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About four and a half years.
What were you doing before then?
I came to Japan to study woodworking. I spent about five years in all doing that, first studying temple carpentry and then furniture-making. When I finished my furniture-making apprenticeship, I needed some money, so . . .
What part of Japan were you living in during this time?
I was studying carpentry in Kyoto and then I went to Gifu to study furniture- making.
When you finished your training, you didn't think of continuing to work in wood? What caused you to take up translation?
At that point, my wife and I decided to get married, to have kids and to move to her hometown. All of these factors suggested that it might be a good idea to get a job--a real job. Also, in order to set up a shop, which was my goal at the time, I needed money to buy wood, materials, machines, and so on. I had previously translated in-house for several months at a time after finishing school in Tokyo and between my apprenticeships. But I didn't think of freelance translating as a career. When we decided to get married, I thought the easiest way to start earning money would be something English-related. The one time I had answered a classified ad for a translator, when I was in school in Tokyo years ago, I had come up against a wall, so I hadn't tried that approach again. But, I thought I'd give it another try, and so I got the Japan Times and started answering ads. As luck would have it, the companies I found in that first Monday issue turned into rather long-lasting relationships. Although I've used the Japan Times again, I never had the luck that I had that first time. Timing-wise, it was quite fortuitous.
Perhaps it was meant to happen.
Perhaps, because the work started coming in immediately. Before I knew it, it had turned into a full-time job. After about a year of that, I had saved up enough money to buy machinery and had found a place that I could rent for a shop, and so I started setting one up. The next year a little gallery in my hometown asked me if I didn't want to do a show of my work. I spent a fair part of that second year preparing for the show. If I'd have had more success with the show--sold more and got lots of orders--I might not be where I am now.
Meaning you might not be here in Japan?
No, I mean I might not be a translator--at least not a full-time one. At the beginning, my idea was to split my time between woodworking and translating. The fact that people didn't flock to buy my work and the fact that we had also had our first child by this time suggested again that it might be a good idea to concentrate on translating.
If you had your preferences, would you rather be doing woodworking 100 percent of the time, 80 percent of the time, or what? Or perhaps your interest has shifted now that you've translated for this length of time.
Yes, unfortunately, translation has become more and more interesting. Being away from woodworking this long has made it difficult to imagine getting back into it on a steady basis.
It sounds like an appealing skill to have: to be able to do physical work as an alternative to the mental work of translation.
I still enjoy working with wood, and do during lulls in my translation work, but at this point I can't see myself making a living at it. One important reason being that all through my apprenticeships I wasn't required to have much contact with customers or to market myself. I got all the pleasure without any of the pain, as it were. I got to enjoy the process of making things without having to worry about if they were going to sell, for how much, and to whom. Starting out by myself, I was immediately faced with these concerns and found that marketing myself, setting prices, and those sorts of things are not really the things I enjoy doing. That's one of the nice things about doing translation work through agencies. When dealing with agencies, once we've established a relationship and set a price, there's not much need for negotiations after that. I'd love to have a similar sort of relationship with an agency that would market my woodworking.
Do you do any work for direct clients or does all your work come through agencies?
I have worked for direct clients in the past, but now I get all my work through agencies. I enjoy just doing the actual work, whether it be translating or woodworking, and don't enjoy meeting with people to negotiate prices and so on.
How did you learn your Japanese?
I started in college, where I did three academic years of Japanese. Then I came over here for a year of intensive Japanese at the Stanford Center--a center set up by eleven North American colleges for post-graduate Japanese language study.
What brought you to the point where you felt you could translate? How did you go about learning kanji?
I learned quite a few kanji during my three years of academic study. I would say I came to Japan with a fairly good grasp of grammar and a fair knowledge of kanji. I always enjoyed that part of it much more than hearing and speaking. At the Stanford Center in Tokyo, the emphasis was entirely on oral skills. It was really good for me in that way because I'm not the kind of person who picks things up through my ears as rapidly as I do with my eyes through books. At the Center they gave us endless hours of listening and speaking practice. We were constantly forced to speak--I remember one of the worst experiences was when they brought a speaker phone into the classroom and made us each call up a bookstore or something.
Can I conclude from this preference of yours that you don't like to interpret?
No, I don't do interpreting. I've done it on a volunteer basis in my hometown but that's about it.
What kinds of translations do you do? Do you have fields that you specialize in?
Not really, I do pretty much whatever comes my way.
So you cover the range from technical to business translation?
