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JAT Board Report (Bill Lise) The Board of Directors Election
Procedure (Election Committee) Director Candidacy Statements
Membership Secretary's Report (Jeremy Whipple)
Choosing
Information Sources(Bill Lise)
これ、読めますか？(Emily
Shibata-Sato)
Welcome Relief （Fred Uleman）
Can I Have an
Amen for Patent Translation Being the Only Path Into the
Kingdom of Wealth and Fame? (Bill Lise)
新刊本のご紹介
(Emily Shibata-Sato)
The New Order (Bill Lise)
Bill Lise President
This report covers the decisions made at the January JAT Board meeting (attended by Lise, Oliver, Shibata-Sato (after a morning assignment), Tokikuni, and Whipple, and later by House) and thereafter, via continuing discussions among the members of the JAT Board.
Shibata-Sato presented a draft of the Japanese-language version of the JAT Constitution, which is currently being reviewed. This will ultimately be placed on the JAT website.
Lise reported that, with some help from Michael House, the posting a number of Bulletins on the website, making the currently available achieve complete from November 1996 through January 1998.
Lise also reported that 39 articles and monographs about J/E translation have been uploaded to the JAT website, with approximately 2/3 of these made available to JAT members only. This is being augmented by articles from the Bulletin, and from other sources, such as the articles written and kindly donated to JAT by member Tom Elliott.
George Tokikuni, IJET-9 Committee Chair had little new to report about IJET-9, since there had not been a committee meeting since our last Board meeting. Reports issued on 1 February indicated that 21 people had signed up for IJET-9.
Lise reported that the response to the call for papers for IJET-9 had not yet reached the overwhelming level, even though the announced deadline was history, and that perhaps a rethinking of the number of concurrent sessions would be warranted.
Oliver reported that our next meeting had been arranged, this being a talk by Sato Kenji, and also that he continues efforts to arrange the March meeting, currently planned as a discussion of translator use of the internet.
Whipple reported membership figures, which are probably updated in another article in this issue. Lise notes that we now have about 40% of our members living overseas, that we are probably very close to our largest-ever headcount again, and also that he expects the foreign-based percentage to exceed 50% shortly.
Lise reported that he had notified a member about a problem with that member's apparent employer, a translation company, which was claiming on its website to be a member of JAT, something that is not possible, of course. The member quickly notified the company, and the offending statement has been removed.
The board has decided to look into the continuing question of whether translation payments from Japanese entities to individual translators working overseas are subject to withholding tax, and will be asking a tax accountant about what could be done to provide an opinion on this issue with a bit more authority than has been provided on honyaku and jat-list by translators without such specialized knowledge of tax laws and practices.
Below are the 10 candidacy statements received by the Elections Committee by the deadline for submission on January 20. Statements are given in the order received. Election ballots were mailed out on February 2. For your ballot to be counted, it must be received by Elections Committee Chair Pamela Ikegami no later than February 23. The results will be announced in March, and the new directors will take office in April.
Please note that you may vote for up to five candidates. (There is no need to vote for that many and you may vote for fewer than five, but voting for more than five will invalidate your ballot.)
To vote, please indicate your preferences on the enclosed ballot and send it back to the Elections Committee. Although it is pre-addressed, it does not have a stamp on it. Please put the appropriate postage on it (50 yen if you are in Japan) before you mail it.
Finally, because the Constitution stipulates that only paid-up members may vote, we need your name so we can verify that you are eligible to vote. Please print your name on the ballot before you send it in. (Note: These names will be ignored and held in strictest confidence by the Elections Committee.)
Thank you. With your participation, we can keep JAT going strong in everyone's best interests.
