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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 while studying Arabic at the American University in Cairo. We decided to get married, I came to Japan, the marriage didn't last, but I decided to stay on.
So you started with Arabic. How long did you study Arabic?
I went on scholarship to Alexandria, Egypt, for four or five months and then to Haifa, Israel, and studied Arabic in both places. And then after I graduated as an undergraduate and after I graduated from graduate school, I went on my own to the American University in Cairo, where I studied Arabic for another year.
How would you compare studying Arabic and studying Japanese? Would you say one is more difficult than the other?
Arabic is two to three times more difficult than Japanese. Easily. The grammar is a lot more difficult. When you're studying Arabic you're studying two different languages--the written language is not a spoken language. So you have to study the written language along with a spoken dialect. The two are different both in vocabulary and grammar.
So Japanese was a snap.
After Arabic, it seemed a lot easier.
Were you planning to be a translator when you came to Japan? How did you fall into this profession?
I wasn't particularly planning when I discussed the possibility of getting married, which my father said, go ahead and try. One of the things that stuck in my mind was that you're going to learn Japanese. I did some English teaching when I first got here, then did editing, then gradually was given some small things to translate in the office I was working in, and then worked my way up into doing bigger things.
Did you study Japanese formally at all?
Yes, I studied in a school in Iidabashi for a little less than a year, and then the rest I primarily did on my own.
So, as far as kanji goes, you are self-taught.
Well, basically, and when I say that people go, ah! But, to me, I have a lot of gaps that someone who was trained more formally wouldn't have, so it's still an on-going process. I still have a lot of kanji that I know passively by looking at, but exactly what the yomikata might be I still have to work on.
That's my problem too. What kinds of translations do you do? What sorts of fields do you translate in? Do you have a speciality?
My M.A. was in international politics and my B.A. in anthropology and linguistics, so I do some humanities-type translation, but, the market being what it is, I also do technical-related stuff--usually at the user manual level and not much beyond that.
In a fairly broad range of fields?
Mainly computer-related.
Do you ever do interpreting or just translation?
I have done very occasional interpreting.
Would you like to do more, or do you prefer translation?
Cautiously, I'd say I'd like to do more. I need a lot more work. It depends on the situation. If it's people I've worked with regularly and feel comfortable with, I don't mind interpreting. But if I'm brought into a situation cold, I don't feel comfortable with it.
Tell us about your work situation. Do you work 40 hours a week? Do you keep day hours?
I work in a 26- to 27-hour cycle. I like working through the night. But I realize that I have to be awake sometime between nine to five. Since I work at home, my schedule tends to revolve around the clock, which is one of the appeals of translation.
Meaning you can work according to your internal clock.
Yes, I don't think I'll be back to a nine-to-five job.
How many pages do you translate a day?
It depends on the type of material. With some things I can easily put in 20 pages a day, with other things I crawl at four to five pages a day. I do a small amount of medical translation. I work directly with the doctors, and I enjoy doing it. And each page is really crafted. There's a lot of discussion to make sure I've got the surgeon saying what he wants to say and said correctly. The rate of pay is higher, but I imagine if I calculated it the hourly rate is rather low. So it depends.
What kinds of reference materials do you use?
As far as just dictionaries go, I have lots of books, and I've found that whatever books I buy I end up using whether I've bought it for pleasure or for work.
What kind of hardware and software do you use?
I use a very old Toshiba 3100. It's just like me--it won't move in the morning when it's very cold. So recently, I've had to put it in front of the heater to warm it up. For software, I primarily use Wordstar and then convert into whatever format the client wants.
What approach do you take to translation? Are you generally literal or loose?
I probably tend to be in the middle. On most medical papers I work on, I totally rewrite and I really change the whole structure. But I'm working directly with the client in that case. Otherwise, as far as order, I pretty much stick with what's there. But I don't like to be tied down to exactly what the text says. If we don't say that in English, I'm not going to say it.
What do you like about translation and what do you hate about it?
I like the ability to set my own schedule. And I dislike the fact that I don't have a set schedule.
What advice would you give to people starting out in the profession?
The thing about translation is that you really have to immerse yourself in language. What I like about being a translator and living in Japan, the country where the language I work in is spoken, is that whatever I learn no matter where I am--no matter how silly or obscure it is--with in a week or two it always turns up in something that I'm doing. I like that positive feedback, the sense that you're dealing with a world view held by a particular group of people. I guess that's why I tend not to specialize since my interests run in various directions and I like my translations to do so as well.
That almost sounds like a recommendation of the profession if you have a generalist interest in Japanese culture.
My frustration is with being too general at this point, but I don't know as if I particularly want to specialize as a translator. I want to specialize, but in an area outside of translation.
Do you think you'll still be translating ten years in the future?
If I am, I hope part time. I definitely want to be translating, but I want to be doing it part time, possibly working in Japanese and another language.
Would that be Arabic?
No. Emphatically no. There are too many good Arab speakers of English. I'll probably go into a European language.
What do you like most about the Japanese language?
Mikuni Rentaro speaks it.