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I've actually been planning a career shift in 5-10 years doing Japanese translation, so it's interesting to read your comment. I have no delusions about getting

by nvarsj 3y ago

I've actually been planning a career shift in 5-10 years doing Japanese translation, so it's interesting to read your comment. I have no delusions about getting paid a lot or only working on creative stuff, but it's still something I'd like to do. From everything I've read there is a lot of demand for JP->EN translators, and you can make a living off of it, which is all I need. What's your thoughts on the industry nowadays? Have you thought about going back at some point?

emodendroket 3y ago
I graduated in 2010, which was probably not the best time, and I had a hard time breaking in when many experienced people wanted jobs too. I also observed a couple trends that I think made it challenging: 1. Machine translation is not a replacement for a human translator... but it's good enough to muddle through for some people that they'd rather not pay. If not, a lot of times they'd rather pay someone to edit MT than for a scratch translation. I've never done this, but to hear others tell it, it's not that much less work but it pays worse. 2. Sites like Gengo and Fiverr have popped up ensuring you're competing with people who are desperate or not doing it as their main job. I did work for Gengo and a surprising amount of work from prestigious companies or requiring a lot of nuance (contract translations, for instance) came through on the basic tier. That was interesting to work on but if people are feeding that stuff into a service like that, it speaks to how little they value good translation work. Unfortunately there weren't enough jobs that this was even slightly consistent so it wasn't a great way to make money even at their low, gig-work rates. I have zero interest in going back. If you're interested to hear more from people who are still doing it, this community seems to be somewhat active with real, working translators: https://www.reddit.com/r/TranslationStudies/ https://www.reddit.com/r/TranslationStudies/

by nvarsj 3y ago

emodendroket 3y ago

I graduated in 2010, which was probably not the best time, and I had a hard time breaking in when many experienced people wanted jobs too. I also observed a couple trends that I think made it challenging: 1. Machine translation is not a replacement for a human translator... but it's good enough to muddle through for some people that they'd rather not pay. If not, a lot of times they'd rather pay someone to edit MT than for a scratch translation. I've never done this, but to hear others tell it, it's not that much less work but it pays worse. 2. Sites like Gengo and Fiverr have popped up ensuring you're competing with people who are desperate or not doing it as their main job. I did work for Gengo and a surprising amount of work from prestigious companies or requiring a lot of nuance (contract translations, for instance) came through on the basic tier. That was interesting to work on but if people are feeding that stuff into a service like that, it speaks to how little they value good translation work. Unfortunately there weren't enough jobs that this was even slightly consistent so it wasn't a great way to make money even at their low, gig-work rates. I have zero interest in going back. If you're interested to hear more from people who are still doing it, this community seems to be somewhat active with real, working translators: https://www.reddit.com/r/TranslationStudies/ https://www.reddit.com/r/TranslationStudies/