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Kevin Kirton (blue) Dan Kanagy (black)
Well, to start from the beginning, where were you born and raised?
I was born in Elkhart, Indiana, in the United States. My parents came to Japan as missionaries when I was one and a half, and I lived in Japan for 14 out of the next 17 years.
So I guess that makes you—at least to some extent—a native speaker of Japanese?
In a sense, yes. However, the native ability of a child is not sufficient for translation. I had to work at acquiring an adult level of Japanese like everyone else. I think it's worth noting that Japanese have to do this as well. It's as 社会人 in the company where they master polite discourse, the art of meishi exchange, and adult telephone manners.
Yes, but the difference between a native speaker of a language and a non-native speaker of that language is still considerable, don't you think? Can you, or would be able to learn to translate English to Japanese as well as you do Japanese to English?
The brain is an adaptable organ. Perhaps given enough time I would be able to translate E to J as well as J to E. However, I certainly don't have the ear now to determine what is well written or appropriate Japanese the way I can with English. In part I imagine this comes from having written volumes more in English than in Japanese. I would consider it a daunting task to learn to translate E to J well.
Are there any other translators in your family?
A sister does translation in Oregon, and a brother does translation and interpretation in Panama.
Is there some kind of family tradition of translation?
No, we are the first generation. It's not blood ties but exposure to Japan at a young age that opened the door to translation.
Did you and your brother and sister ever speak Japanese together as children?
Yes. We lived in a small Japanese town and were the only Westerners there along with a Catholic priest. For a period in my life I played in Japanese with my sister and preferred reading Japanese over English.
How old were you when you went back? How was the transition?
The switch came with a switch in environment. After graduating from a Japanese primary school, I started attending an English junior high school in Sapporo. Then our family returned to the United States for a two-year furlough. By the time we returned to Japan and I started attending an English high school in Tokyo, English was my dominant language.
What led you to begin J-E translation work?
My Japanese became a little rusty from lack of use in the United States. I thought living in Japan for a while would be a quick way to upgrade my Japanese. I didn't want to teach English, so I thought translation would be a way to earn a living while learning Japanese at the same time. It was only later that I discovered there was much more to translation than I had imagined.
What kind of things?
I discovered that translation is a special kind of skill. It's not enough to know Japanese and English. That's just the start. You can be bilingual and still be a poor translator. You need to go through a process of weaving together your understanding of Japanese with your understanding of English. I sometimes wonder if there is a physical component to this, of connecting neurons from the Japanese part of your brain to the English part. In any case, once such connections are established, translation becomes a lot easier to do.
When you first started translating, did you tend more to a word-for-word style, or a say-what-it-means style?
I don't know if I was ever in the word-for-word camp. Meaning doesn't necessarily map to discrete units of words. Sometimes it takes three English words to express the meaning conveyed by a Japanese word and vice versa. You could even argue that a word's meaning is never exactly the same whenever it appears. What comes before and after shape its meaning. That said, I have become freer in how I translate over the years. I started working on the sentence level; now I like to work on the paragraph level, meaning that at times I will break up sentences or rework their order to better express what I understand the author intends to say in English.
What do you consider the highlights of your career so far?
One highlight was translating the main essay for Modern Photography in Japan 1915-1940 (ranked 699,558 at Amazon.com on March 23, 2004) for a U.S. publisher and being complemented for the quality of my work. It was satisfying to be validated in this way by the U.S. publishing market.
Can you tell us a little about how that project got started, and how it proceeded?
The publisher was referred to me by a friend who thought I might be better suited for this project than him (I have a B.A. in Art and have shown my photographs three times in Tokyo). They were quite professional about their end of the deal. They gave me a long lead time and the phone number of a photography expert in Tokyo to consult with over questions arising in the text. I took full advantage of that since the book at times referred to obscure historical equipment and processes. Early on I suggested to the publisher to print Japanese names in Japanese order and to use macrons for long vowels and this was accepted. I delivered the translation by email when completed and they later sent me a check for my work (I have a U.S. checking account). They paid me well for my effort, and I ended up spending more time on this project than I do on average for translation.
