Fake It Till You Make It: How I Translate Professionally With Imperfect Japanese

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Like many second-language students, I am less than happy with my level of Japanese. After years of work, I would consider myself fluent, but still nowhere near the fabled “native level”. Although it seems impressive to my family and others who don’t speak Japanese, to me there are still tons of moments when I don’t understand what’s going on. But dangit, I’ve spent SO. MUCH. time on this, I’d like something to show for it!

It’s All Relative

samurai

Photo by Nature And

As it turns out, there are lots of people out there who don’t speak any Japanese at all! So over the summer, I put on my big-girl suit (I don’t remember, it probably wasn’t a suit) and finally managed to convince some poor fool to pay me to translate Japanese for them. By which I mean I went to go talk to the curator of a private collection of samurai armor in my city and tried really, really hard to sound like I knew what I was talking about. I was actually asking for a job… but instead I was asked to translate papers that sometimes came with the armor they purchased (turns out the curator only speaks French).

Now I work a completely separate, full-time job, and every once in a while I get a request to translate documents (mostly auction materials) for this collection, which I do in the evenings. So although I’m getting paid, I’m not sure I would consider myself a professional translator. But since I’m sure there are plenty of Japanese students out there who have something they want to translate (books, manga, song lyrics, whatever), I thought I’d share my approach. I’d also love to hear what other people do, because frankly I’m pretty new at this.

*The collection I translate for will remain nameless for privacy reasons and because I don’t want anybody to steal my job.

Getting Ready To Translate

After dinner, I sit down to work. I open the e-mail, and take a moment to freak out when I can’t read anything on the page. Honestly, these articles should be considered way above my level, but this is the kind of situation where you “fake it ‘till you make it”.

The first thing I have to do is convert the images my client sends me into text. (Standard practice is to charge by the character, so at the very least I need it for an accurate character count). I can try a text-converting program or just type everything up myself, depending on the quality of the image. This time my client has sent me both the image and the converted text (plus a botched Google translation, to remind me that she needs me). I copy and paste the text into a Google Doc and prepare my workspace.

This involves opening several tabs: Google Translator, Jisho.org, and Kotobank.jp. I also turn Rikaichan on in my browser, which is especially useful because I can wave my mouse over any word in the Google Doc to get a definition. If this seems like cheating to you, wait a little while and you’ll see why I don’t waste time on relatively common vocabulary.

1. Rough Draft

rough-draft

Photo by Wess

Remember this: the key is just to get English on the page.

Now that it’s time to actually start translating, I wave my mouse over the first unfamiliar word (unfortunately, it’s the title of the article). Uh-oh. Rikaichan is only defining the individual characters. “Iron earth” is not an acceptable description for a helmet, so I copy and paste the phrase into Google Translator.

Still no good. Jisho and Kotobank don’t give me anything either so I put a star next to this and move on.

I spend 15 minutes trying to find the meaning of 車患 before I look at the original image and realize the text converter has badly misread 鯱. This is why you always need to double-check converted text. I go through and correct all of the misread kanji before continuing. (鯱, by the way, is しゃちほこ/shachihoko, a mythical dolphin/whale/fish thing. Nagoya Castle is famous for the two golden shachihoko on its roof).

鯱の胴体部は背を中心に鉄薄板に鱗を打出した二枚を左右から合わせ
形成し、これに眉庇を兼用する鯱の頭部の鬼面を被せ…
For the body of the dolphin / in the middle of the back / in iron lacquer / two plates with embossed fish scales / join on the left and right to take form / these scales also serve as mabisashi / and the dolphin’s head / covers a demon’s mask

Unlike English, the Japanese language does not frown upon run-on sentences. I think they would actually rather add modifiers to an existing sentence than make a new one if the subject of the sentence is the same. For this first draft I am trying to stay as close to the original Japanese meaning as possible, so I separate ideas with “/”. Later I will rearrange everything to make more sense with English grammar.

A lot of words I come across are jargon, specific to ancient Japanese armor. They either don’t appear in a Japanese-English dictionary or have a second, more common meaning. That’s when I go to Kotobank, a Japanese-Japanese dictionary, to find the more obscure definition. You can do this even if you still have a lower vocabulary level, because all you have to do is use Rikaichan on words you don’t know.

