Hey, I have a question that I was wondering if people could help me with. I just graduated from university having studied Japanese as my undergraduate (alas, not having a year abroad at 東大 due to the pandemic, but I’m here now for a year on a working-holiday visa) and I wondered what the prospects of a job in translation would be like? Now, full discretion: could I have tried harder during my degree? Yes. (Was I also going through 5 lockdowns? Yes.) Am I the best at Japanese? I’m looking forward to this year finally putting it into practice!
With this in mind, I’m concerned that my Japanese won’t be at a high enough level for any employer to consider me for a translator position.
I wondered if anyone here is a translator, has any experience starting out translating and has any tips, or just any general good advice.
(Translating English to Japanese and vice-versa btw)
4 comments
>With this in mind, I’m concerned that my Japanese won’t be at a high enough level for any employer to consider me for a translator position.
Did you study to be a translator? Or did you get a Japanese Studies degree?
Because the skills a translator has are going to be different than the skills you’d learn in a Japanese Studies degree.
While there might be some overlap I think you might have been sold a bill of goods (common by Universities especially the liberal arts departments – contrary to what they might have told you what you study is important, and while you can do anything with your degree convincing someone to pay you to do it while you learn skills others learned in college is a whole other proposition) that doesn’t cover what you wanted.
Did you pass N1? What tests did you pass to show you’re capable of actually working with Japanese much less translating it? Do you have other skills that you can use to become a translator for a specific speciality? etc. etc. etc.
a) Before you can translate something into English or Japanese you have to have a good understanding of that ‘something’. In other words, focus on becoming the bilingual subject matter expert in some field. You want to translate that subject like a native speaker would write about that subject. Don’t ignore that – go to school, take classes / courses, etc, whatever you need. ‘Generalist’ translators will struggle to make money translating letters to Aunt Jo.
b) Focus on subjects that interest you and pay well. Pharma / medicine, finance, legal etc – the more specialized the subject, the more lucrative translating in that field can be. Flip side, of course, is that it can take a long time to become a subject matter expert in the field. Start now.
c) Get familiar with machine translation technologies. Properly trained ML engines, used properly, are incredible production boosters – they DO NOT turn a bad translator into a good translator, they give a good translator superpowers. Think 50% speed increase while typing 50% less. The problem is, engine training is complicated and is rarely done well. You may spend a lot of time ‘fixing’ machine translation – frustrating when it’s done poorly.
d) Editing / fixing ML translations is quite different from editing / fixing human translations. The mistakes can be subtler. You can often tell when a human translator has lost the plot, because the writing suddenly breaks down. Some ML translations will read OK, but will make major errors (A causing B instead of B causing A). Bad writing can result in really really bad ML translation. Which means….
e) Learning how to give feedback on writing that can go to people training the engins can be valuable.
f) Learn to use translation memory products, understand the lingo. Maybe even take a course or two (if you haven’t already) on ML, programming, etc.
g) You don’t need certification or anything to become a professional translator. I know hundreds of translators, all making well over six figures, and maybe only studied Japanese or translation at university.
h) I think the ideal position would be in the IR / intl department at some company, in a role that would necessarily require some translation of internal documents and the like. In other words, the role would not be ‘translation’ per se.
Good luck!
I was a freelance translator for a bit over 20 years, starting in 1999. The way I got started was by applying to every translation agency I could find, taking their translation tests, and start getting work. I agree with /u/Dragon-Ash ‘s advice of finding a specialization–preferably something that you have a genuine interest in, because you will need to know this field in great depth. In my case, I’m a software engineer so I specialized in IT.
H