Date:
Aug 1, 2021
Time:
9:00 am - 10:00 am

Dear JAT members

The JAT Anthology wants to hear from you

It has been a difficult year for many of us. Interpreters who work on-site, for example, have had to work, when there is work at all, off-site. Translators who depend upon work from companies hard-hit by the covid-19 pandemic have seen their workflow dry up. There may have been exceptions, but they have not made the news.

Yet every difficult situation is also a learning experience, and few people are better learners than translators and interpreters. What have you learned from this? What are your take-aways from this pandemic year so far—or more broadly from your career so far?

Conceived in the hope we can learn not only from our own experience but also from others’ experiences, the JAT Translator Perspectives anthology would like to hear from you so that JAT members and other anthology readers can learn from you.

The guidelines are that your essay should please be up to 600 words in English or up to 1800 characters in Japanese. The essay should also have a title and your name (including how to pronounce it). In no case may the essay exceed two printed pages. (This is something that will be obvious when it is laid out. We will ask you to trim it if it runs over.) The deadline is August 1.

In principle, we will not edit your essay. What you write is who you are. Rather, we will just collect the essays and send them to the printer, who will standardize the font and type size and do the lay-out. Once we get things back from the printer, we will send you your essay and ask you to proof it, Tell us what, if anything, needs to be corrected and the corrected essay will be printed. As mentioned, there is no provision for us to edit your essay. Getting it right is your responsibility.

This is the anthology’s tenth year, and we would like to make this a special issue with an especially large number of especially thought-provoking essays from JAT members. Translation: We look forward to hearing from you. Essays (and questions) should be sent to anthology_at_jat.org.

Thank you.

P.S.: A JAT member recently asked if it is okay to include a photo with his essay. So the coordinators talked it over. Yes. It is okay to include a photo or illustration with your essay for this year’s anthology.

There are, however, a few conditions: It has to be obviously relevant to the essay; we can only use monochrome, and it is included in your two-page limit and cannot be larger than half a single page’s text space.

With that, yes, we look forward to your essay—with or without a photo/illustration.