The key to getting this far is making educated guesses about the meanings you don’t know. If you’re still not sure you understand, you can try a search using the romanization of the word (in this case, マビサシ comes out to mabisashi). You might find something like this:

mabisashi

Number 12 is “Forehead plate – mabisashi (眉庇). Mystery solved! Thanks Wikipedia.

Everything I’ve written about so far has taken place in the first sentence of the text! Granted, it’s a run-on sentence that takes up most of the first paragraph, but you can see why this might take a while. And that was just the first draft–it has English words but makes no real sense in English. Plus, there were several words (I’m looking at you, 鉄地) that I couldn’t translate the first time around. Hopefully they’ll make more sense as I figure out the context that they are written in.

2. Second Draft

An English sentence like the one below isn’t exactly easy to understand:

For the body of the dolphin / in the middle of the back / in iron lacquer / two plates with embossed fish scales / join on the left and right to take form/ these scales also serve as mabisashi / and the dolphin’s head / covers a demon’s mask / on the left and right / large scales and koshimaki boards / are hammered into place with rivets.

This is actually where Google Translate is the most helpful, believe it or not.

Okay, so a key part of Google’s translating algorithm is based off of statistical survey of websites and documents that are written in multiple languages. The algorithm compares the English version with the Japanese (or Spanish, or Arabic) version to see how the words correspond. If, in several different sources, 日本 (nihon) corresponds with “Japan”, then that is how Google will translate it. The program is getting more sophisticated over time, and it can now recognize some common grammatical structures. This means that I can sometimes put a chunk of text into Google translator to see how the grammar is most commonly translated.

I’ll go ahead and use a different (shorter) sentence. Here, “鬼面の眼球には鍍金板が嵌入され” comes out to “Plating plate is fitted to the eye of the devil mask”. Uh… yeah, that doesn’t make sense. But I already figured out in my first draft that “in the eyeball of the kimen (a special armor term) / gilt strips are inlaid”. So now I can write “Gilt strips are fitted to the eye of the kimen”. That makes sense, right? This isn’t a foolproof method, but as one of several references, it can be helpful. I go through the whole first draft like this, to get a working English version. Sometimes I do a third draft as well.

3. Cleaning Up

cleanup

Photo by emilydickinsonridesabmx

Translating is more of an art than a science. The articles I translate need to be functional, because my client is trying to understand more about the piece of armor. There may be phrases I don’t understand (what the heck is 鉄地?!) and I need to come up with a reasonable guess. In the case of 鉄地 I decide to ignore the 地 (chi, earth) character because I thought “iron helmet” was more to the point, and “iron earth helmet” would have just been confusing. If I’m particularly concerned about something, I’ll include “Notes” in my translation. For instance, once a passage had several typos, including a wrong date and a wrong location. I translated the information as it was written, and corrected it in the Notes.

As a last resort, sometimes I just have to ask a native speaker of Japanese. There are lots of things I don’t know because I didn’t grow up in Japan, so if I absolutely can’t figure something out myself (whether a given location is, in fact, a typo, for instance) I’ll get in touch with one of my Japanese friends.

Waiting for the moment that you understand absolutely everything perfectly means never using your Japanese. Whether it’s for fun or for profit, it’s a good idea to take chances and use your Japanese, whatever level you’re at. Even if it didn’t have the added benefit of improving your Japanese, it’s rewarding to actually use a skill you’ve worked so hard to get.

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  • gohomeloser

    J-E translator for over 25 years, translation manager for 15.

    a) If you’re using Rikaichan and Google Translate…you ain’t translating, honey.

    b) You are the translation industry equivalent of the asshole auto mechanic that screws over the client that doesn’t know enough about cars to know he’s being ripped off. Did you tell the client upfront that you you wouldn’t be able to read ‘anything on the page’? I doubt it – no, the client thought he was hiring a professional translator – key word there being *professional*, as in ‘an expert or specialist in the field, someone that turns in high quality work, someone that acts with integrity or displays a high sense of professional ethics in their practice. What they got was a charlatan, a fraud – someone brazen enough to brag about getting paid from unsuspecting clients as they ‘fake’ their way through the ‘work’. Cry caveat emptor all you want; this isn’t information asymmetry it’s unethical at best and borders on outright fraud:

    You said that it was a ‘very time sensitive’ job, and that you struggled with it. Well, great – the curator gets back a sub-par translation, notes from the translator basically saying ‘gosh this was really hard, I couldn’t read anything on the page!’….but because it was time sensitive now he doesn’t have time to ask a real translator to take a look at it. So he’s stuck having to make a purchase decision based on your sub-par work. Quite frankly there’s no way you should have accepted actual money for this job..

