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JAT member Kevin Kirton interviewed Tom Gally for the JAT website. Tom Gally is well known for his involvement in the successful Honyaku mailing list and his work in initiating the jeKai online dictionary.
Q: I believe you studied Russian and Chinese before Japanese. Where did your interest in languages come from?
When I was in junior high school in Southern California, I read and enjoyed several novels by Fyodor Dostoevsky in English translation. The public high school I later attended offered Russian, so I chose Russian as my foreign language. I took it for four years in high school and continued to take classes in Russian language and literature in college. I also started studying Chinese on my own in high school, and then I took Chinese classes for two years in college.
My Russian got good enough to read fluently and hold a reasonable conversation; I can't speak Russian anymore, though I can still read it moderately well. Most of the Russian I read in college was 19th century literature, so I get a bit of a Rip-Van-Winkle feeling now when reading Russian newspapers, with all their new vocabulary about the Internet and pop music and the like. My Chinese, which was never good enough for reading without a dictionary, evaporated after I moved to Japan and started learning Japanese.
I chose Russian and Chinese partly out of interest in Russia and China but also out of teenage orneriness—Russian and Chinese were considered "hard" and "exotic," and that increased their attraction to me over, say, Spanish or French. In college, I also dabbled in Sanskrit, classical Tibetan, and Wolof, a language spoken in Senegal and Gambia. (I even presented a paper entitled "The Relative Clause in Wolof" at a linguistics conference.) If I were to move back to Southern California now, though, the first thing I would do is start studying Spanish.
My undergraduate major was linguistics, but I also took advanced mathematics classes, and I later got master's degrees in both fields. In those days, I was drawn to languages not only as windows into other literatures and cultures but also as formal systems that could be studied from a theoretical viewpoint. Later, though, I became disillusioned with linguistic theory.
Q: Are there any other translators in your family?
No. My parents both studied French in school and my father has studied some other languages a little bit (including Japanese; he spent time in Japan with the U.S. occupation forces in 1945 and 1946), but I can't think of anyone in my family who has used foreign languages in any professional capacity.
Q: Have you ever worked as a translator of either of those languages?
My very first translation job was from Russian to English; I was still in high school at the time. The father of a friend of mine worked as an assistant to Armand Hammer, the president of Occidental Petroleum. Hammer had business contacts with Soviet leaders from Lenin on and was well known in the USSR, and he occasionally received letters in Russian that he couldn't read. My friend's father asked me to translate one of those letters. It turned out to be from a recent emigre asking for a job. I couldn't understand the letter completely, but I did turn in a translation and was paid something like twenty-five dollars for it, a large sum for me then.
The next Russian translations I did were about eight or ten years ago for one of my Japanese clients. They wanted to know the content of some technical papers in Russian, so they asked me to translate them into English. I didn't have any Russian technical dictionaries, so I had to make a trip to the Diet Library to look up some of the technical terms. I think I did a reasonably good job on those translations; I remember being surprised at how much easier it was to translate from Russian to English than from Japanese to English because of the similar sentence structures. That client asked me two or three times for Russian-to-English translations, but I never presented myself to others as a Russian translator and haven't done any work with Russian since.
Q: What were the main turning points that made you want to get into Japanese-to-English translation?
I started learning Japanese only after moving to Japan when I was twenty-six years old. I didn't have any specific goals at first; I just wanted to learn to read the language fluently. But then I happened to meet an American translator—Bruce Talbot—at a party in Tokyo, and his description of his work sounded attractive to me. I liked the idea of using my hard-won language skills and of working independently. After I graduated from Japanese language school at the end of 1985, I started getting work from a translation agency where a couple of friends were working, and I also started looking for clients elsewhere. It didn't take long for me to become as busy as I wanted to be.
Q: What are some of the things that you know about translation now that you wish you had known during your first year as a translator?
While I think my Japanese language skills were adequate at that point, of course they could have been better. But more importantly, I wish I had known more about translation as a profession and a business. I knew only a handful of other translators, and there were no resources like Honyaku or IJET then.
Q: Do you have any recollections of embarrassing mistakes that you made as a beginner?
I've forgotten the details, but there were at least a few cases where I misinterpreted Japanese idioms or misread kanji and my mistakes were caught by my clients. These days, I think (or hope) that most of my mistakes are just typos or other careless errors.