JAT 1998 Elections Committee Pamela Ikegami (chair) Fred Uleman Jeremy Whipple
昨年度の立候補に当たり、私は皆さんに４つの「公約」を発表しました。 会員間の交流の活性化, 管理業務の簡素化、紙媒体による連絡・会報の見 直し、新規事業の検討に関する提案を行うことです。その「公約」は達成 しましたが、実現したのは残念ながら５月の親睦会だけでした。親睦会に は新しく会員になられた方も参加され、成功裏に終了したと思います。会 報の活性化については「誰でも意見を述べる権利はあるから、理事の側か らわざわざ個別に意見を求めなくてもいい」と考えている理事が多く、現 状維持の状況でした。そのほかの項目については多数の理事の支持を得ら れなかったため実現にはいたりませんでした。 今年度は、まず５月のIJET-9の開催に力を注ぎ、それから会員間の交流 の活性化について具体策を練りそれを実現すべく努力し、また、新規事業 としてJAT会員による本（JAT books）の発行の検討を提案し、ほかの理 事と協力してJATの運営に力を尽くしたいと思います。JATはみなさんの ための組織です。いろいろな形で参加してしてこそ意味があると考えてい ます。会員各位の幅広いご協力をお願いいたします。
時國滋夫 (George Tokikuni)
Although I have only been a JAT member since November 1995, I have volunteered for various JAT activities which have included being on the Elections Committee in the 1997 JAT Director elections and becoming a member of the IJET-9 Conference Committee working on venue and advertising. I have also tried to attend as many of the monthly JAT meetings as I can and through these activities, I have gotten to know the ongoing JAT directors and fellow JATers who are able to attend these meetings. But most importantly, I have been consistently impressed with the high level of commitment and professionalism which this association and its members strive to maintain in the field of J<->E translation and interpretation.
I see this commitment not only on a personal level in work related matters, but particularly among the JAT directors both previous and current who are deeply committed to making this a viable and meaningful organization.. As a member of the IJET-9 Conference Committee, I have been pleasantly surprised and impressed at the team work, the courtesy, and the assistance which members consistently extend to one another to get the work done. The team work is great and since many of the IJET-9 Conference Committee members are ongoing JAT directors, I feel that this team work is also present within the JAT Board of Directors. As such, when I was approached to run for the office of director, I felt that contributing some of my time and energy for the organization would not be a burdensome experience, but one of accomplishment and camaraderie. So with your support and endorsement, I would like to try my hand at serving in the office of JAT director for 1998.
Kathleen Taji
Over the past two years, JAT's directors have made great strides toward moving to electronic means of communication as much as possible. Much work has been done, with more to look forward to. Having been a part of the process in my own way since the beginning, I hope to continue to apply what I am learning in the course of doing this work. Thus, I announce my candidacy for the 1998 Board of Directors. Thank you.
I hereby declare my candidacy for the 1998 JAT election of directors.
If elected, I hope to continue to serve as the association's membership secretary, a job I have enjoyed doing since last year.
Since deciding to abandon the paper bulletin and setting up online sign-up and dues payment facilities, JAT's membership has grown from about 150 to over 200. An increasing percentage of our members live outside Japan (more than a third at last count). I am pleased by both of these trends, and I hope that the association will focus increasingly on activities that benefit members regardless of where they happen to be living. We are already publishing an electronic bulletin, of course, and have set up a website that is growing in size--and, I hope, usefulness. My own main involvement in all this has been to create and update the online membership directories, something that I intend to keep up if reelected.
I have also been administering JAT-LIST, the association's Internet mailing list, since last year. I believe that there is room for more use of this list as a supplement to the HONYAKU mailing list, but basically the volume and nature of the message traffic is up to the members to determine, and I shall not be losing a lot of sleep trying to figure out how to drum up more messages.
I am sorry that Adam Rice has decided not to run for reelection; I hope that the new board will contain one or more members from outside Japan to represent our large non-Japan-based constituency--also, I think it's good for the directors to *have* to use the Internet to keep in touch, because the Internet is a major part of JAT's present and should be an even larger part of its future.
In closing, as the representative of the board of directors serving on this year's Elections Committee, I urge you all to vote, even if not for me!