    c) Your so-called ‘fake’ translation career will last right up until a client realizes that the translation you turned in was rubbish. Good luck getting work when word gets around you’re a crap translator. And trust me – it will get around.

    d) But of course, the best part of all is that you probably spent the better part of a day – if not longer – on what should have been a 45-minute job. Given hourly wages, you’re probably far, far better off wearing a funny hat and asking the customer if they’d like to supersize it.

    e) Translating when you’re still not confident in your ability is completely meaningless if you’re not getting feedback. I don’t care how long you work at ‘faking it’; if you never get feedback you will always – and I mean always – be a crap translator.

    If you really want to develop skills as a translator but don’t feel confident in your ability, your best bets is to find some translation-related work at your current job, or maybe even tell a prospective client you’ll work for free if they give you feedback,

  • Carly Born

    I do a bit of translating and interpreting on the side, mostly for martial arts events. I almost never get paid for my efforts, mostly because I don’t feel like a professional translator and I feel an obligation to share knowledge with people who really want it. However, my experience has shown me that context and subject matter knowledge is crucial. Since I have training in a couple of martial arts (significant in one, less in others), I am often in a better position than the hired professional to interpret for a budo training or lecture event. But I recognize very much that my knowledge and abilities in this are very subject-specific, and I avoid getting roped into interpreting for anything outside of my comfort zone.

    I completely identify with the run-on sentence problem! Hanshi sensei who are trying very hard to teach anyone (but gaijin specifically) can go on and on in great detail about their point without ever including a verb!! It’s an amazing talent, really.

  • gohomeloser

    > I am often in a better position than the hired professional to interpret for a budo training or lecture event.

    This is complete and utter bullcrap.

    You know what the difference is between you and, say, some martial arts sensei with 40 years of experience teaching in your specialist area but with zero Japanese language ability?

    NONE WHATSOEVER.

    All the specialist knowledge in the world is useless if your Japanese is – as you admit – not up to par.

    This may shock some people here, but while subject-specific knowledge / experience / background can be critically important, the job of a professional interpreter or translator first and foremost requires *professional-level* language ability. Shocking, I know.

    A professional translator may be able to learn enough about their subject manner on the fly to turn in an acceptable translation. You’re not learning enough Japanese on the fly to do the same.

  • les piles

    I’m a professional translator today, but I guess I’ll try “faking it ’till I make it” in some other professional branch tomorrow. Surgery, perhaps? Or law? Please, please, choose a job you’re actually good at.

  • Huitième Passager

    Why am I hoping that some day you’ll have a fake plumber or fake plastic surgeon messing with your bathtub or your face? Maybe because I trained hard to become a *real* professional translator.

  • Noiram

    As some of my colleagues already said, translation is an actual profession – not a lucrative hobby. Believe it or not, some people even go to college to study it! So please, have a little respect for us professional translators, and do not accept such work if you don’t have the appropriate skills, i.e. if you don’t master the source language, for a start. Or at least, have the courtesy not to brag about it publicly.

  • Rose Newell

    Hard job, isn’t it? Funny thing is we really do manage it. Every day. We charge good money for it, too. That is what “professional” translation is.

  • Casual Pirate Game Player

    Quoting you on: “the translation you jotted down is the correct translation”.
    Are you for real? Last time I checked, languages are in a very basic sense points of view (which are constantly changing). How on earth does the idea of correctness apply to a point of view (and thus to a language)? Saussure disapproves. You have correctness in mathematical disciplines and to a certain extent in the hard sciences. But the humanities and the arts don’t qualify to use that word. Why? Because they are disciplines full of subjectivity. Correctness is an objective term. There is not such thing a correct translation just as there is no correct translation of an interpretation of Munch’s The Scream. Unless you are technical translator in the sciences or mathematics, I very much doubt that you can talk in terms of correct and incorrect translations.
    I would suggest “the translation you jotted down is the most suitable to the best of your knowledge”.

  • Casual Pirate Game Player

    I love how honest and humble you come across.
    P.S. Plus Koichi liked your comment! :0

  • Loek van Kooten

    Though the “perfect” translation does indeed not exist, I think all readers know very well what I mean with “correct translation” without diving into semantics. For example, translating helmet as say shampoo is not a correct translation, no matter how often your point of view changes. Please don’t use semantics to defend what cannot be defended. You know very well what correct means in this context; don’t pretend you don’t.