Are there any major mistakes that you made as a beginner translator that are not too embarrassing to talk about now?
I made many mistakes, as we all do when learning a new skill. I was surprised to discover how little I knew English, but then until I started translating I never gave much thought to the requirements for producing professional caliber English. So I learned that the quotation mark follows the period (for American English), I learned when to use the hyphen, the en dash, and the em dash—things I was ignorant of when I started translating.
Did you pick up those skills as you went, or did you take deliberate steps to learn them?
As I became aware of this deficiency, I took deliberate steps to learn. I spent a lot of time with the Chicago Manual of Style, other style manuals, and books on English usage. I also paid a lot of attention to prose in print to learn how things were done. It was time well spent.
Now that you are an experienced translator, are there any areas of your work that you are still focusing on in this way?
Language is dynamic and changes at a more rapid pace than dictionaries can keep up. Where I continue to expend effort now is to keep pace with changes in language in my fields of specialization and also more broadly. The Internet and web searches through Google are an immense help. Just today I learned that 転職支援会社 is a recently coined Japanese term for outplacement agencies.
Have you ever missed a deadline?
Not that I can think of. Once or twice I may have called and asked for an extension when I realized the job would take longer than I originally estimated.
Do you still ever underestimate the time required for a job? Or is that something that is overcome with experience?
I bill by the Japanese page so the amount of translation I have to do is a known quantity beforehand. I avoid filling my schedule to 100 percent, so even if a job takes more time than I first thought, I have time available for extra research or whatever. I always take a look at a job before committing myself, even if the client tells me it is easy. Even if a job might take a little longer than expected, I leave enough flexibility in my schedule so the client doesn't have to know about it.
What translation techniques do you know now that you wish you knew when you started as a translator?
I'm not sure I have translation techniques. I read the Japanese sentence and then try to think it in English. After that, it's a matter of how well you write English.
"Read the Japanese sentence and then try to think it in English" would be a very unorthodox approach in some circles. Have you ever had to deal with clients expecting word-to-ワード consistency?
I may have, but I can't recall a case now. I don't think such clients would like my translations and the relationship wouldn't last. However, I do consider my translations to be very faithful to the original. I do no more than try to write what I think the author would write had he my English skills.
And what do you know about the translation business now that you wish you knew then?
I don't consider myself very skilled in this area despite having incorporated myself. When I started translating, I thought I was selling a product. Now I view myself as selling a service. I'm still learning how to do this.
Do you still enjoy your day-to-day translation work as you did when you were a beginner?
The challenge is different. I wanted to become a good translator but I didn't know if I could achieve that at first. I think the key to enjoyment is maintaining a suitable balance in your life. Translation is brain work, and the brain is happier when the body is happy. So I make a point of maintaining a balanced diet and getting adequate exercise and rest. It's a long and painful day to have to translate on four or five hours of sleep.
Do you have a routine for starting work each day?
My routine is to start Japanese and English dictionary programs to refer to doing the day, a glossary program to add terms to, Via Voice to dictate with, and Word to dictate to. Then I am off and running.
How long have you been using dictation software and how effective has it been for you? Could you work without it?
It's been a while. I would guess starting in 1996. This was when CPUs were still too slow to handle the required signal processing, and you had to install a hardware adapter with the software. Dictation software has become an essential tool. Not so much for speed, although there is some speed gain, but for increased accuracy. My eye never leaves the page, so the problem of skipped text hardly ever occurs. To avoid working without dictation software, I have it installed on a backup laptop.
On the Honyaku list, you once gave the following advice for beginner translators (this is part of Tom Gally's Getting Started web page):
"I would also echo the advice of getting your start by working in house for a while. That's the path I took myself."
What did you like best about working in-house?
To have colleagues on hand to ask questions. The variety of work. The chance to learn about how a Japanese company works from the inside.
Can you give an example of one of the ways in which knowing how a Japanese company works from the inside helps with translation work or the translation business?