15 January 1998 Jeremy Whipple
I have served as JAT Publication Director over the past two years. During this time I was able to witness a historical transition of the bulletin, from paper to online. In the first phase of the e-bulletin publishing I caused you many problems by producing lots of bake-mojis. 失礼しました！ But it seems to be technically solved and I now feel a lot more comfortable preparing/sending out the bulletin.
Therefore I am willing to serve as a director for one more year.
In addition, thanks to the effort of other directors, the JAT website has been expanded to include the Translation Topics section. This would open up a new possibility for the bulletin: valuable contributions (including the ones in the pre-history paper versions) can be uploaded and shared by the members instead of them being buried and forgotten. So this year I would like to think about ways to encourage members to make more suggestions and contributions to establish a solid base for the JAT assets.
Emily Shibata-Sato
I am running for another term as JAT Director.
I have been a JAT Director for the past four years. During this time, I have served as JAT Treasurer. In 1995-96, I was also JAT President. I served on the IJET-7 Committee and am presently a member of the IJET-9 Committee.
Doing JAT work is a source of great personal pride and satisfaction for me. I look forward to one more year as a JAT Director.
Respectfully,
Bob Oliver
Considering the fact that many translators often work alone, being members of a professional association such as JAT can fulfil a number of important needs: socialization, professional advice, and a sense of professional unity. As evidenced by the volume of e-mail on the JAT-List and the HONYAKU mailing list (the latter sponsored by JAT), the number of translators who attend JAT's monthly meetings in Tokyo, and the continuing success of the IJET annual conferences, JAT provides a wide range of resources to J-E and E-J translators from all over the world.
As a Director of JAT, I will work with the other Directors to enhance and extend JAT's resources in two main areas: support for members who reside outside Japan and liaison between JAT and other professional associations including academic institutions. As JAT's overseas membership figures grow, we must continue to encourage communication among members to provide information and exchange current cross- cultural knowledge. Overseas members have special needs involving communication contact with other translators and clients within and outside Japan. Addressing these needs may include expanding the content within the JAT Bulletin and promoting regional chapters. As well, by extending JAT's relationships with other professional associations and promoting JAT as an information resource for novice and seasoned translators, JAT can play a vital role in contributing to heightened awareness of the translation profession overall by other translators, clients, and the community.
Together with other JAT Directors, I will use a combination of my personal and professional experience to work towards these aims. Since 1990, I have spent six years in Japan and two years outside Japan, and as such, am aware of the unique needs of JAT's overseas members. Having recently completed an M.A. in Japanese Business Communication, majoring in Translation Studies, I have a continuing personal and professional interest in promoting JAT's resources to J-E and E-J translators, be they just starting out in the profession or looking at maintaining or upgrading their skills and expanding their client base. I think 1998 is a year full of possibilities for JAT, and I would be most enthusiastic in assisting other Directors in pursuing our association's goals.
Leslie M. Tkach January 1998
I look forward to another opportunity to work toward established JAT goals and to help forge new goals in the coming year, and to that end I hereby announce my candidacy for JAT director for the coming year.
In the past year, I have spent much energy in supporting the move of JAT into cyberspace, and we are now starting to turn the JAT website into a place for translators to visit for more than just meeting announcements and contact information for directors. One important administrative change in our cyberspace presence was the institution of online dues payment, a change which the Board feels has been responsible for our rapid growth from about 145 to our current headcount of about 206 members.
As another part of the effort to make our web presence more meaningful, at the end of last year I move all the translation-related content from my personal website (approximately 500 K of material in about 30 original articles and monographs) onto the JAT website, and have since then begun augmenting that starting base with material from other sources, including, but not limited to, the JAT Bulletin.
I am sure that the next year will offer many opportunities to self-starting JAT directors who have ideas and the drive to implement them to demonstrate that they have what it takes to make the organization do more than stagnate, and I look forward to working with a team of colleagues who actively seek out those opportunities.
To the JAT Members.
