Don’t blame me--I just work here!
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.
I do some freelance editing for a translation company and can confirm that the level of Japanese to English translation is very low.\r
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Out of 100 people you are lucky enough to get a couple of passable translations - which always needs to be rewritten by a native speaker who has at least a shred of writing ability.\r
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Part of it is not that they are bad at translation, but rather have no writing skills. It’s not enough just to translate literally what’s there - you need to be able to turn it into well written, cohesive language with style. I believe that this is the most neglected area of study for most translators.
Oh I forgot - half of the people I have checked translation auditions of haven’t even worked out how important a spell check is or to use the internet to double check facts or names.\r
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It only takes one spelling mistake for me to disregard them.
It’s not enough just to translate literally what’s there...\r
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I know what you mean. A lot of Japanese people are shocked--shocked!--when I suggest phrasing something in a different way than the original. After explaining some of the structural differences between Japanese and English, I can often get them to realize how silly it is to expect to just translate the individual words (which is all most of them seem to think is necessary).\r
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I, too, have a hard time understanding why Japanese people expect me to do their spell checking when they’re all using MS Word in the first place.\r
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It only takes one spelling mistake for me to disregard them.\r
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(And yet you still read this blog?) \r
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Well, I’m a lot more forgiving than that, but there is an unforgivable level of crap that comes across my desk with the instructions “Just make it understandable”. My advice in those situations is almost always the same: Give me the original Japanese and let me retranslate it from scratch. There’s no use even trying to fix the translation provided--it’s hopeless!
I didn’t know you were a translator! \r
If you are really thinking about going freelance, I would highly recomment joining JAT (http://www.jat.org), the Japan Association of Freelancers. Talking with people there and networking and getting advice has been a huge help to me. \r
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So much so that I’m now a Director of the organization!
I didn’t know you were a translator! \r
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Well, actually I’m not a translator but a technical writer. Translation assignments are tacked onto my workload frequently enough that I’ve started to identify myself as a tech writer/translator.\r
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JAT is a good organization, one that I really should join. Maybe I will at some point, but I don’t foresee getting involved in any more organizations right away (I’m already a member of more than I want to think about). I’m actually trying to scale back on most of my existing commitments until after our baby is born.\r
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But JAT is certainly at the top of the list of groups that I would join if I had more time.
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