Telephone manners would be one. This is best picked up watching how others do it. Seeing how decisions get made or how people express agreement or disagreement with each other is also highly useful.
Did you receive good feedback and mentoring while you worked in-house?
I did get feedback which was very useful. I wouldn't say this was structured to the point of calling it mentoring. But no one turned me away when I had a question to ask.
Did you always plan to go freelance at some time?
I think I did.
Do you ever think of working in-house again?
No.
Another quote from that time with advice for beginners: "Learn to recognize when you don't know something. The thought 'That's probably right' is usually wrong." Do you see many mistranslations in your field?
Mistranslations can happen when you guess, when you misread or misunderstand the source language, or when you don't reread your translation. I would imagine financial translators are just as prone to these errors as translators in any other field.
What led you to specialize in financial translation?
I had an interest in economics so was eager to deal with the sorts of documents generated by this market.
What are the main sorts of documents generated by this market?
Stock market reports, bond market reports, currency market reports, financial futures reports, derivatives reports, annual reports, investor relations documents, macroeconomic reports, microeconomic reports, econometric reports, banking industry documents, insurance industry documents, documents of economic research institutes, Ministry of Finance documents, Bank of Japan documents, and more. You are also likely to be asked to translate such things as business letters, speeches, and contracts.
How is the current market for J-E financial translation?
It's hard to say. I only see a small slice of it. I do business, economic, and financial translations and have seen little change in sales over the last five years. The market still appears to provide me with an adequate amount of work. An article appearing in the Nikkei in the last year noted that business and financial translation was one of the market segments where translation rates fell the least in the post-bubble period, so that is one indicator of the level of demand.
What are the major forces of change currently in the J-E financial translation market?
I'd like to know myself. I still work for the same clients I worked for five years ago.
Do you use Trados or any similar translation tool?
No, I don't.
Can you imagine anything that would make you want to use it?
No. I translate few highly repetitive documents where software like Trados might be useful.
Do you support moves toward introducing accreditation for translators?
I think the best accreditation is provided by the market. Consider yourself accredited when the client calls you with a second job.
What do you think are the current effects of machine translation in the financial field?
I don't know much about this, although I hear of certain experimentation going on. I don't consider machine translation a threat to the kind of translation I do, so I don't pay much attention to it. I consider honing my writing skills time better spent.
What do you think will be the effects of machine translation in the financial field in the next five to ten years?
Negligible for the kinds of translation I do. You can go to a 回転すし restaurant and eat sushi made by a machine if you like, but human sushi chefs are still working. It will be the same for translation.
Do you also do interpreting work?
No, I don't. Part of the enjoyment of translation is trying to find the perfect turn of phrase. There simply isn't time for that in interpreting.
What are some of the positive or negative changes that have occurred in the J-E translation industry since the beginning of your career?
I gather there has been downward pressure on rates and expectations for faster turnaround at the lower end of the market. But I actually know very little about the industry other than the small slice I work in. In that slice I haven't encountered significant change.
In Internet terms the Honyaku list is very mature and active. What do you think are the main ingredients of the success of the Honyaku list?
An easy-to-understand purpose and the willingness of subscribers to support this purpose. Time and again you will see new subscribers joining the list and quickly picking up what the list is about.
Has the Honyaku list developed in the way that you thought it would?
In general, yes. But participation is broad and shallow. You don't see such useful projects as IJETs growing out of Honyaku. For that you apparently need translators organized in a different way, as in JAT.
Naturally there are differing views about the preferred future direction of JAT (accreditation is one issue that comes to mind), but how would you like to see JAT develop?
A less bureaucratic direction would be my preference, but this appears to be a minority view.
Can you give any examples of what you mean by 'less bureaucratic'?
My personal preference is for a purely volunteer-based organization. So I see the assignment of a paid administrator and calls for other paid positions as a move away from what JAT should be. Since you raise the issue of accreditation, that raises the question of who accredits the accreditor? As I've already noted, I think the repeat order is the best form of accreditation. That said, it's good to see fresh faces stand for director. I trust they will lead JAT into a fruitful future.
March, 2004