The Japan Association of Translators is running a great seminar called The Japanese Automotive T&I Seminar. This is a continuation of the Honda seminar that I had blogged about a few years ago. It is going to have two very experienced instructors.
If anyone out there is in my area and interested, you should definitely join us on September 1, 2016.
See details below:
I put together a practice schedule to help me polish the basic skill set that goes into translation and interpretation. I will put the schedule up here and then post occasional progress updates. Feel free to practice along with me and post any resources you found particularly helpful.
| Task | Applicable Objective | |
| 1 | 10 digit number memorization | I-3 |
| 2 | Number interpretation | I-3 |
| 3 | Word chaining | I-1 |
| 4 | Phrase memorization | I-1, T-1, G-1, G-2 |
| 5 | Quick word interpreting | I-1, G-1 |
| 6 | Shadowing | I-2, T-1, G-1, G-2 |
| 7 | Consecutive practice | I-1, I-2 |
| 8 | Translation editing | T-2, G-1, G-2 |
Listen to a recording of ten unrelated numbers. Repeat as the recording plays. Then, play the recording again and wait until the first two numbers have been said to start repeating. This way, you are hearing numbers and saying different numbers.
Example:
Recording: “1, 5, 33, 47, 118…”
You: “……….1, 5, 33, 47, 118…”
Listen to a recording of random numbers (over 6 digits) and interpret them into the opposite language.
Memorize a series of random words by forming a story in your head as you hear them.
Memorize sentences from JLPT N1 vocabulary book. Repeat the previous one before starting to memorize the next.
Prepare a list of 10 words in Japanese and English. Look at each word in the Japanese column and say the English version. Repeat with opposite language. Time target of 10 seconds to interpret the whole list (ie: no time to think about it).
Listen to a speech and repeat the speaker’s words as he is speaking without changing or missing any words. This is done in the language of the presenter (ex: listen to Japanese and repeat in Japanese).
Listen to a 5 minute speech and take notes. Interpret after speech has concluded. Record your interpretation. Re-watch speech and check for errors.
Take an old translation and remove any confidential content (company names, etc.) Post on lang-8 to solicit corrections. Compile revised version in translation notebook.
So, let’s start with a disclaimer. I live in the mid-west in the United States of America; far removed from the country of Japan or even the Japanese communities of California and New York. While I work at a Japanese company and have exposure to the language every day, that is not enough to keep up translator level language skills. I need to expose myself to a lot more language. In a sense, I have to create my own immersion environment. So, here is how I do it. I am going to share with you the resources I use and the way they help with my translation and interpretation skills and practice.
Reading of the Paper Variety
Once a year, I manage to get to a Japanese book store, either in Portland, OR, where my family is from, or in Japan when I’m on business trips. While there, I buy up a bunch of books to read for the year. Some of them turn out to be boring, some interesting, but I try to give them at least 2 or 3 chapters before giving up. I try not to force my way through books that I dislike, because I will just give up reading all together. I also get a good mix of fiction, non-fiction, technical, magazines, and manga.
The fiction helps me make my interpreting more natural. I usually read novels that are based in everyday life so that I can reuse the phrases I learn in my interpretation. On the other hand, the non-fiction seems to help with my writing. Self-help type books are usually written in a very clear and easy to understand manner. I can reuse a lot of the grammar and structures in my Japanese translations. The magazines help me to stay in touch with current issues in Japan. I love Nikkei Woman! After falling in love with it on my last trip to Kinokuniya in Portland, I have been having it ordered monthly from Japan through our parent company.
On that note: If you work for a Japanese company, it is likely that packages come in from Japan every month for your 駐在員. If you have a good relationship with them, you may be able to request a book or two and get free shipping 🙂 Try not to go overboard; one or two a month max. If that is not you, try a forwarding service like Tenso or White Rabbit Express. Kinokuniya also has a lot of books in stock in the US and if they don’t have it, they will order it for you Japan, though they mark up quite a lot to cover the import and shipping costs.
