How Customers Can Make the Most of J-To-E Freelance Translators’ Services
Frank Moorhead
Translation services are usually provided by freelance translators or agencies. Freelancers work alone as individuals or small incorporated entities, while agencies are usually incorporated and have a number of translators on their books, including in-house employees, outside translators under exclusive...
Translator Profiles: Melinda Hull and Ichiro Takahashi
In 1993, Dan Kanagy conducted interviews of four JAT translators, Two of these interviews are reproduced here from the JAT Bulletin of that year.
Translator Profile: Melinda Hull
I'm interested in hearing about your background and how you came to live in Japan. I know Japanese wasn't the first language you studied.
No. I met a Japanese...
An English writeup is in the works. In the meantime you can read the full Japanese language report here.
https://jat.org/ja/blog/pre-ijet-2018-patent-report
A Visit to Kyoto, the Capital Capital (IJET-2000)
by Ann Macfarlane
President, American Translators Association
In planning for attending the IJET-2000 conference last May, I decided that I would work up my conversational Japanese. Like most translators and interpreters, I dislike being in a country where I can't exercise at least minimal politeness. And it's handy to be able to attach...
Finding My Way Through Game Translation: Karma, Rules, and Irony
by Jason Franzman
Good Karma Strikes (for Once)
My initiation into game translation was a bit of luck, perhaps accompanied by some good karma. In the early 90's, I helped a friend get a position at the translation company in Japan where I was working. I left a couple of years later to pursue my freelance translation career, and...
A Look at the Business Side
by Fred Uleman
I have a very simple, yet very important, reminder for you: We very often say we are in the translation business. And we spend great amounts of time honing our translation skills. These skills are important. But just as important is the other half of the “translation business.” It is a business, and we should not lose sight of that side either.
...
Meaning-based Translation and the Search for Equivalent Impact
James L. Davis
Two key questions for translators are: “What is the writer of the source text saying?” and “What would a native speaker of the target language say in this situation?” To answer the first question, translators need at least a near-native grasp of the source language grammar and patterns of usage, as well as a clear...
Dear JATPHARMAcists and other JAT members:
JATPHARMA proudly announces the release of the updated and expanded version of the JAT Pharma Handbook bilingual glossary, which JATPHARMA initially released with the JAT Pharma Handbook in 2011.
The glossary represents the first of hopefully many glossaries to be released under the JATPHARMA Terminology Project, which is headed by John Stroman. The...
Loyalty or Betrayal?
Ginny Tapley Takemori
Whenever the issue of being “faithful” to the original comes up in discussions on literary translation, I only have to think of the case of Izumi Kyoka to be reminded of the impossibility of this proposition. My experience of translating his story “Kaiiki“ (“Sea Daemons“) convinced me of the futility of trying to replicate the original and of the...
Making Translation Rewarding
Joji Matsuo
Translation is a rewarding profession. It pays the bills. It also provides ample opportunity for studying about everything from technology to trivia, from marketing tactics to manufacturing techniques, from contemporary art to historic events. You name it, we translate it. And to translate it, we have to study it. No other profession is as diverse. And...
A Proposal for the Creation of a New Translation Theory between Japanese and English by a Partial and Selective Union between Conventional Translation Theory and so-called Technical English Writing
Paper presented at the FIT Fourth Asian Translators' Forum
at Tsinghua University on October 28 – 30, 2004
by Chuichi Kamei (亀井忠一)
In the realm of business, scientific and technical...