Hello! So I have a good Japanese friend here who is absurdly good at English. Like, she can seamlessly interpret anything from zoomer slang, to corporate lingo into Japanese while keeping the vibe and meaning accurate. She is completely self taught and sounds like someone who grew up in Canada. However, she works at a bottom of the barrel, dead end call center.
She is clearly unhappy there, but she says that she can’t find any kind of translation / interpretation jobs because she technically has no experience in those fields.
Does anyone have any experience with getting this kind of work? Any advise?
8 comments
There are a few ways to get your foot in the door of the industry. First is an interpreting school or course of some kind with job placement/recommendation OB system. Second is starting at the bottom, volunteer interpreting or interpreting in a factory or other low-paid job with low barrier to entry. Third is get a job with interpreting as a minor/”nice to have” role and build experience.
There are any number of recruiting agencies and websites that she should be applying to.
That said:
I personally would question how competent someone is at translating -and- interpreting if they’re ‘completely self taught’, as normally, it’s next to impossible to actually work at a professional level without years of in-house experience. Also note that it is the very very rare individual indeed that can both translate and interpret at a very high level, those tasks require completely different skill sets.
Perhaps your friend is the rare unicorn. But it’s highly doubtful.
Just ‘being good at English’ (or Japanese), on its own, is not remotely sufficient to guarantee someone is a good (or even halfway decent) translator or interpreter, because the core requirement is not the foreign language skill (that’s a given) but *subject matter expertise*. You have to have something to say in that foreign language. And -that- you can largely only get in-house.
If your friend is a generalist, there’s limited demand and almost no money in it.
She should get some certification. That will make it easier for her to get a foot in the door. Translation and interpretation are not highly paid. They can be with specialized knowledge, generally for law or scientific writing.
Where in Japan is she looking?
Have her look into foreign-owned companies. I work for a large U.S. company and we’re always looking for younger translator/interpreters.
Have her apply for Liaison work. We always need people to help our projects logistics.
I have no idea to be honest but I regularly require a professional translator for documents and all them need licenses. Might be worth a shot getting such license. In that case finding a job as proper translator might be easier?
My company is in dire need of bilingual (JP+EN) employees *but* with an engineering degree, preferably mechanical / electrical. They’ve been looking for 6 months but still couldn’t find anyone…
may be getting some relevant è³‡æ ¼ will help?
like 通訳案内士
or she could create her youtube channel where she would demonstrate her skills – perhaps that could help her land a better position