Reading of the Digital Variety
I try to keep up with a couple different online publications:
Reading Techniques
When I’m reading anything, digital or otherwise, I have two basic rules:
Then when I find those words that I don’t know in a dictionary, I do one of three things:
As much as it might surprise you, number three is the one I do the least. Only when I encounter a word that I have been looking for and wanted to use in daily interactions, will I actually make an effort to study it. Usually, I do number one more than anything: figure out what it means and move on. You will get farther in the actual reading that way.
Listening
For this one, I am mainly going to give you a list of resources, as I don’t ‘study’ listening per se.
Watching
I distinguish this from listening because, while the skill is primarily auditory, the visual component makes it easier to understand what is being said. With youtube, it is actually relatively easy to get a quick shot of Japanese tv any time. I like to chose videos that wil help with my translation but, honestly, sometimes you just have to have fun with the language.
Then, of course, I will sit down and watch a full drama from time to time, but I can’t put links to those here.
If you have any resources to share or questions about studying in a Japanese void, feel free to leave me a comment.
This is based on「日本語力強化大作戦」『通訳翻訳ジャーナル』2013年1月号 (WINTER)
This article posits that, at least in the world of translation, there is no such thing as “good” or “bad” language. What is most important is that the language used in the translation is appropriate for the field, target audience, medium, etc.
Unlike literary translation, industrial translation texts need to be clear and logical, and adhere closely to the original. The translation must also make sense to the reader. In order to achieve that, you must understand the particular document’s field, content, and intended audience. If the document is meant for internal use, you can use more terminology, company-specific words, and abbreviations. However, if the intended audience is outside the company, it may be more important give a non-literal, meaning based, translation to make the content more comprehensible.
Often, translation in this field comes down to “literal and comprehensible” or “non-literal but easy to understand.” The best translators, according to the article, can do both. They are able to keep a literal, one to one correlation between the English and Japanese while creating an easy to read, natural sounding text. Good translators are often bold when it comes to the structure of the sentence, but are very cautious with the terminology.
Phrasing and terminology are key in this field. The best way improve your L1 proficiency in this area is to read a lot of articles from that field, collect example sentences, build your TM, and then imitate those examples in your translation. We often think of doing this in our L2, borrowing sentences that we have heard before, but less so when writing in our L1. Yet it is very important for this type of translation. Additionally, terminology and phrasing can vary by company so it’s important to know what terms are used in the company you are translating for. Press releases and messages from the CEO will help you understand the tone and phrasing used by that company.
Interpreting requires equal proficiency in both languages. However, in interpreting, it is crucial that you understand what is being said. If you can take a complex discourse spoken in your L1 and change it into simple comprehensible L2 discourse, that is good. However, if you don’t understand the content, even though it is in your native language, you will not produce a good L2 interpretation. So it’s important to have good skills in phrasing and a wide knowledge base. A good interpreter will be able to take what is said by the speaker, scrape away the unnecessary words and 口癖, and produce a simple, natural, beautiful sentence in an instant.
In interpreting, TPO must always be considered, especially for Japanese. “Would you like to get dinner?” for example, would be interpreted very differently between two coworkers and between a subordinate and the president of the company. It would also be different if they were in a bar vs. in an office. Appropriate language for every TPO, both in the L1 and L2, must be mastered.
Since natural phrasing is so important in interpretation, you should always be looking out for interesting phrases and writing them down as they come up. Also, it’s important to look up any words you come across in your native language that you don’t understand. This will help you broaden your knowledge base. In addition, it can be good to shadow the news in your native language to get used to formal discourse.
Interpreters must never forget to keep reading. Everything. The more you read, the more your knowledge base and vocabulary grow. Interpreters should read not only newspapers or magazines, but also novels, because they are a great source of spoken dialogue.
One of the most difficult things to remember when translating is that you must focus on the meaning, not the words. The picture above is a great example of this. I’m sure the person who made it thought that they were “translating ‘Hello'” into many different languages. However, that is not entirely accurate. “Hello” in American English is a neutral greeting. It puts some distance between you and the target of the greeting, compared to the relative closeness of the term “Hey.” However, it is also formality and time neutral. こんにちはis also of relatively neutral formality, but it is more akin to “good afternoon” (in that it has a variant: こんばんわ) and is appropriate only at a certain time of day. That being said, “Hello” is used commonly when picking up the telephone in English, for which こにちわ in Japanese would be inappropriate. “Ciao” can mean “hello” or “goodbye.” 你好 is both “hello” and “how are you?” Even the translation of a simple word like “hello” varies by time of day, target of greeting, professional level of the speaker in reference to that target, medium of communication, etc. TPO!
