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Basically mid-twenties wanderlust. I was planning to stay for maybe a year, supporting myself teaching English, before either going on to another country or ret

Basically mid-twenties wanderlust. I was planning to stay for maybe a year, supporting myself teaching English, before either going on to another country or returning to the U.S. But as soon as I got here I got a strong urge to learn the language, and I spent the next couple of years studying it intensively. I then starting doing freelance translation work and, over the next few years, gradually settled in both careerwise and in my personal life. It’s now my home, and I will stay here after I retire from my current university job next year at the age of sixty-five.

Dracophoenix 5y ago
Did any of your translation work involve anime or video game? How did you fare after the bubble economy burst in the 90s?
- tkgally 5y ago
  > Did any of your translation work involve anime or video game? No. I translated a wide variety of texts for many different clients, but I was never asked to do any anime, manga, or video games. Not being into those things myself, I didn’t seek that kind of work, either. I knew quite a few other professional Japanese-to-English translators in the 1990s, and only a couple were doing otaku stuff. I wrote a bit more about this at [1]. > How did you fare after the bubble economy burst in the 90s? No effect. After the bubble burst, I realized that some of the work I had done in the late 1980s had indeed been “bubbly”—fluffy PR materials for purely domestic companies that had no need for PR in English but were spending their borrowed money on things they didn’t need. But when those jobs disappeared, other work arrived to fill their places. I had as much work as I could handle pretty much continuously until 2005, when I took an academic position. I knew only one freelance translator who left the business because of the burst bubble. He had been working mainly for real estate developers, and real estate was the sector hardest hit by the downturn. Rather than trying to build up a new slate of clients in another field, he changed careers. If you have any other questions, feel free to contact me privately. My profile page contains the URL of my website; see the About page. [1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29576575 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29576575

Dracophoenix 5y ago

Did any of your translation work involve anime or video game? How did you fare after the bubble economy burst in the 90s?

tkgally 5y ago
> Did any of your translation work involve anime or video game? No. I translated a wide variety of texts for many different clients, but I was never asked to do any anime, manga, or video games. Not being into those things myself, I didn’t seek that kind of work, either. I knew quite a few other professional Japanese-to-English translators in the 1990s, and only a couple were doing otaku stuff. I wrote a bit more about this at [1]. > How did you fare after the bubble economy burst in the 90s? No effect. After the bubble burst, I realized that some of the work I had done in the late 1980s had indeed been “bubbly”—fluffy PR materials for purely domestic companies that had no need for PR in English but were spending their borrowed money on things they didn’t need. But when those jobs disappeared, other work arrived to fill their places. I had as much work as I could handle pretty much continuously until 2005, when I took an academic position. I knew only one freelance translator who left the business because of the burst bubble. He had been working mainly for real estate developers, and real estate was the sector hardest hit by the downturn. Rather than trying to build up a new slate of clients in another field, he changed careers. If you have any other questions, feel free to contact me privately. My profile page contains the URL of my website; see the About page. [1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29576575 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29576575