But I continue to learn. Only recently did I realize that "monitor" is not used in English in the meaning of モニター, that is, a consumer who comments on products, television programs, commercials, etc. About ten years ago, I did some translations for a consumer research company, and I must have referred to "consumer monitors" dozens of times in my translations. I'm not sure if this mistake was embarrassing, but I should have used another term.
Q: Have you ever missed a deadline?
I haven't let more than handful of deadlines come and go without informing the client in advance. But I have often renegotiated deadlines when I found that I couldn't finish by the deadline set by the client. I need at least seven hours of sleep to function, and I refuse to pull all-nighters or make other extraordinary efforts to meet deadlines.
Q: You once suggested volunteer translating as a possible way of beginning a professional career. What kind of volunteer work have you done, or what kind would you recommend?
I think I was passing on a suggestion that someone else had made previously. The only translations I've done on a volunteer basis have been a handful for friends and acquaintances. In one case, for example, the mother of a Japanese friend had an accident and was hospitalized while traveling in Hong Kong; after she recovered and returned to Japan, she asked me to translate her thank-you note to the nurses at the hospital. I didn't charge her anything.
People who are more politically or religiously minded than I am can probably find organizations who share their sympathies and would like material translated for free. I once forwarded to Honyaku a request for a volunteer English-to-Japanese translation from a political organization in the United States, and several people contacted me eager to help because they either were members of or supported the organization.
Q: For a person who was planning to leave their current profession within six months and try to become a professional freelance translator, what kind of study and preparation would you recommend?
Enroll in a translation course. Translate some texts on your own and pay an experienced translator to look them over and make comments. Read as much as you can in your second language to increase your fluency and understanding. Start reading Honyaku regularly. Attend IJET, JAT meetings, and other translator gatherings.
Q: Do you have any daily study habits that help you in your translation work? (E.g. carrying a notebook, e-dictionary, PDA?)
Nothing systematic—just read a lot in both languages, which I would probably be doing anyway. I've found that the best way to become a better translator is to translate a lot. I also taught a course in Japanese-English translation for several years when I was still a new translator myself; the course probably helped me more than it did my students.
Q: What part of translation work do you find rewarding? And what parts do you dislike?
While I enjoy the constant challenge of the translation process itself, the biggest attraction of translation for me has been being able to make a good living while working independently at home. Now that my children are getting older, I'm very grateful that, unlike parents who have to work long hours away from home, I have been able to be around most of the time while they are young. I have never regretted not working in an office or having a career inside an organization.
My main dislike of freelancing is having to juggle tight deadlines from multiple clients, and that is part of the reason why I have started shifting the bulk of my work from translation to lexicography. While dictionaries are always made under tight deadlines, the deadlines are not as urgent as the quick-turnaround translation work that I've been doing for many years.
Q: Do you ever do interpreting work?
When I started translating, I toyed with the idea of interpreting as well. But while I probably could have become a reasonably good Japanese-to-English interpreter, my spoken Japanese has never been smooth and fluent enough for me to go the other way. Since most interpreting requires that people go both directions, I never pursued that kind of work. (I've done only one interpreting job for pay, and that was enough.)
Another side career I didn't pursue was narrating. I have done a number of narration jobs and directed many more, and with experience I probably could have made a pretty good living at narration. But, like interpreting, narration is done outside the home, and I didn't want to commit myself to work that would have required a lot of time away. I also had the privilege of working with some top-notch narrators, and I wasn't confident that I could ever come close to their level of skill.
Yet another career that I have intentionally steered clear of is starting a translation company. In some ways it would be a natural extension of what I have been doing, and I have some of the skills necessary to succeed. But I don't think I have some of the other required skills, nor the inclination, to be really successful or to enjoy being a businessman.
Q: Your website, Gally.Net, features quite a selection of own musical compositions. In what way does your life as a musician/songwriter affect your life as a translator? (And vice versa?)
Not much. Music and language are similar in some ways, but they occupy mostly distinct spaces in my life. I haven't ever done any music-related translation, for example. The closest connection I can think of is that freelancing from home has enabled me to maintain and improve my musical skills more than I would have if I were working outside. My favorite way of taking a break from work is to go play the piano for a while.
I occasionally perform at a friend's bar in Tokyo, and I've been thinking of doing a translation-related set that would include instrumental versions of "Home on the Range," "Norwegian Wood," and "The Banks of the Ohio." The translation connection is that the title of each of these songs has been mistranslated into Japanese: 『峠の我が家』, 『ノルウェーの森』, and 『オハイオ銀行』. (The first two are the standard Japanese titles; the third may be apocryphal.)