So, when you are translating (or interpreting) it’s important to focus on the meaning of what’s being said. Too often (especially in E>J) I will see a word and say to myself, ‘I don’t know how to say that word in Japanese’ so I will spend several minutes finding the appropriate Japanese translation of an English word, only to find that, when I get the sentence all put together, it doesn’t make any sense in context. Then I end up changing it to words that I already knew because they reflect the meaning better.
Just remember, being true to the original means reflecting the meaning of the original in the target language, without dropping any aspect of that meaning. It does not mean making sure that every word used in the original is used in the target. That makes for a wordy and confusing translation.
Lately I have had a lot of downtime at work. So, I decided to write a blog post about effective use of time, rather than using my time effectively 🙂
Step 1: Organize and Review
If you have been taking notes while you are translating or interpreting, or if you have been saving a document to look over in detail, now is the time to do that. I like to organize the vocab I look up into lists by theme (HR words, Manufacturing words, Financial words, etc) and that is rather time consuming. It can be a great thing to do if you have nothing else to do. Take the time to organize what you have done so far. Put your files in order. Take the words you looked up on the last translation and review them. Put them into a flash card program. Go over old translations.
Step 2: Practice
If you don’t have any work to do, you can always make work for yourself. Go get an NHK article and start translating. Put the translation up on lang-8 and see what people think. Practicing will grow your vocabulary and give you more words to add to your glossary. If you are a straight interpreter, try pasting an article into google translate. It has a read-to-me function that you can use to help you practice interpreting. (Note, I am not telling you to use the translation google provides. Use the read-to-me function on the original, not the translation. We all know how bad GT is.) If you work in close quarters with other people just stick your headphones in and interpret in your head. It may look silly but its actually pretty good practice.
Step 3: Professional Development
See what other things are out there that might help you be a better translator. Research translation classes, online classes in your field, articles related to your field. There might not be something you can do right then but you might be able to suggest something at your next personnel review. Most companies love it when their employees take the initiative in professional development.
Step 4: Familiarize yourself with the Building/Products
If you work in a factory, this is a great time to go out on the floor and watch the processes, see how things work. Take notes and try to look up how to say things that you don’t know. (You may see things you’ve never thought to mention in conversation: beams, rafters, ventilation, etc.) You can also take this time to shadow someone, if anyone is willing. You don’t have to get involved you can just watch them do what they do and take notes. Try to translate out what you saw in a diary entry kind of thing. If you don’t work in a factory, find some parts laying around or some drawings and familiarize yourself with those.
Step 5: Taking stock and self evaluation
Let’s take some time to look at where you are and where you want to be. Look at how much progress you’ve made in your job. List your accomplishments to date. Include things like “I went to this seminar” or “I translated this thing that was out of my specialty.” Then take time to list out some goals. What are your weak points? What would you like to be able to do? What steps do you need to take to get there? This will help you know how to better use your downtime when you have it.
Step 6: Read
Reading is always good for our profession. Open up any random Japanese news site and start reading. It can be taxing when you just got done translating 10 pages and all you want to do is zone out, but reading is one of those things that we have to be able to do. It is how we grow our vocabulary. Reading is essential for translators.
Have you ever had this experience? You see or hear a word in your native language and think that you don’t know how to say it in your target language. But then when you look it up, you find a word that you actually knew. This happens to me a lot. The main problem is that we are looking for one-to-one equivalents and ignoring the general meaning, which we understand because it is are native language.
Here is an example. I recently looked up the word “orientation” (in terms of “the orientation of the part in the fixture”). I thought that it must be a word I didn’t know. But when I looked it up, I found 方向. Of course I know that word, but I never equated “orientation” with “direction” which was the English definition that I assigned to 方向 when I first learned it. The problem is that we don’t think about the overall meanings of the words we hear or read. If I had thought about it, I would have realized that the “orientation” of the part is pretty much how it is put in the fixture: right side up, left side in first, vertically, surface down, etc. It’s more or less the same thing.