I have been a member of JAT since 1993 and have witnessed many changes in the organization. I am also aware of the substantial contribution made by the directors towards making this organization run and operate. I have gained a considerable amount from their efforts, and I am interested in making a contribution towards JAT's stable development.
As with many people here, I also run a small business, and I am somewhat selfish about my own time. Nevertheless, I can well appreciate the need for persons capable of providing a human service to keep JAT running.
For this reason, I am tendering my candidacy to serve as director. If elected I will do my utmost fulfill the responsibilities that I have been entrusted, and to make myself available to the membership at large.
I do not have a specific agenda, but instead wish to work along side the other directors and to pitch in with whatever needs to be done, whether in programming, compiling of information, or interfacing with other organizations.
Thank you very much for your consideration.
Richard Thieme
I was at the very first JAT meeting back in 1985 and attended meetings regularly when I lived in Japan, sitting quietly in a corner in awe of the 'big names' in translation and avidly absorbing their knowledge and experience and professionalism. Having been a JAT member ever since then and having benefited enormously from what JAT has to offer, I guess it's time to give back a little by standing as a candidate for JAT director.
So what can I offer JAT members, especially since I live outside of Japan and only translate on a part-time basis these days (I teach full-time in the University of Queensland's Master of Arts in Japanese Translation and Interpreting)? Well, I am passionate about translating and about our profession, and I am a hard worker. My track record includes organizing the IJET-4 conference, editing Forum (a newsletter for translators and interpreters of Japanese) for eight years, founding JITBAG (Japanese Interpreters and Translators Brisbane Area Group) and giving papers at IJET conferences and international academic conferences on translation. I believe that some of the insights and contacts gained through my work as a translation teacher and as a researcher in this field might provide a slightly different perspective on the issues facing JAT and its members. If elected, I would like to represent some of the less vocal members of JAT, such as women, part-time translators, overseas translators and translators who are not yet fully Internet-literate. For JAT to best serve all of its members, I believe it is vital that the leadership recognize the diverse profiles of its members and their differing needs, particularly those of newcomers to the profession.
Since I only visit Japan once a year it is unlikely that I would be able to attend any directors' meetings in person. If elected, however, I would do my best before each meeting to provide written comment by e-mail on any issues to be discussed, and also to propose some initiatives and new directions to build on the achievements of earlier JAT directors.
Judy Wakabayashi 19 January
Here are some statistics for JAT membership as of the end of January 1998.
Membership 220* In Japan 133 Overseas 86 Unknown 1
*Total includes pending renewals for December (7) and January (6).
JAT-LIST subscribed 187 not 33
Open directory http://www.jat.org/opendir.html listed 81
New members January 15
Non-renewals November 1
The ballots mailed on February 2 went to members current as of the end of January (including the pending renewals noted above, it being the membership secretary's policy to allow for possible delays in reporting payments by not dropping members until two months have passed, unless they specifically inform me that they do not intend to renew).
MEMBERSHIP DIRECTORY INFORMATION: The ballot mailing also included a printout with each member's current directory entry. Please check this carefully and let me know of any changes or additions by the end of February for inclusion in the 1998 membership directory. (Note that you may now include your name and/or address in Japanese if you wish.)
Note about renewals: I send notices to all members when their renewal month arrives, including information on how to pay dues. If you want to check your membership status at any time, you will find your next renewal month listed in the private online directory at http://www.jat.org/member/jatdir.html. Renewal months are also indicated in the directory entry printouts mailed with the ballots--though this information will not be printed in the directory itself.
Jeremy Whipple mailto:membership@jat.org
by Bill Lise
When translators need information to solve problems in a translation job, there are a number of sources available. Let's take a look at some of them, focusing on the qualities of organization, skill required, cost, quality, and accountability for the validity of the information.
Confronted with a translation problem the answer to which can be expected to be obtainable from one of the above sources, the translator needs to make several critical choices. One, obviously, is the method to use first. Another choice to be made is when to abandon that method in favor of a different approach.
