6 months to become a translator? How can it be done, I wonder?

Let's say you had an opportunity, the type that you just couldn't pass up. You see there are all these Japanese people wandering around with sort of OK English, but nowhere near pro-writer level, and they just neeeeeeeeeeeeeed your help to lighten their wallets and enhance their written clarity to the next level. The trouble is you can't fleece them for nothing because they want J-E, おねがいします, and you're a bit average in that department to say the least!

So imagine you had 6 months, 3-5 hours a day free time, no life and some ability in Japanese (like N3). You want to get good at translating and translating alone and you have the motivation to do it. What process would you use?

# Bear in mind, your customers want academic or business translation with perhaps some translation of manuals or reviews, so on, thrown in to the mix.
# We are talking about some seriously high reading levels of these types of texts. You'd need great grammar and a solid business vocabulary (or academic in a certain field + general academic vocabulary). Your English level is native and you can use a dictionary and, if you like, you could imagine you have a business background (I'm trying to say your English is fine).

Not possible to go from 3kyu to professional translator in 6 months. Unless they are cool with really crappy translations and insanely low productivity.

If you want to learn to do something, start doing it until you hit a pain point. Then work on that point until it doesn't hurt much, then start doing the thing you want to learn again.

So to learn to translate, start translating things. When you find something that is painful to do, concentrate on it until it's not very painful, then go back to translating again.

At the same time, I'd be learning vocabulary that is likely to come up for the people you'll be translating for.

As I'm a programmer, I'd also be working on an efficient translation system, but that's another story.

I guess it wouldn't be so hard since you'd basically be a copywriter. You'd have to figure a whole lot less slang that way.

Translating is easy, especially if you're given a fair amount of time and have dictionaries on hand (DOJG series + any standard J-E dictionary).

I would try to get as much pre-work as possible to get used to how they're writing and to learn the vocabulary terms. If people told me to translate the news, I would start translating news and news-like material. I would also try to get someone better to check my work to make sure it's accurate.

I'd ignore nuances like tone, since those are mostly up to the translator and his client. I've seen translations that look nice but are completely wrong, and ones that are accurate but look terrible.

kainzero Wrote:I'd ignore nuances like tone, since those are mostly up to the translator and his client. I've seen translations that look nice but are completely wrong, and ones that are accurate but look terrible.

Guess the best translation is in-between

If you'd said from N1 to translator in six months, then it wouldn't be so far-fetched. I don't know many people with "fine English" who I believe are "pro-writer level". It'd take enough time just to polish up the writing style that you're going to sell, let alone learn massive amounts of Japanese and the skill of translation, as well as the tools you'd need to make a business out of it (CAT and such). I think a lot of people underestimate how well you need to understand a language to translate it, and many more completely ignore the fact that you need to be a talented writer in your native language.

kainzero Wrote:Translating is easy

You've never actually done professional-level translation, have you?

yudantaiteki Wrote:

kainzero Wrote:Translating is easy

You've never actually done professional-level translation, have you?

Fight! Fight! Fight! Fight! 8D (joking)


Or maybe he's just spent a lot of time translating. Hard things seem really easy once you've been doing them a long time.

KMDES Wrote:

yudantaiteki Wrote:

kainzero Wrote:Translating is easy

You've never actually done professional-level translation, have you?

Fight! Fight! Fight! Fight! 8D (joking)


Or maybe he's just spent a lot of time translating. Hard things seem really easy once you've been doing them a long time.

OH YEAH YOUR MOM



no really

the only experience i've had translating is a stint in localization testing for square-enix, so yudanteiki is right.

basically someone already translated it and we had to fix it for errors.
i found a lot of strange sounding stuff and proposed changes, but it was very clear that they would only fix things if it was REALLY bad, because otherwise it was "good enough" and that programmers didn't want to bother with it.
(eventually i got so mad that i found a really obscure factual bug that only the biggest nerd would ever find and made them fix it because it was technically incorrect, lol.)

based on that experience, i am supposing that translation really depends on your client, how fast they need it, and what they need. if someone asked you to translate hamlet in a day and capture all the nuances and subtle wordplay, okay, i can see that being difficult.
i would think (but am not absolutely sure) that translating a manual would be much easier since there aren't as many subtleties.

kainzero Wrote:

KMDES Wrote:

yudantaiteki Wrote:You've never actually done professional-level translation, have you?

Fight! Fight! Fight! Fight! 8D (joking)


Or maybe he's just spent a lot of time translating. Hard things seem really easy once you've been doing them a long time.

OH YEAH YOUR MOM



no really

the only experience i've had translating is a stint in localization testing for square-enix, so yudanteiki is right.

Way to have my back when I'm having your back. >

N3 to translator in six months is impossible.

I'm really looking forward to you beating the nay-sayers, Cranks. If there's anything you think I can help with, feel free to give me a PM.

*shrug*
If you told me it was possible to learn how to perfectly write 2000 kanji in 6 weeks I wouldn't have believed you...

This is madness. Sheer folly. Folie à deux.

Six months to be a decent translator is possible, if you're already past JLPT1 level at the beginning of those six months.

Translation skill doesn't come free with language skill.

It also depends on what you're translating. It took me a few months to go from pro-level general translator to pro-level technical translator and copywriter when I started this job.

