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.