  • http://asmarttranslatorsreunion.wordpress.com/ Catharine Cellier-Smart

    Why don’t you just change the title to “How I Translate UNProfessionally With Imperfect Japanese”?

  • Loek van Kooten

    I do think though that “honest” in this case would have been to tell the client upfront that the articles were way above her level, as she wrote herself. Humble maybe. Honest no.

  • Eline Van De Wiele

    By devoting time to becoming properly qualified before we start masquerading as professionals. By researching, researching and researching some more until we KNOW our translations are correct. BY having enough subject expertise AT THE OUTSET to know when online sources are untrustworthy. By being honest about what we are really capable of.

    And last but not least, by giving a damn about what ends up in front of the client. As a professional JP-EN translator who spent a lot of time and money to get to where I am now, I’d be mortified to hand in a bunch of guesses. That you are happy to do so, and even seem proud of it, shows you still have a looooong way to go before you can consider yourself a ‘professional’. And you know what? It’s not because of your language skills. It’s because of your attitude.

  • Casual Pirate Game Player

    Nice. So when you say correct translation you don’t mean “correct translation”. And you ask me not to dive into semantics? Translating “helmet” as “shampoo” does not work…assuming both words are in English and the context is not a piece of poetry or prosopoetry or any other context where semantics gets really fuzzy. Assumptions this big should always be explicitly stated, don’t you think? Just like Laura should have explicitly stated that her taking the job implied accepting that she could successfully tackle it.

    “don’t use semantics to defend what cannot be defended”. I was simply quoting you on a very misguided arrangement of words you used. I am not defending anything, just criticising the quote. Translation in non-technical fields (i.e. outide the sciences and maths) is very fuzzy and the stuff I quoted from your comment does not help. A correct translation does not exist. I don’t know what you mean by “correct translation” so not “ALL readers know very well what you mean”. But some readers might know what you mean. Again coming back to the topic of certainty and correctness. Btw, your last four words come across rude/arrogant.

    P.S. I don’t think Laura would translate technical material in a critical subject (such as medicine or civil engineering) if she felt she could not tackle it. I think that’s exaggerating a bit your point. I understand that you might have felt that your profession was kinda watered down in this post but I don’t think that was Laura’s intention judging from her reply to you. : ]

  • Casual Pirate Game Player

    She did not say that she knew that the articles were way above her level before taking up the job. For all we know, she was just doing minor translators even if they were paid. She herself said she did not consider herself to be a professional translator. Also I said “you come across” (see present simple) So she is being honest and she is being humble. How she was back then is not up to you or me to judge.
    Also, putting the translator rage aside, it might be worth remembering that this article is aimed to media translation (presumably not paid). Books, songs, etc.
    P.S. As I said, Laura has been awesome at replying to your rage-filled comment and I think she deserves praise for it even you if you think she should have refused the job on the basis on some fuzzy ethics that play absolutely no role in the job she was doing.
    ———————————————————-
    Love you, Laura! :)
    P.S. Love you too, Loek! I am sue you are just a passionate translator! :]

  • Casual Pirate Game Player

    1. She said professionally (i.e. being paid).
    2. She said she did not consider herself to be a professional translator. Reminder: she was looking for a job and she was asked to translate.
    3. This article is aimed at students looking to translate mass media materials.

    How does any of this harm any of you angry translators that feel it okay to criticise Laura on what I see are mainly emotional grounds?
    ——————————–
    Stay strong, Laura! #laurafan

  • http://www.jadelanguagesolutions.com/ Eline Van De Wiele

    As I understand it, Laura is encouraging students to lie about their true capabilities in order to get paid as a professional would. Unless I (and the other angry translators) have really got the wrong end of the stick, I assume that her client has no idea she is ‘faking it’ and thinks they are getting a professional service. I don’t think that is acceptable in any profession.

    By all means practice your skills as a student, and get as many gigs as you can. But at least be honest about the fact that you are still essentially a trainee so that the end client knows what they’re getting into.

  • les piles

    1. Oh, I thought the definition of “professional” was something like “characterized by or conforming to the technical or ethical standards of a profession”, but that’s probably Merriam-Webster mixing up everything. How silly of me to think words actually matter.