I sometimes hear translators complaining that they have searched for hours on the Web for a particular term with no success. My advice would have been to stop after about 15 or 20 minutes, since it is likely that either the information is not available, or the translator is searching in the wrong way, making a shift to another source necessary, both to find the information and to cut losses incurred in a wild goose chase across the vast reaches of the Web. Essentially, knowing when to stop using an information source can be a money-making strategy.
In more specific terms, consider if you will the situation in which a translator has a stack of work to do and is performing searches for information. (The issue of how to always have a stack of work is the subject of a different article.) In Japan, an hourly billed amount of 20,000 yen not at all unusual. Every hour spent searching for information, therefore, could be thought of as costing the translator 20,000 yen in lost billings. This stark reality should underline how important it is to stop pursuing an information source that might lead to a dead end.
In JAT Bulletin articles, at IJET Conferences, and on countless websites, translators are presented with link lists to various websites that are recommended as good sources of information. This in itself is fine. What remains an unfulfilled need, however, is a course in searching for information on the Web and elsewhere, a topic which has not been covered in much depth, and also on how to judge when further searching is merely wasting money (i.e., time)--essentially, a look at information sources in terms of their impact on translator income.
An upcoming JAT meeting looks like it is going to be devoted to the internet. I hope that some of the issues about evaluating information sources that I have cited can be incorporated in that meeting.
毎日新聞の「月間しみずよりのり新聞」というページのコラム「イアンさ んの日本語カルテ」（97年12月18日付）で紹介されていた、漢字に二つ 以上の全く違う読みがあるという例文です（ちょっと無理がある例ですが）。 さてみなさん、読めますか？ 正解はJAT-LISTにてのちほど発表します。 Non-nativeの第１号正解者には、プレゼントをさしあげます
「生まれは下町、生い立ちもそう、生命ある限り生粋の江戸っ子。芝生の 生垣づくりが一生の生業。草が生えるから生やさしいもんじゃない。」
（ちなみにうちの小学５年生の子は、「生粋」と「生業」で つまずきました）。
Emily Shibata-Sato
Usually any big Japanese event worth its salt has a reception as the first order of business. Registration during the day, reception in the evening, and then do the business part of the symposium or whatever the next day. It is a very established pattern -- so much so that this 歓迎レセプションis part of the mindset.
So the 「ごあいさつ」(inevitably translated as "greetings") for this program that came over my transom recently talks about the organizers' intentions, the schedule, and how glad they are that everyone is here in **** City. Because registration is in the morning, the symposium in the afternoon, and the reception in the evening, the paragraph mentioning the reception reads:
また、セミナーの後に開催させていただく歓迎レセプションでは地元各界 の代表者と大いに交流を深めていただくとともに、**** の夜を存分にお 楽しみいただきたいと存じます。
How does this come out in the attached English? We are also hosting a welcome reception after the seminar. It is our desire that you will make use of this occasion to forge closer relations with leaders of public and private sectors of this region and enjoy a pleasant evening in ****.
Truth in advertising is fine, but it might have been better to just call it a reception? Or capitalize it as a Welcome Reception? Or _something_ besides translating on automatic.
by Bill Lise
The magazine 通訳翻訳ジャーナル, which I don't normally look at, since it is basically just lots of thinly veiled "testimonial" articles that look like they are aimed at helping advertisers get customers for their translation schools, featured patent translation in its March edition. To anyone who knows the ropes, the magazine's title this month--あなたにもできる！注目 の「特許翻訳」-- hints of not much more than ads for schools, of which there are plenty in this issue. Among the chaff, however, there are a few grains of wheat in several articles.
One of these articles is by Asako Mizuno, in which the author makes some comments about what is required of a patent translator--comments which apply to translators working in either J-->E or E-->J.
