i-sako.com

I’ve been discussing making the transition from in-house translation work to freelancing with the friendly folks over at the SWET-L mailing list. One contributor kindly called my attention to the following article from The Japan Times. I couldn’t help but smirk as I read the story of my working life.

Lost in translation: Staff corner-cutting helps cause all sorts of confusion

Even people overseas with little interest in Japan or knowledge of it are keenly aware of how awful the quality of translated English can be here.

…

Still, the often appalling quality of English translations shouldn’t come as a big surprise when you consider the demographics of the translation market in Japan.

William Lise, a veteran translator and founder of the Japan Association of Translators, reckons that 500-800 native English-speaking translators are working in Japan, plus many others who translate on the side. The number of Japanese nationals doing the same kind of work, however, is many, many times higher, somewhere around 10,000, he says.

...the bursting of the economic bubble in the early 1990s has forced many companies to restructure. That has meant that more and more employers are diverting their material to their in-house, non-specialized staff.

So unless the economy improves or employers take on a whole new attitude when it comes to publishing English material, bad English will still be with us for a while yet.

In my experience, this article rings painfully true. All too often, Japanese people think their memory of junior high school English lessons is enough to help them produce passable English translations. They’re almost always wrong.

Tomorrow my company will announce the (domestic) release of a new product, so today I am busy with preparations. As if my normal workload was not enough to keep me busy, my boss asked me—only about half an hour before quitting time, as usual—to translate a few Japanese documents “for use in the FAQ”.

Ah, the FAQ, one of the least understood abbreviations in my office. Although most people understand FAQ to mean “Frequently Asked Questions,” I have come to understand that in Japan it has a different meaning. I’m still trying to pin down exactly what it does mean here, but I gather it is an amalgam of meanings that covers PR, Q&A, Troubleshooting, and (occasionally) real questions. In my experience, very few of the “questions” (which sometimes are not questions at all, but statements) are ever asked at all, much less frequently. Instead, most of them are thought up by middle management, a committee of middle-aged Japanese guys who don’t understand the technology, but feel qualified to predict the questions a so-called “typical user” might have. The result is a bloated FAQ that is about to explode with information cribbed from product brochures, operation manuals, and press releases.

Not only is the information in the FAQ more readily available in other places and other forms, but the fact that the company uses some of the world’s worst software to manage the information makes the FAQ all but useless to most people. And to top it off, most of the questions that are asked frequently are never added to the FAQ! (An example that springs to mind immediately is product updates. The company is quick to sell products, but slow to provide updated information when required accessories are no longer available in the market.)

Yet somehow the management is convinced that having a “substantial” (read as “expansive") FAQ will reduce the cost of customer support. Perhaps, but so far it has been unwieldy, clunky, and difficult to maintain.

Perhaps it’s time to introduce a new abbreviation to the folks I work with: GIGO.

My job often involves meeting an urgent need for all-but-useless information (Examples: “Quick, what’s the Japanese word for ’iridencleisis‘?" or “Write up a simple description of the problem the design team is having with the chromatic aberration of the polycarbonate substrate layer of this 4x DVD+RW media") and responding to mind-bendingly convoluted messages from people who cannot write in English (no, not the Japanese I work with, but the people outside Japan—more than a few of whom live in countries where English is the primary language). Has everyone forgotten that mail software often comes with a spell-checking feature? It would certainly seem that way.

So it was with some sense of irony that I note that Microsoft might start working on spell-checkers for minority languages like Gaelic, Icelandic, and Catalan. Supporters say it will give these languages a boost.

Maybe so, but if my experience at work is anything to go by, Microsoft should spare itself the trouble; no one uses spell-checkers anymore. Heck, most people can barely be bothered to capitalize their own names (but, strangely, are sometimes offended if you leave their names in all lowercase letters when you respond).

I doubt the Foundation for Endangered Languages would take me seriously, but sometimes I wonder if the English language will survive the popularity of the Internet—the widespread availability of spell-checkers notwithstanding.

I read an article in The Japan Times this weekend about how companies are increasingly monitoring their employees’ use of the Internet on company time. Although this practice is understandable, I don’t think companies realize that restricting access to Web-based mail and online discussion groups may actually be counter-productive.

For example, I often find it very helpful to be able to ask questions about JavaScript, Perl, PHP, XML, or even the English language (which I seem to forget more and more of the longer I stay in Japan) at places like Yahoo Groups or evolt.org and so on. The information I get from these sources helps me work more effectively, which I think companies should understand and respect.

Unfortunately, however, starting this month, the company where I work has decided to cut off access to Web-based mail, mailing lists, chat groups, forums, and other sources of information. Just this morning, I noticed that I am no longer able to log in to my Web mail accounts or manage any of my Yahoo Groups. Although I acknowledge that it is still possible to get work done without these resources, it is a considerable inconvenience to be deprived of them. (And, sure, I freely admit that I use Web-based mail for personal correspondence while I am at work--but not in favor of getting work done.)

Until I can figure out a way to work around this prohibition, I’m afraid I will be a bit harder to reach than usual. I will only have unfettered Internet access from home, where I rarely have time to respond to the volume of mail I receive each day. 

Sigh. The really ironic thing about this is that the company wants to treat me like an employee (which would give it the right to control how I work), but pay me as a contractor (which would not). Maybe it’s time to call more attention to my contractor status by insisting on telecommuting rather than showing up at the office each day. Or maybe it’s time to look for a new job--although I don’t have any reason to believe that any other company’s policies would be any more enlightened.

At any rate, I’m not pleased with this situation. Do you think the company would accept a request to increase my budget for reference materials to offset the loss of unrestricted access to most of my regular sources?