    2. Reminder: she also has a “completely separate, full-time job” now. And I find it hard to find excuses for lying about one’s professional abilities in general.

    3. If someone bragged about “finally manag[ing] to convince some poor fool to pay [them]” to do YOUR job without the required competences, wouldn’t you feel somehow insulted as a professional?

  • Tanya Quintieri

    1. Just as wrong. Not because she’s taking the money that a pro would have earned, but because her client is paying for crap. Period.
    2. If my son were to hit his head really bad and needed surgery, I would not do it, no matter how hard he begged. I’d take him to a surgeon.
    3. Students… aha. Why not take your car to a mass car shop to have students work on your engine? I have plenty of more examples on hand – but you get the point I presume?

  • DGbg

    Hope you are not going to ‘wing’ the research on that too!! Skills and a great logical mind you have, respect from the professional translation world you definitely do not!

  • Casual Pirate Game Player

    “Laura is encouraging students to lie about their true capabilities in order to get paid as a professional would.”
    That is factually incorrect, if you read the article again, you will see that in the first bit she mentions her intended audience: Japanese students that want to translate books, manga and lyrics. They might or might not be paid for it but assuming that this payment would equate that of a professional is a bit far-fetched.

  • Casual Pirate Game Player

    1. No. Profession-al only means you get paid to do it.
    ————–
    adjective

    1. relating to or belonging to a profession:
    ——————————–
    Note: if you want a definition, oxford is the way to go. Just a tip. ;)

    2. How is that relevant to the fact that she never considered herself a professional translator?

    3. whether you feel insulted or not depends on your sensibilities. Just because a student got a job she was not totally capable of handling and a job you couldn’t get it shouldn’t make you feel insulted. But I guess it did on you and the other angry translators.

  • DGbg

    I don’t feel the ‘anger’ or ‘rage’ that you comment on whenever you post a supporting comment to the OP. The title states … How I translate professionally … However much you support and defend the OP professional translation it is not. No anger – just calling a spade a spade.

  • Casual Pirate Game Player

    1. Oh, so this is the good old “they come here and steal our jobs” rant, uh? :] Unfortunately, not all of us are as financially well-off as you to be in a position of refusing a job. May we see your work so we can admire the absolutely absence of imperfection in your translations? Links, please. :]

    2. Nice, but you still rely on incompetent politicians to do their job, right? To educate your children and give you social welfare benefits when you get old and dependable, right? Where will you go then? Sometimes, a job needs to be done and you just have to summon strength and do it. Given the fact that laura is being regularly called back I would say she is being fantastic. :]

    3. The example is irrelevant. If a car malfunctions the risk is more significant than if a non-technical translation is not appropriate. And Laura is talking about non-technical translations. Your argument is invalid. :]

  • Casual Pirate Game Player

    The title might be misleading but the author compensates for that by claryfing the intended audience of this article. :]
    inb4 the translators rage

  • gohomeloser

    Ah, I love the smell of bullshit wrapped in　self-righteous semantic hand-waving; it smells like victory.

    Semantics:
    Last bastion of the feeble-minded, adored by little men and the unimaginative the world over.

    Also, here’s what you posted earlier:

    > She did not say that she knew that the articles were way above her level before taking up the job.
    > it might be worth remembering that this article is aimed to media translation (presumably not paid)

    Interesting views. Let’s go back and read her article, shall we?

    - Title of the damn article: How I translate with imperfect Japanese.

    - to me there are still tons of moments when I don’t understand what’s going on

    - there are lots of people out there who don’t speak any Japanese at all!
    (translation: So I felt perfectly fine with going out and swindling another non-Japanese-speaking client)

    - (I) tried really, really hard to sound like I knew what I was talking about

    - finally managed to convince some poor fool to pay me to translate Japanese for them

    - (I) freak out when I can’t read anything on the page. Honestly, these articles should be considered way above my level
    (translation: I can’t read worth shit, but Google Translate will do it for me. Profit!)

    And thanks to these quotes, we can lay to rest the idea that this was meant purely for ‘non-paid translation’:

    - I don’t want anybody to steal my job”
    - Whether it’s for fun or for profit

    > I spend 15 minutes trying to find the meaning of 車患

    This would be hilarious if it wasn’t so tragically retarded, especially since she told us it was a ‘time-sensitive job’. Or was it time-sensitive only because she took so long with what otherwise should have been a short job?