In her article, Mizuno, who is mentioned as one of the teachers at the translation school Ikaros Academy (apparently connected to the publisher of the Magazine, Ikaros Shuppan), cites non-internet sources as important in keeping up with terminology. In a world in which webworship is increasingly the religion of choice among searchers for information, this is indeed a refreshing note.
Another article of some interest is by Munetake Hamaguchi, the president of Chizai Corporation, a fairly large patent translation agency (and, it appears now from ads in this magazine, a patent translation school as well), in which some interesting statistics are presented with regard to patent filings.
The Hamaguchi article presents graphs which show the trend in patent filings, and additionally states that data for 1994 indicated that approximately 40,000 filings were made in the US by Japanese entities. This is a bit higher than the 30,000 number I have been using in my calculations of the patent market, but I cannot think that Hamaguchi is adjusting the figures just to make patent translation schools seem attractive. Hamaguchi goes on to state that statistics for subsequent years are not available, but that there has been even further growth in US filings from Japan in the past few years.
While the overall tone of the magazine this month remains "spend your money to go to translation school," and most of the articles are written by people or are about people working for either translation agencies or schools, the magazine still might be worth a read.
For some reason, there is a section titled 特許に強い翻訳会社リスト which lists a surprising selection of large translation companies. My contacts with benrishi indicate that few patent professionals are eager to give patent translation to agencies, for reasons of lost income (higher cost), not much added value, and no opportunity to make contact with the translator. One of the companies listed is サン・フレア, and I can't help wondering whether, after reading this magazine published by "Ikaros," translators might not need to be careful with their flight path on their way into the kingdom of patent translator wealth and fame.
小内一、「究極版逆引き頭引き日本語辞典−名詞と動詞で引く 17万文例」講談社＋α文庫 1900円
校正者である著者の紹介は次のとおり。 「校正をしていると、しっくりこない表現にたびたび出合う。 辞書を引くと言葉の意味は載っていても、日本語としての正しい使 い方かどうかははっきりせず、とまどうことが多々ある。そこで現 代作家の作品にあたり、用例を自分で集めはじめ、それが本書のも とになった。」
この辞典は次のように使います。
１．ピタッとくる言葉を探す → 風がふいて葉が動いていること を書きあらわしたいとき、「葉」の項を見ると、「動かす、きらめか せる、そよがせる、ひるがえす、震わせる、揺らす」など、葉が動 かすことをあらわす言葉がいくつか出てくる。
２．忘れていた言葉を思い出す → 「場数を踏む」と書きたいけ ど、「場数」という言葉が思い浮かばないときには、「踏む」の項を みると、「場数」が出ている。
３．使い方を確かめたり、別の適切な言い回しを探す → 校正の 仕事をしていて、「目を立てる」というのが出てきたがちょっと変 だ。そこで「立てる」の項を見ると、「目」ではなく、「目角、目く じら」などが見つかる。
さて私は前に、「的を射た」と「当を得た」を混同して、「的を得た」 とワープロで打ってしまい、クライアントからまちがいを指摘され たことがあります。そこでこの辞典の「的」の項をみると、 「射抜く、射た、撃つ、競う、しぼる、そらす、にらむ、ねらう、 はずす、外れる」が出ていました。一方、「当」には、 「得る、失する」が出ていました。
（新潮文庫 ５１４円）
ロシア語通訳の第１人者による、抱腹絶倒（はらをかかえて笑いころげる） のエッセー集。
何がおもしろいかは、本文を読んでいただくとして、タイトルは、イタリ ア・ルネサンスの格言「翻訳は女に似ている。忠実なときは糠味噌くさく、 美しいときには不実である」に由来する、フランス語の Belles Infideles （美しいが、原文に忠実でない翻訳）からとったとのことです（注：イタ リア語で「ぬかみそ」が何にあたるのかは不明）。
さて、容貌と貞淑度を女にばかりたとえられるのはしゃくだと、著者は考 えました（私もそう思います）。でも男にはうまく喩えられない、せいぜ い「浮気の絶えない三高男」、「あなた一筋の三低男」か、と著者は述べて います。
どなたか、この本のコメントを３月号の Bulletinに寄せてくださいませ んか（特に通訳専門の方）。 本当におもしろいし、ためになる本ですから。
Note: 三高 = Three highs (high degree, high income and tall) 三低 = Three lows (no degree, low income and short)
by Bill Lise
Nobody expected the war to last until 1947, but when the Japanese finally extracted an unconditional surrender from the Allied Forces, there were sighs of relief from all quarters. It was not until the late 1960s that any significant number of Americans were aware of the virus responsible for the loss of one-half of the US fighting force starting in late 1944. The world had set about to the task of rebuilding its industries and societies, and it was clear that language--the Japanese language--was going to play a major role in the new order.