Q: Do you foresee any major changes occurring in the J-E translation market?
Clearly the Internet will continue to pose a challenge for translators living in high-cost countries like Japan. Translators who want to live in Tokyo or Osaka and not be undercut on prices by translators living in Ireland or India will have to take advantage of their physical proximity to clients through face-to-face contact, developing client-specific skills, and the like.
As Japan and Japanese companies become more international, we may see more and more documents being produced directly in reasonably good English rather than translated from Japanese, and more companies may start using English as their company languages. I don't expect any massive transformation in this area over the short or even the medium term, though.
I'm not worried about any threat from machine translation, at least for the sort of work that I have done. But if I were translating patents or manuals, I would keep a close eye on the MT competition and, if it seemed to be catching up, think about going into a less vulnerable field of work.
Q: Do you think certification for translators would be good for the profession?
I have no idea. I personally prefer to prove my ability through the actual work I do, and I'm willing to share the market with translators of all stripes and abilities, whether or not they have been certified.
Some translators seem to support certification because it would give them more prestige and raise them in the social scale to the level of other certified professionals, like doctors, lawyers, and teachers of flower arrangement. I've never seen the attraction.
Q: You once mentioned on the Honyaku mailing list that you started translating a Yu Miri novel ("Gold Rush"), but it turned out the translation rights were bought by someone else. Who are some untranslated Japanese authors that you think should be translated?
吉田修一, who recently won the 芥川賞, has a nice touch. His prizewinning story 『パーク・ライフ』 may be a bit too restrained for the overseas market, but his earlier 『パレード』 is livelier. I've also liked the stories I've read by 町田康 and 長嶋有.
Two recent novels that knocked me over, though in very different ways, were 『日本難民』by 吉田知子, a frightening depiction of Japan invaded by unspecified foreign countries, and 『本格小説』 by 水村美苗, a rich, multilayered story that is one of the best novels I've read in any language for many years. If I had the time and the inclination to translate a novel now, I would choose 『本格小説』, though I would first make sure that the translation rights were available.
On a more entertainment level, I got a big kick out of 『都立水商！』 by 室積光. It's the story of a fictional vocational high school established in Kabukicho, Tokyo, to teach the skills of 水商売. I don't know how well it would go over with readers not familiar with Japan, but I found it hilarious.
Q: In a recent article in the Chronicle Review, Wendy Lesser stated that for translations of the works of Murakami Haruki she much preferred the style of Alfred Birnbaum over that of Jay Rubin. Do you have any views about this?
Not really. I read that article, but I haven't looked closely at either Birnbaum's or Rubin's translations. I haven't read much of Murakami in Japanese, either. (A story by Murakami in the February 10, 2003, New Yorker magazine was translated by Richard L. Peterson.)
Q: To quote you again from the Honyaku archives: "I and at least a few other people on this list do not have a readily definable field of specialization. Some types of work in which source-language comprehension and target-language eloquence are more important than field-specific knowledge are advertising and public relations; speeches, scripts, and other texts for spoken delivery; newspaper and magazine articles; and, for those who don't mind penury, literature." Couldn't this field of specialization be defined as a field that requires knowledge and expertise in "target-language eloquence"? (After all, a person may know a lot about computer chips or cars, but be unable to write a newspaper advertisement for either.)
"Target-language eloquence" is harder to pin down than, say, a degree and work experience in chemical engineering, and many translators would hesitate to present themselves as specialists in eloquence. But it is a key factor affecting the quality and price of many translations, and translators in all fields should try to write as well as they can.
Q: One last quote from the Honyaku archives: "(P)eople also leave translation to take up other careers, including teaching, editing, writing, research, and running their own businesses. Many people, including myself, wear multiple hats simultaneously." What other careers are you involved in?
I'm now spending more than half of my time helping with the editing of English-Japanese and Japanese-English dictionaries, and that work is likely to continue for some time. Since last fall, I've also been teaching an academic writing class to doctoral students at the University of Tokyo, and I continue to teach private courses that I have taught for many years in American literature and news English.
Q: Are there any careers you haven't tried yet that you would like to attempt soon?
I plan to continue with the lexicography, and I'll see where the university teaching takes me. For the time being, my career seems to be moving away from translation, but I wouldn't be surprised if, in the future, translation becomes central to my work again.