    > For this first draft I am trying to stay as close to the original Japanese meaning as possible

    Which is really really hard when you don’t have a damn clue what the original Japanese actually means. If you had an idea what the original Japanese mean, you wouldn’t need to worry about ‘having to stay close to the Japanese meaning first, writing actualy English second’.

    - making educated guesses about the meanings you don’t know

    For Laura, I’m guessing ‘meanings you don’t know’ would mean ‘pretty much the entire page. Yeah, ’cause clients totally wouldn’t mind if you guessed.

  • Tanya Quintieri

    Why do you have to get rude about this? Do you feel offended? It’s not about them (there’s too many Lauras out there) stealing our jobs. They’re feeding us with jobs that we don’t want to do, namely correcting their stuff after they’ve failed. Not always and by all means I am not saying that an amateur can’t do a good job. But a professional does it faster. A professional has the necessary skills (apart from language skills) and a professional e.g. has the proper insurance in case something does go wrong. Even if it is not a technical translation. For instance, what if that clients decides to use Laura’s translation for a brochure. And what if he would have a print run of let’s say 10,000 copies. What about the clients financial loss? And it is also about educating clients that they pay less in the end if they work with professionals. The economic damage done by amateurs in any profession is huge. And in the end it’s you and me and everyone paying for it. But I do see where this is going: nowhere. So, have fun, live long and prosper.

  • Tanya Quintieri

    A lot of things I’ve read here remind me of a (German?) saying I recently heard: “It’s like eunuchs talking about making love.”

  • les piles

    1. If you quote Oxford, please quote the whole definition : “engaged in a specified activity as one’s main paid occupation rather than as an amateur.” What is described in the article is not professional translation, yet the author chose to use the word “professionally” in the title.

    2. It’s relevant to the fact that she still accepts translation assignments she can’t do properly although she has other sources of income. Also, in your first answer, you wrote: “she was looking for a job and she was asked to translate.” So? If I were looking for a job and I was asked to do something I couldn’t actually do, should I accept I anyway?

    3. What makes me feel insulted is not a student getting a job she’s not capable of handling. What makes me feel insulted is someone who does something else for a living sharing tricks about how to pretend to be a translator and bullshit clients. It’s perfectly unethical and you know it. I hope.

    As Tanya put it: this is going nowhere. All the best.

  • Casual Pirate Game Player

    Get rude? Get offended? Did you see the comments of the other translators (including yours)? They were all filled with rage and most of them contain at least one inappropriate word. Jesus Christ, it’s not as if she was translating medical books or something. let her live and breathe and be happy. -_-
    What’s next? Computer scientists getting enraged because we produce work using software like Word Processors which we are not qualified to use? Yes, there exist a qualification that certifices that you know how to use Microsoft Office. Perhaps, we should not trust anything you type on Word because I would bet you a tofugu life membership that you don’t know half of the tools of microsoft office or any other office package.
    If the client wanted top work he should have asked for credentials and portfolio. Don’t blame Laura if you feel people like her employers undervalue translators. :]

  • Axel Herrmann

    You try to back up something that is totally off track – and your argument that it is “factually incorrect” what Eline writes is a pseudo argument, because the message of the article is exactyl that what makes the professional translators so upset. Taking money for something you do fpr others does not make you a professional, but faking that you have the ability to do something (and not telling your client that you have not the skills it needs to get a perfect and professional result) and taking money for it means that you fake to be a professional, because your client does not know that you don’t have the abilities. So either way you do not know it better or you lie to your client. Both is inacceptable from a professional point of view.

    And encouraging people to act like this is even worse. Don’t be blind just because you’re a fan of the author.

  • Carly Born

    I’m sorry if you are somehow offended. I’m just speaking from my experiences. On more than one occasion the pro stepped back and asked me to take over because they were not prepared for the content. Perhaps that just makes them not as pro as they should be, being that they were not properly prepared to handle the subject matter. I have the utmost respect for professional interpreters and translators, I know that they do things that I cannot do. But if someone asks me to help them understand something when there is no pro available or the pro is not able to communicate well enough to be understood, then I’m going to help them. It’s selfish and rude not to.