Save for a small core of Japan experts that the US had used during the war years, there were few Japanese-capable Americans to meet the sure-to-come onslaught of things Japanese pouring into US society. But the US, perhaps to demonstrate that it was down but not out, was determined to meet the challenge.
As part of the Japanese occupation of the US, the newly formed Bureau for Cultural Harmony, under the capable leadership of former Japanese teacher Fumi Toobes, brought about a reform of the US educational system the likes of which had never been dreamt of. Just five years after its implementation, the average American was capable of having a brief conversation with a Japanese on the streetcorner or in a public conveyance. The more advanced Japanese- language learners quickly discovered that they could turn their language ability into income, as the ever-growing export business in the US had a great need for Americans who could take on Japanese first names, speak some Japanese with Japanese customers, and generally "act the part." These jobs were often taken by former US employees of the Japanese occupation forces, and some of the early female workers in giant US trading companies were even rumored to have formerly worked in the special recreation centers the US government had set up for its Japanese guests at the edge of some US cities. The largest of these was established when a gutted-out Italian restaurant on Gunhill Road in the Bronx was adapted to that purpose.
Around 1954, the situation changed drastically. The Japanese government, having rewritten the US constitution to forbid all means for making war, granted the US, exclusive of the territory of Hawaii, its independence, with the additional condition that Japan would be permitted to maintain military bases on the US mainland. The non-warmaking article of the new US Constitution was soon to be undermined when a missile crisis in Latin America and the subsequent police action not only provided a boost to the US economy, but also a reason for limited re-armament, at the urging of none other than the Japanese.
The breathtaking recovery of US industry and its success in exporting its superior technology to the increasingly affluent Japanese, Korean, and Taiwanese markets created heavy demands for translation into Japanese. There were certainly some Japanese still resident in the US who could take on such work, but their numbers were limited. Some of them were not even very good translators, and most demanded higher rates than their American counterparts, in spite of the low rates they would be satisfied with when doing English-to-Japanese translation in Japan. Many of them felt that they deserved higher rates because they could write native-level Japanese, a feat very few Americans could manage. Some clients didn't look beyond this qualification when selecting a translator. Some of the first businesses to turn this situation into a hard profits were translation schools.
Businesses such as Timelag Institute, Mumblejumble School of Word Replacement, and Guise Academy came to the rescue, with schools and correspondence courses aimed at training Americans to write Japanese-language instruction manuals, advertisements, and patent specifications. Naturally, some of the graduates from these schools were good, but they were the notable exceptions.
The schools even offered highly popular courses which taught the difficult art of doing Japanese-to-English translation for subtitling of Japanese movies, which represented the major part of movie ticket sales in the US. It is not certain whether these schools revealed to their hundreds of students that, even with the great popularity of Japanese films, all such subtitling was already being handled quite well by a core of 10 translators, most of whom laid claim to being disciples of that illustrious movie subtitler, Imelda Toad.
Another seldom-discussed sector of the language-service industry in the US was busily at work creating T-shirts with inscriptions that were mostly 4-character expressions from Chinese classics that were thought to be popular in Japan at the time. Apparel with snappy inscriptions朝三暮四 and 温故知新 became common sights on the streets of Rosu (which for some reason never reverted to the name Los Angeles after the Japanese occupation ended).
