ClaecElric4God wrote:I'm still in old Japan land, struggling through the dumb decision to go for a master's in education. Hopefully someday I'll be glad I didn't quit.
Good to see people still kicking. And jealous of you, Kaori. I do mostly English teaching, with a bit of translation on the side haha. Let me know how to get more of those great translation jobs.
I guess it is ironic to say "don't be jealous" when
I am jealous of
you (for still being in Japan), LOL. Even after doing interpretation/translation for close to 5 years now, being able to move back to Japan is so far out of sight it feels impossible. I've also thought about doing exactly what you're doing and getting a Master's in Education (that, or at least a license, is what I'd need to get back into teaching), so your decision is very sensible. Hang in there!
And I also seriously cannot recommend getting into translation as a career. At least, not freelance translation. Machine translation for Japanese to English is still pretty terrible at this point thanks to the fact that Japanese leaves out so many words (subjects, objects, etc.), but it is improving all the time. Even as it is right now, it's hard to find companies that will pay decent rates (i.e. a living wage), and there's bound to be continued pressure in the future to lower unit rates for translation as MT improves and becomes more widely used--it will also increase competition among translators, as customers with tight budgets will likely increasingly opt for MT or post-editing instead of translation.
But there are some other potential things you might be able to do in the translation field other than pure translation, like:
・In-house interpretation/translation positions, if you feel your spoken Japanese is good enough to tackle interpreting
・Machine learning (to help machine translation take away translators' jobs, LOL--a very smart way of keeping ahead of the automation curve)
・Working as a project manager with a translation agency (wrangling freelance translators to complete end clients' projects)
Just some food for thought. But I will PM you with some translation shop talk anyways.
Speaking of which, I might as well take this opportunity to advertise. I got to translate subtitles for a play recently and it's on Youtube! If anybody's interested give it a look. It's a really good story.
That's pretty awesome!
Shooraijin wrote:It's good you did the subtitles; I can barely hear them (my poor Japanese comprehension is bad enough without that).
It's pretty hard for me to make out some parts of what they're saying, too!--the acoustics are pretty echoey and not terribly clear.
