i-sako.com

When I started working at my current job, I was paired with a more experienced mentor in the same department, a Japanese guy who goes by the nickname “Ricardo” (a name he acquired in his eight years in Panama). Together we formed a two-man translation team that handled most of the translation work for our division. This arrangement worked pretty well. I handled the J-E tasks; he took care of the E-J. Life was good.

Yesterday Ricardo was transferred to another division, one where his responsibilities do not involve translation. I remain in the same department as before—and I seem to have inherited his workload. Lucky me!

The difficulty this poses for me is that now I am more or less expected to handle translations in both directions, which is somewhat outside my comfort zone—and my competence, to be honest. Sure, I can translate information into Japanese if I have to, but I wouldn’t say that I’m very good at it.

My colleagues assure me that everything is fine. “You understand Japanese with no problem,” they say. “Naturally, you can write it, too!” In my view, this is like saying, “You understand Shakespeare, so naturally you can write like him, too!”

At any rate, I’ve lost a good teammate, which happens from time to time in any job. Losing Ricardo certainly will make the game more challenging. 

I must be a glutton for punishment. After spending all week translating thoroughly turbid audit reports and engineering correspondence written in clipped shorthand, what do I have planned for the weekend to relax and unwind? IJET-15, the translation conference put on by the Japan Association of Translators. Do I know how to have a good time or what?

Do we work to live or live to work? These days, it’s getting hard to tell, there’s so much work to be done. My wife, however, is eager to get back to work after having spent the last several months taking care of our infant son. I can’t say that I blame her at all for wanting to get out of the house and speak to other adults (and, of course, earn a bit of money). Starting tomorrow, we go back to being a two-income family. We’re both very glad to have work, of course, but when are we ever going to see each other?

A few months ago, I was fretting about changing jobs, mostly because I wasn’t sure if profitability-based bonuses would be enough to offset a reduced monthly salary, particularly in these less-than-stellar economic times. It turns out that my fears were completely unfounded.

TOKYO, Jan 29 (Reuters) - Japan’s Canon Inc said on Thursday that its net profit rose 45 percent in 2003 thanks to healthy demand for office copiers and booming sales of digital cameras and it forecast a fifth straight record profit this year.





Canon posted a consolidated net profit of 275.7 billion yen ($2.60 billion) for calendar year 2003, beating analysts’ consensus estimate of 264.5 billion yen, on revenue of 3.2 trillion yen, up 8.8 percent from the previous year.





Japan’s largest office equipment maker said it expected the good times to keep on rolling, projecting that group net profit would rise another 3.7 percent in 2004 to 286 billion yen.

Wow. I’m certainly looking forward to that June bonus now.

How often do we here these words in our modern, consumer-driven society? For most people, I bet it’s not very often, which is why I was so surprised when my coworker Tsutsui-san presented me (and several other translators who work in the same office) with a scarf that she made herself. The notion that anyone would spend a week or so of their own free time making a gift for someone comes as a bit of a surprise—which is both a testament to Tsutsui-san’s kind-heartedness and a criticism of modern life, in which gifts are all too often simply another thing you purchase.

I am a bit envious of Tsutsui-san’s creative ability, partly because it calls attention to the fact that I have very few creative skills of my own. I could help her set up her own weblog, but that’s hardly in the same league. So, readers, help me out here: What meaningful gifts can geeks give?