I don't do any really technical materials, although I guess the architecture- and construction-related work that I do could be considered technical. But I don't really advertise myself as an architecture- or construction-related translator, partly because I think of my knowledge in that field as being more on the practical side, and because I think, perhaps mistakenly, that there's not that much work in these fields. I describe myself as a generalist, and I try to concentrate on work in business and economics. I have also done a fair amount of work for a market research agency, although I've been getting less of that lately.
Do you do anything to further your knowledge of the areas you work in?
Back when I was an apprentice woodworker I didn't have any interest at all in the economy, but since starting translating--and getting some work in that area--I have become very interested in learning more. So I have been trying to learn more about the economy and about finance, but I haven't been rewarded by a lot of work in these areas recently. Ideally, my study would be reinforced when I received a translation that relates to the economy--and this would give me increased motivation to keep studying. I've found that the best method for learning is on-the-job training--the actual translations that you have to read word- by-word, sentence-by-sentence and which, for that reason, you really digest. But, most of the work I do requires good intuition more than field-specific knowledge.
Intuition in what way? In regard to the Japanese or in regard to the English?
Intuition is required in so far as the Japanese isn't very clear. I've asked a few Japanese friends about this, and I get the impression that they don't really spend much time studying writing or composition in school. Certainly, from the examples I've seen in the last four and a half years, the average Japanese person does not seem to possess a very high level of writing skills. This can be seen in works as a whole, or in individual sentence units, where the subject changes in mid-stream, or the tense changes from sentence to sentence, and where there's almost no parallelism at all. For example, the author might give a list of causes for something, and then when he gets to number four he goes off into a completely new idea. All in all, it takes a lot of intuition and experience to be able to understand what an author is trying to say. Of course I'm not suggesting that the average American is a good writer either. . .
Have you developed a strategy for dealing with this problem?
I tend to divide translation into two categories. The first is hopeless. The text is so obscure and the author is saying such ridiculous things--things you know are factually wrong, whole pages of rambling--after a while you can gauge that a work like this falls into the hopeless category. Then I go for a very literal translation. The other category, which fortunately is still the majority, is salvageable.
So you would try to reproduce the same level of obscurity in English?
The way I would typify my work is that I started out translating very literally. I was used to my school training where the emphasis was on showing that you picked up every word and every idea and reproducing that faithfully in a one-on- one English correspondence. So, when I get what I think is a hopeless work, I go back to that mode of translating and give them back what they gave me.
Do you spend time soliciting work or on marketing yourself?
As long as I have work, I have no inclination to look for new clients or even new agencies, until a certain amount of time has passed and I'm interested in raising my rates. I've found it's easier to approach a new client with a higher rate than to try to raise your rates with someone you've been working with.
How many pages do you translate in a day? How would you describe your average workday?
I do somewhere between 10 and 14 pages a day, but there are lulls when I don't have any work at all, which brings the average to about 7 to 8 pages a day on a monthly basis.
As for my workday, I start as early as possible, which is 8:30 or 9:00 a.m. and work until 6:00 p.m., with about an hour for lunch. Since March of this year I've been trying to take walks and get some exercise after lunch for about an hour because my body is rapidly deteriorating.
Translation is very sedentary work. What sorts of reference materials do you use?
Nothing unusual--your basic set of dictionaries, the things that are in JAT BOOKSHELF [Editor's Note], basically. I had planned on getting a CD-ROM player when I was back in the States--and getting an encyclopedia or something--but I ended up going over my limit as far as purchases go. So I had to put that off.
What kind of hardware and software do you use?
I bought a notebook computer while I was back in San Francisco in January which I like because I can hook up a monitor and an external keyboard to it when I'm working, and then in the evening I can take it home--next door--to write letters and browse around on NiftyServe. The software I use is WordPerfect, dBase for putting together glossaries, and Qmodem for communications. One of the main reasons I bought a new computer was so that I could begin using DOS/V, which is turning out to be easier to use than I thought it would be--mainly because I can use WordPerfect, dBase, and Qmodem with it in Japanese. I've used it a little bit for putting together glossaries and for looking around on NiftyServe, but it would be a lot more useful if I had a printer that would print with it. The other thing I got when I was in San Francisco is a faxmodem, which is very useful and saves me the trouble of printing things out when I need to fax them. Ironically, I can send faxes in Japanese, but can't print anything in Japanese.
Do you have any examples of untranslatable expressions or things that you wrestle with in your work? Or perhaps we've already covered this with your categories of hopeless and salvageable.