There is actually a book about this called 同時通訳が頭の中で一瞬でやっている英訳術リプロセシング. I have only just started reading it but it seems like her main thesis is that interpreting is really just taking what you hear and instantly changing it to reflect a meaning that you can then convey clearly in your target language. Unfortunately, after that thesis the book devolves into a series of common business phrases and their “appropriate” translations. But still, the main point is fairly solid. If you are trying to 直訳 everything, you are going to get some funny sentences. The same holds for words. We need to grasp the meaning of what is being said and translate that rather than paying attention to the words the person is using.
A few months ago, I read Food for Translators‘ blog about how to improve your source language proficiency. Since, I am the only translator in my company, I do a lot of E>J not just J>E. Its important for me to produce well written business documents in Japanese. I considered my weak points on this topic and, taking the first tip from the blog “Study for an exam designed for native speakers”, decided to study for the ビジネス能力検定. I know very little about business in general. While I have no intention of taking the test, I thought it would help me write and talk about my company in Japanese better.
I was right. It has been one of the most useful things I have chosen to study; far better than the JLPT or BJT. Not only is it fully of great business buzz words, it is made for Japanese people, so it is the right tool to help you toward native level communication. I would recommend it to anyone out there who is starting their first translator or bilingual Japanese job.
If you have ever played around with Google Translate (Yahoo翻訳、Excite翻訳、etc) you know that it is far from reliable. So I was very surprised when I heard, through a friend who attended the JAT presentation “Does Translation Pay the Bills?”, that machine translations and native checkers are quickly replacing actual freelance translators. This is ridiculous. If you have ever tried to translate anything highly technical, you know that Google doesn’t cut it. But, I am sure they are not using Google. So the question is:
How far has machine translation come?
The answer, I have found, is not very far. Machine translation is light years away from where it was when the internet was first getting started and everyone was laughing at the kind of things Babelfish came up with. But, it is far from perfect. The general consensus in the market right now is that, even if you buy the most expensive software out there, the product will still be inferior to what a native speaker can produce. The reason is that language is just incredibly dynamic. Take the word 対応 for example. The dictionary has this as “correspond to”. However, it can function in an English sentence as “for”, “support”, “handle”, “tackle”, “address”, or (my favorite) NOTHING. There are times in translating when a word in the original simply has to be omitted. It happens with words like 対応 in Japanese and with pronouns in English. While it is perfectly acceptable in English to say “I put my homework in my bag”, it would be ludicrous to say 私は私の宿題を私のかばんに入れました. Just not necessary. Yet if you Google Translate the previous sentence, you come up with an odd variation. 「私は袋に宿題を置く」This shows a different problem: Lack of understanding of context. Any beginner student of Japanese would have been able to handle that sentence. Yet Google decided to use the more common translation of each word (袋 and 置く). This is the heart of the problem. Translation software cannot assume it knows what you are talking about (as translators do). You have to spell it out. Oddly enough, if you take the ludicrous Japanese above and go J>E, you end up with “I was put in my bag with my homework.” Closer. Take out the 私は and you get: “I put in my bag my homework.” Now we have the second core issue: Word order. Google Translate has obviously been programmed with the correct STPOQV word order. However, it can’t always understand how that correlates to English sentences. It also doesn’t understand when someone breaks grammar rules. It can’t assume subjects correctly when they aren’t there. I shutter to think what it would to with languages that have a truly flexible word order. How can it know whether the beef ate the man or the man ate the beef?
I am not saying that machine translation will never be wide spread. As I learned, it already is. But one thing is true. It will never replace translators, particularly in one very important field:
Literature
You cannot sell machine translations of literature. (That is a bold statement but let me elaborate.) MT is enough to get by. You get the point of what you are reading and that is why it is common in legal and science translation. But people read novels for the experience. They want the story and the art of the language transferred into their own. Their are countless stories of beautifully translated phrases that became as famous in the target language as they were in the original because they were delicately re-crafted to evoke the same feeling as the original with different words. 「君の瞳に乾杯」has to be one of my favorites. “Here’s looking at you kid.” Same feeling, different words. That is what literature (in that case cinema) needs and that can never be done by a computer.
Becoming a Translator 