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JAT Bulletin 180, March 2000

JAT—Who Could Tell Where it Would Lead?

When 23 translators met in a public meeting room in Shinjuku in March 1985, few really thought they knew what was going to come of it. There were a lot of ideas thrown out, and the way JAT developed demonstrated the difficulty of predicting the direction of an organization at the outset.

In discussing the goals of JAT, which at that time was a special interest group of SWET (Society of Writers, Editors & Translators), a number of likely items were proposed.

• Glossary Exchange
  It sounded good. Many of our members surely had a stock of terminology they could and would share with their colleagues. In reality, this purpose was substantially never realized. Perhaps translators really didn't compile glossaries. Perhaps the ones that did had no time to share them, or the ones that could didn't need glossaries themselves and couldn't be persuaded to compile them for others. In either case, this goal was never achieved.
  
• Exchange of Work Overflow
  Here is another area in which some members seemed to place their hopes. At least one member suggested that JAT act as a clearing house, distributing translation work given to it by clients. Alas, this idea also never saw the light of day. Although I can only speak for myself, I will say that in 15 years as a JAT member I have shared work with JAT members on only 3 occasions that I can recall. In each instance, work was given to colleagues who, from my observation over the years, I judged to be capable of doing the work. JAT might have provided the forum for meeting these colleagues, but it certainly didn't match work to translators; that's an agency's role.
  
• Accreditation
  Another idea that has been brought up numerous times at JAT board meetings over the years, accreditation has never had support, and after 15 years I think it is safe to say that JAT is moving even further away from the issue of evaluating the qualifications of people working in our profession.
  
• Identification of Market Rates
  JATers could probably be given at least a B-minus in this area, although it was generally not until JATers moved into cyberspace that tight lips opened up to speak of money matters.

While many of JAT's originally proposed goals have not been met, there have been some sparkling achievements that were never expected. One was the move of translator networking into cyberspace and, while it soon became apparent that there were a large number of translators desirous of participating in cyberspace networking who had no interest in joining or participating in JAT activities, the fact that JAT started this mode of interfacing is undeniable, as is JAT's pioneering achievement in creating the first J-E translation website. Another achievement was the JAT Bulletin, which also took its place in cyberspace. Yet another is the JAT monthly meetings in Tokyo, thanks to a continuous stream of volunteer speakers and a relatively small portion of JAT members who can and do show up at our monthly gatherings.

But beyond any and all of these achievements is the International Japanese/English Translation Conference, a tradition in our profession, and an activity which was not even dreamt of at the 1985 gathering. This single JAT activity places our organization apart from other groups that position themselves as omnibus J/E translation/translator groups.

What's In Store for the Future?

Just as nobody at the 1985 gathering suggested or predicted cyberspace networking or IJET conferences, there is probably nobody who can predict for certain what JAT will be doing for its members and the profession in 2015. I think it is safe to say, however, that a group that has no more active members with a total membership of nearly 400 than it did with a membership of about 100 might be headed for some rough travel in its journey into the future.

On that note, although I myself am slowly becoming less directly active in JAT matters, I would like to express my strong wish that members standing on the sidelines just waiting to get their chance to participate wait no further. If you have an idea, tell it to someone on the JAT board. If they don't listen and you are still committed to your idea, run for JAT director yourself, and be ready to remember the second 15 years of JAT history to your colleagues in the March 2015 issue of the Bulletin.

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