.
Anyway, in the case of Mr. I Know What’s Best, if they are paying you well, “the customer is always right.” Let them go drive their new Maserati through the surf on the beach.
Doing translation and proof reading, yes. Many times.
Them: “We really want to use this word even if it’s wrong.”
Me: “ok”
As long as I get paid, I stopped giving a shit.
So what’s the question though?
Sounds like a real Japanese thing, and you cant win. just do your job the best you can, i would say.
This is not just about Japan. I’m a trained translator (studied translation in Uni, etc.) and this is a well-known frustration in our trade.
Sometimes, I’ll take the time to explain why I made this or that change or why their wording would definitely not work. But if my name is not on the translation, well, I just let it go. I did my job of proofreading anyways 🤷♀️