  • Casual Pirate Game Player

    Hi, there. Nice to meet you too, lovely.
    1. The articles is aimed to student wanting to translate media. Nothing like medicine, engineering, etc.
    2. She gave an example where she tackle a professional job. She nailed and she got called back for more translations. Surely, if they are bad someone will notice. But it has not happened. ^^ Don’t you worry, no one is stealing your job. :]

  • Tanya Quintieri

    I am speaking for myself, not the others. And I am speaking as the president of an Association for professional freelance translators in Germany. Yes, we do accept members who did not get a degree in translation, because we know that many roads can lead to a being a good, professional translator. I am a “job changer” as well and I worked unprofessionally myself for a number of years. Simply because I didn’t know better. But now I do. And I would expect a person halfway intelligent enough to KNOW she’s not a professional (something I was was unaware of for the first years doing “translations” besides my full-time job) not to label her work as such. It’s the message she is spreading that ‘pisses me off’ (sorry for the harsh words). Not her. I am sure she is sweet and all she did was take an opportunity. It’s the “how” she selling her approach here. To me personally, it’s only that label she put there that bothers me. The signals she’s sending out. I’d like to compare it to this: Don’t we all try to do better for our environment? She’s polluting the environment of professional language service providers of all kinds. The world out there, and even more so the internet, is my environment and that of many professionals that have to speak up in this case and make a statement.

  • Casual Pirate Game Player

    Because she does not want. :]
    P.S. Your comment is very rude. It’s very easy to spot who is a translator on here by just looking at the comments.

  • Casual Pirate Game Player

    There are also people that do harder jobs for 1 dollar a day. :] And they don’t get all rude when someone who needs some money tries to do their job. But hey, all they have to do to be “professional” is charging “good” money for it. :]

  • gohomeloser

    > The articles is aimed to student wanting to translate media.

    The articles -are-, not is. While we’re at it, you need a -d- at the end of ‘tackle’, and you need an -it- between ‘nailed’ and ‘and’. Very odd ‘mistakes’ coming from someone that earlier was waxing so poetically on correctness as an objective term. I personally suspect you’re actually Laura. But I digress.

    > Nothing like medicine, engineering, etc.
    Oh wow!!!! I had no idea accuracy only mattered some of the time! I mean, here all along I was thinking the curator was interested in faithful, accurate translations. Silly me; he needn’t worry his little mind about things like ‘accuracy’, he’s not a doctor or an engineer! How dare he expect ‘accuracy’??

    > Surely, if they are bad someone will notice.
    Oh, eventually yes. But you think every person fleeced at the auto garage knew it? What a repugnant viewpoint – ‘I have no problem turning in shit work and getting paid for it, because hey, someone should notice, right?’.

    And oddly enough you conveniently forget that the curator in the ‘professional’ job above *speaks neither English nor Japanese*. (“turns out the curator only speaks French”).

    > ^^ Don’t you worry, no one is stealing your job. :]
    Oh, no doubt. But someone is definitely stealing hers.

  • gohomeloser

    Well, we certainly can’t tell by reading the article.

  • Ogee!

    “A professional translator and proud of it! #proudxl8 (http://dvud.org/proudxl8)”

    Is this just a way to come off as arrogant and rubbing it on her face that you are much more than her?

  • Tanya Quintieri

    It’s not about arrogance. It’s about being aware that there’s a difference. She’s making herself miserable in the long run. What if a future employee reads this blog. What will (s)he think? I (or anybody else for that matter) am not more or more valuable than her. But I am a professional translator. That’s all it says.

  • Ogee!

    Regardless, that came off as rude, and it was totally uncalled for.
    If you are a professional then you should act accordingly instead of saying these things just to get an air of superiority (which is what it seems it is).

  • Tanya Quintieri

    It wasn’t meant to be rude. What’s wrong with you? Since when has it become rude to be proud of what we’ve achieved in our lives? Since when have skills become less worthy than cheats? Grow up, will you?

  • Ogee!

    It is called being humble, like the Japanese say. Not waving the pride flag.

    Oh, and forgot to add, I am only calling you on your attitude. Most
    of the points you make and the other angry translators are true I think,
    but there are better ways to tell her.

    I once ( or many times..) got asked to translate things and I refused because I feel I’m not ready yet.

    And to be honest, this “”Fake It Till You Make It: How I Translate Professionally With Imperfect Japanese” title was only pouring gasoline on herself. She could have handled it differently too.