Actually, I was probably being a little harsh. There are probably four categories: well-written, average, poorly written but salvageable, and hopeless. You can see, when you think in those terms, that so much of the difficulty of translating is determined by the original. If a paper is well-written in the first place, and the author is clear about what he wants to say, than it's so much easier to translate than something that's poorly written. And this goes back to the point of learning writing skills. When we learn writing skills in American high schools and colleges, there's a lot of emphasis on clarifying your thought, by making outlines, for example. It's not just the technical skill of writing but also organizing your thoughts and sorting out what is important and what isn't. A lot of the work I get--most of it--is lacking that sort of preparatory work. Oftentimes, a manuscript seems to be a collection of whatever comes to mind--and in whatever order. All in all, that's the most difficult part, the fact that the author is not necessarily clear about what he is trying to say.
What do you like the most about the Japanese language?
I like the graphic nature of it. I picked the language up through books and through my eyes. I enjoy reading more than speaking . . .
Is that also true for English?
Yes. In school, I concentrated on religion and Buddhism. When you look at the terms that are used in these types of writings you can perceive the characters-- these ideographs--as individual ideas and absorb them in an intuitive way that you wouldn't if you were reading just a combination of letters. For example, I studied Dogen, and one of the expressions he used was "shinjin datsuraku," or the dropping off of the body and mind. There's an imagery there--it's as if you swallow it whole. When you see the expression in Japanese the understanding process is a lot more intuitive than it is when you read "dropping off of body and mind" in English. Seeing such religious concepts in the form of ideographs gives you a new way of looking at them. There's also a pithiness that goes with this. "Shinjin datsuraku" is just four characters. When you look at some of the old works of Buddhism--Chinese sutras and things--at least the way they're published in Japanese, they give you three versions: the Chinese, classical Japanese, and modern Japanese. When I read works like this, I start with the modern Japanese version, and, when I get to something that attracts my attention, I go back to the classical Japanese, which has less hiragana and is less wordy--it's more pure kanji. Or I can go back to the Chinese, which I really enjoy since it's all kanji and one idea is expressed after another, without the intrusion of hiragana. There's a real purity there.
Would you say that your experience of reading about Buddhism is totally different when doing it in English rather than in Japanese?
Yes. Being able to read Buddhist texts and books about Buddhism is one of the real advantages for me of having learned Japanese. Second to that would be Japanese literature. I enjoy reading Soseki and authors of that period because of the way they use words and especially the way they use kanji. I enjoy seeing the old kanji and the combinations that aren't used anymore. And with Soseki, you get some original combinations, like the way he wrote "sasuga." Seeing those combinations adds another dimension to the work. And a lot of times the kanji gives you an idea of where a word came from. With hiragana, you don't get a clue as to what a word means. In that sense reading kanji is perhaps similar to reading English with a knowledge of Latin. Immediately upon seeing a word written in kanji--not with all words, of course--you have an idea of what it means and where it comes from. There's a depth there that I don't get from reading English. There's a different level of understanding--not just what the word means as a combination of characters, but also what each character means individually. This won't necessarily help you to come up with the right English word when you're translating, but it does make reading more interesting.
What do you like about translation and what do you dislike about translation?
The best part is the freedom. I can work at home and make my own schedule. In January and February I went to the States and worked essentially as I do in Tochigi, receiving work by fax and sending it back by modem. Also, I don't have to coordinate my daily schedule with anyone else. This is especially good for me now because I have two small kids and it's a lot of fun being with them, or at least near them, during the day. Compared to the advantages, the things I dislike about translation aren't even worth mentioning. I can't imagine any work that I would enjoy more.
Does that make translation your "tenshoku"?
I enjoyed woodworking a lot, but there were times when I felt that perhaps it wasn't my "tenshoku." Translation work, however--dealing with the Japanese language and writing in English--comes naturally and I enjoy it. One thing I enjoy a lot about translating is that you're constantly coming into contact with new things. To be able to translate something, you have to understand it. So, it forces you to do a lot of research, and you are exposed to a lot of things that you normally wouldn't know about. One of the more memorable jobs I've had was from the National League for Support of the School Textbook Screening Suit. It was about Ienaga Saburo and his fight against the Japanese government's censorship of textbooks. It was like being back in school and reading about something I'm very much interested in, except that I was getting paid to do it.
What approach do you take to translation on a continuum from loose to literal?