Naturally, having little contact with Japanese and Japanese language outside of public education and vocational training, most graduates of translation schools produced Japanese that was at best strange, and at worst laughable. But few Americans could tell the difference, and teaching translation often provided surer profits than doing translation, a reality of the translation business that encouraged a number of translation companies to make translator training a major part of their business plans.
Another interesting phenomenon that occurred in the 1980s was the establishment of official US-government-approved organizations which held translator accreditation examinations. Two of these translation groups, basically run by translation companies such as Toe-Out Productions, and by schools such as Guise and Mumblejumble, each had their own system of multilevel examinations, with member schools giving courses to prepare students to pass their group's examinations. One interesting development was that one of the groups administered the examinations by email, making more than a few people wonder about the means used to identify the person actually submitting answers to exam questions.
If Americans could be justly accused of being in the age of innocence with regard to the world of translation, people outside the US were completely in the dark. Soon after the Japanese occupation of the US came to an end, a shrewdy named Robert Bluster convinced a worldwide translation organization that he represented US translators, claiming to head a group of thousands of translators. He succeeded in gaining entry into that organization as a voting representative from the US, although Bluster's group was widely known to extend no farther than his imagination. A recent phone call to Bluster's group revealed that their telephone number is no longer in service.
Occasionally there would be a fuss over the great popularity of English-language learning in Japan, but seldom did this popularity result in any significant number of additional Japanese capable of E-J translation and willing to come to US to translate in support of the export market from the US, where there remained a huge market for poorly done but attractively priced E-to-J work. The normal mode of operation was to have the E-to-J work done by Americans, and then to have it "rescued" by Japanese language teachers living in the US, or even by Japanese (and sometimes Korean or Chinese) trinket vendors who could normally be found selling their wares on streetcorners in large US cities. The use of Japanese rewriters with better qualifications to fix the translations tended to raise the cost of production beyond what the larger translation clients could cope with. Needless-to-say, it was not a system destined to produce high-quality E-to-J translation.
US book publishers also got into the act, publishing hundreds of E/J dictionaries and tutorials on translation, virtually all written by Americans who had learned Japanese in the postwar rush to acquire Japanese technology and culture. It was very difficult to find any dictionaries that could not be picked apart by English-capable Japanese who knew the correct terminology in their native language. Unfortunately, these self-styled Japanese dictionary critics had neither influence on the business of publishing dictionaries, nor the ambition to produce something better themselves.
A small number of long-term US-resident Japanese translators and some of their American colleagues, realizing the need to form an organization of individual translators with common interests and goals, banded together in 1983. Their group, the US Association of Translators, unlike the officially recognized translation groups, was not run by agencies, and in fact didn't even allow corporate members. Another difference was that, while the "official" groups were almost entirely made up of Americans living in the US, this new translators' group not only included a significant number of Americans, but also had a membership that spread well beyond the borders of the US.
In the 1980s, the pressure to save money on E-to-J translation encouraged some in the US to look to machine translation. As teams of engineers from computer industry giants in the US worked toward the goal of automated machine translation, the translation company Bluffice, headed by entrepreneur Mizuno Awao, pulled off the public relations coup of the century by convincing several of the major dailies to run stories announcing that Bluffice had succeeded in developing an automatic E-to-J translation machine that would soon put scores of translators out of work by translating hundreds of pages per hour. Followup stories, however, were difficult to find, and Bluffice went out with a whimper, and with not even a hint of a bang that was heard by anybody outside of the translation industry in the US.
In the late 1990s, MT vendors were still suggesting that their systems would enable monolingual Americans to produce usable Japanese texts.
As the 21st century loomed large on the horizon, it was clear that language-- the Japanese language--had indeed played a major role in the new order.
Any resemblances in this story to names of existing persons, institutions, companies, countries, and prejudices are entirely figments of the reader's imagination.
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