  • Tanya Quintieri

    Exactly. Being. Japanese people show their pride differently – by only doing what they know how to do and by perfectioning what they do. There’s nothing wrong with being proud. Don’t confuse pride with artogance. And then go back to my initial comment. I complained about the hiw, not the what or who. And sorry if there’s typos here. Typing on my cell phone and I can’t see what I’m typing cause the screen is way too narrow now (with the boxed comments). Night ya’ll.

  • Rose Newell

    “There are also people that do harder jobs for 1 dollar a day. :]”
    In different economies, perhaps. They also probably don’t have to invest what we do to be at the top of their game.
    “And they don’t get all rude when someone who needs some money tries to do their job.”
    I don’t know. Have you actually gone to those places and checked? It isn’t about the money here, anyway.
    “all they have to do to be “professional” is charging “good” money for it. :]”
    Actually, not quite what I said. I said that professional translation means managing to translate the hard stuff, day in, day out.
    Some other things that might help you learn the difference:
    1) We understand the passive tense (seriously!).
    2) We don’t leave out hard words or phrases because we do not understand them.
    3) We don’t rely on Google or whatever other tools to make up for the gaps in our knowledge.
    4) We don’t accept work for which we are not qualified.
    5) We realise that doing any of the above three will result in dangerously unreliable work. It may be right 85% of the time, even 95%, but that crucial 5% can cost my client their client in the best scenario, or someone their lives in the worst scenario.
    Professionals DO charge good money for it. This is to reward and compensate the years of practice, further education, training and experience invested, as well as the finances invested in expensive translation memory tools (for the uninitiated – this is nothing at all related to Google Translate and machine translation, but rather an automatic creation of a database of your own past translations, if you will, which helps to ensure accuracy and consistency in your ongoing work), dictionaries, subscriptions to magazines and attendance at events in both the translation sector and whatever sector(s) we translate for. Just like the best copywriters, PR consultants, accountants, tax advisors and lawyers. And that’s why we charge a similar fee. Some girl with beginners’ level Japanese and Google Translate is not in the same league, if even the same profession.

  • Rose Newell

    I think Laura should take the post down for her own sake. She has no idea how bad this will look to future employers. Nobody will openly hire a dishonest cheat: they will constantly question whether she is faking it. Maybe in American culture the entrepreneurship will be admired? But I doubt it. Any legal firm, accountants, PR company or just about ANY company I know well enough would be horrified. Even if they liked her, they wouldn’t hire her because of the bad image this would create for the company. Nobody wants to hire a fake. Nor does anyone want to work with a company with a fake on their staff. Really bad move. In many ways I would rather the article stayed as it is a great exposé of the workings of unskilled, unprofessional, poor-quality and cheap translators… However on the other hand, I worry about Laura as a young individual, however her actions have pissed me off.
    You would not boast about plagiarising your term paper, so why boast about faking your career? It all looks the same in any employer’s eyes.

  • Jonathan Harston

    It’s always easier to translate into your own language as you know the idioms and natural structure better that trying to translate “outwards”. This is the problem I’ve suddenly got.
    I learned Japanese 25 years ago, and since then I’ve only ever used spoken Japanese. It’s annoying, but I’m now functionally illiterate in Kanji. Write it in kana or romaji and I’m ok.
    Now, I’ve just had a job pre-offer where the recruiter has said: the client likes your CV, but would like it in Japanese.
    err… dot dot dot…
    Ok. I can translate “KEY SKILLS”, “RECENT EMPLOYMENT”, “PERSONAL PROFILE” and “I can offer 20 years’ experience of…” but CVs use such a stilted idiomatic language even between different areas that use the same language that I’m sure I’m going to end up with something unreadable.
    Like Laura, my process is to use Google Translate to get some raw text, and then correct it to get something readable.

  • Jonathan Harston

    Actually, the method Laura describes is exactly how the professional text translators I know do it. The only “cheating” is that nowadays you can get the bulk raw text to start on using online translations, but 90% of the work is correcting that raw translation to get the natural language. That “cheating” is just saving 10% of the work that in the past would have taken several days of grunt-work typing.

  • Rose Newell

    Funny professionals is all I can say. I guess they don’t give a damn about client confidentiality.

  • Jonathan Harston

    Sorry, “profession” very definitely refers to the quality of the work, regardless of whether you’re paid for it. I have fought with appallingly produced work that has been paid for where I had been in the same position producing better work the same position but not been paid for.

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