I've been moving from literal to loose. I started out very literal, partly because of my school training and partly because I thought that was what was expected of me. Now I'm moving more toward the loose end. I find it much more rewarding to give myself that freedom and to go about trying to make something not only comprehensible but also smooth and fluid out of what started out as not being that. I feel more of a sense of accomplishment. I also feel like I'm earning my pay because I'm giving the customer a finished product. Another reason I'm getting much more loose in my translation is that I started working periodically at a translation and design company called Lexis where I got to see how other translators work, and I saw that other translators were taking much more freedom than I was.
You can learn a lot from seeing how other translators work. I sometimes have the opportunity of editing the work of very good translators, and I always learn something from that experience. The way I might have translated a sentence may be equally valid, but I get see that they took a different strategy that works naturally and beautifully.
I felt very fortunate when I was at Lexis because, in effect, I was getting paid to learn translating skills. Sometimes I would be given an original text and a translation by a good translator and I would have a chance to look at the Japanese and the English side by side. That kind of experience is really invaluable, I think, if it's a good translation.
What advice would you give to someone getting started in the business?
If you have a chance to work in an agency or somehow review someone else's work--with the Japanese and English texts--I think it's very helpful.
So, you might suggest working in-house in an agency situation for a while, or am I putting words into your mouth?
In my case I was going in once a week over a four- to five-month period, and I gained a lot by that. I guess it depends on how much time you want to spend in a situation like that, and on what level you're at when you start. But if you can find a good agency that uses good translators and spend some time there looking at both the English and Japanese, you will find it very helpful. I would recommend doing it after you've done translation for a while rather than trying to start out in translation that way. I think it's also important to hone your English skills.
Any strategies you would recommend to accomplish that?
Just reading. You shouldn't forget that you are being paid to write. I think there's a tendency to put all of the effort into reading and comprehending the Japanese and give short shrift to the actual task of putting that into well- composed and well-written English. My advice would be not to forget that you are a writer. You have to write well. You shouldn't lose sight of that.
Do you plan to continue living in Japan?
No. I've been here for eleven years now, and my wife and I have discussed it and at this point we want to live in the States, for a number of reasons. One is to get out of the town we're living in now, and there aren't a lot of places where we'd both like to live in Japan. I'd love to move to Kyoto, but my wife doesn't have any interest in that. A large part of moving to the US has to do with education. I have a real hard time swallowing the educational system here. I don't have any illusions about the American educational system, but it seems to be the lesser of two evils.
Are you planning to move back relatively soon, and are you planning to continue as a translator?
I think we've pretty much set this year, through December, as our limit for being in Japan and then we're going to move to the Bay Area. I'll continue translating, hopefully getting lots of work from Japan, and hopefully the yen will keep going up. Also, at the same time, I'd like to cultivate some direct clients in the States since I've heard that agency work there doesn't pay very well. I think at this point for my own growth and also economically, working for direct clients would be a good move.
One thing I forgot to ask earlier relates to where you live. You live outside of Tokyo in Tochigi. Does that present special problems in terms of finding clients? Do clients prefer to have their translators in Tokyo? Or have you found that where you live makes little difference.
On the whole it hasn't made much difference. If I were trying to get direct clients, or if I already had such clients, I would have to come to Tokyo more often, and then the expense would be a problem. But then presumably it would pay enough to enable me to afford the Shinkansen trips. Time-wise, it's not bad. It's only an hour and ten minutes to Tokyo Station from Tochigi. As far as agencies go, they don't seem to care that I'm not in Tokyo. Just today I dropped by an agency that I've worked for for about a half year, since I've never met them in person, and they seemed to wonder why I had come.
I guess one of the disadvantages of being out in the provinces is the lack of interaction with other translators. I can't really afford to come to JAT meetings. And there aren't, as far as I know, any translators out where I live. I do get some exposure to other people's opinions through TWICS. But my experience has been that without a personal relationship first--in my case at least--people have not been very responsive to my messages. I get the feeling that if I had established some personal relationships with other JAT members first, then it would be easier for me to take an active part in the discussion on TWICS, and that people would be more responsive to my comments and questions. But even so, listening to the discussions has been very interesting. Until I joined JAT and TWICS, I didn't know any other translators and I had a lot of questions about what other translators do in terms of their approaches to translation, how they do business, how much they charge--a whole range of things. The people on TWICS have answered a lot of my questions. So it's been good for me in that way since I can access TWICS without coming to Tokyo. I guess, though, that the isolation is one of the hard parts of being outside of Tokyo.