I think part of the problem is the confusion surrounding the word "translate" -- it's often misused just to mean "understand". A lot of people say things like "I'm trying to translate this" when they really just mean they're trying to read or understand it. When you do real, paid translation, it's much different than just trying to read something.

Quote:*shrug*
If you told me it was possible to learn how to perfectly write 2000 kanji in 6 weeks I wouldn't have believed you...

I still don't think that's possible for most people.

(And even if that is possible, I don't know what relevance it has to this thread. Surely you don't think that a single statement like that makes any "X is impossible in Y months" statement false.)

KMDES Wrote:Way to have my back when I'm having your back. >

ha!
before you choose sides you should do your research!



... are we still friends?

wccrawford Wrote:If you told me it was possible to learn how to perfectly write 2000 kanji in 6 weeks I wouldn't have believed you...

doing RTK doesn't mean you can perfectly write kanji. maybe *passable* kanji.

zachandhobbes Wrote:*shrug*
If you told me it was possible to learn how to perfectly write 2000 kanji in 6 weeks I wouldn't have believed you...

The reason you can do RTK really quickly is that you're taking a very small part of a very big complex system and just learning that part. You're learning how to draw little symbols with no real relation to the actual language, so you're avoiding the difficulties of the actual language.

Going from N3 to N1 means becoming much better at many parts of the very big complex system, so it's much harder to do than RTK, and takes a much longer amount of time. And even if your Japanese is N1 level, your Japanese is still far from perfect, and you don't actually have an specific translation skills yet.

It's just not a six month project.

(I realize, of course, that taking N1 is not necessary for translation--I'm just using it as a measurement of Japanese skill)

I took ‘perfectly’ to mean ‘near-perfect’, which is perfectly accurate a possibility (even if I think it's a bad idea to go for such speed, as the learning tends to be more short-term). Certainly declaring it can only be ‘passable’ is only a passable perspective on completion of RTK from someone who perhaps extrapolates their own ability/experience onto all other learners... ;p

I think near-perfect in 12-16 weeks would be better and is a definite possibility. ^_^

Tzadeck Wrote:

zachandhobbes Wrote:*shrug*
If you told me it was possible to learn how to perfectly write 2000 kanji in 6 weeks I wouldn't have believed you...

The reason you can do RTK really quickly is that you're taking a very small part of a very big complex system and just learning that part. You're learning how to draw little symbols with no real relation to the actual language, so you're avoiding the difficulties of the actual language.

Going from N3 to N1 means becoming much better at many parts of the very big complex system, so it's much harder to do than RTK, and takes a much longer amount of time. And even if your Japanese is N1 level, your Japanese is still far from perfect, and you don't actually have an specific translation skills yet.

It's just not a six month project.

(I realize, of course, that taking N1 is not necessary for translation--I'm just using it as a measurement of Japanese skill)

I bet a talented student could go to Japan for 6 months and study their butts off and come out practically fluent and able to translate.

That's a bad bet for you to take by the way, because I know multiple people just like that. I haven't asked them to translate any novels but my friend translates movies for me to practice his japanese. He went in with basically somewhere between N3 and N2 level and come out functionally fluent.

Lol, ok... guys, guys... I don't actually intend to try this any time soon, but it was a thought. Anyway, here's what I would like to know: How would you go about it? Let's talk 'process', guys!

An example from above was "Translating news articles or text from the area of work you want to work in."

Now, let's forget N3-N1 conversations and if it is impossible or not. So if it were possible... how? What exactly would you do? Show me those techniques guys!

If it were possible to fly by flapping your arms, at what angle would you keep your wrists?

It is more effective to set practical goals that can be met and replaced by new goals instead of outlandish dreams that will only lead to demotivation and burnout when they fail to be met.

kainzero Wrote:Translating is easy, especially if you're given a fair amount of time and have dictionaries on hand (DOJG series + any standard J-E dictionary).

If you need a grammar dictionary then you aren't ready to be a pro translator. If you need a vocab dictionary any more than a few times a week for anything more than thesaurus-type usage, you aren't ready to be a pro translator. When you are a pro translator 99% of your effort should be towards making natural, faithful English (or whatever destination language), not figuring out what the Japanese means.

If you think you're up to it then try to pass the test at mygengo.com and get cracking. The standard for quality there, even if you pass the pro test, is quite a bit below what is expected of full-on translators in industry. I made $1000 or so there keeping my translation skill up before I started at my current job.

Let's all be cynical and mean to the OP instead of being productive, because that's what's in style and makes people like you more on the internet -_-.

OP: If I had it my way, I would go to Japan, I would attend Japanese schools and be told that my marks for that semester were down to me and I would have no outside help. This includes sciences, social studies, Japanese, and yes even English (which I would totally use that time to study Japanese).

I would push myself really hard to study Japanese as much as possible so I became as good as possible in 3 months.

After 3 months I would add in translation practice and start doing Subs translation and comparing to official subs.

If you can make money doing it then mazel tov, but for the most part this is insanity. You're not gonna be good at it even if you do get paid. You'd be better off doing anything else in order to improve your Japanese->English skills.

I would be worried that any work you might do with your skills now would overshadow the proper work you might do in the future when you do get better. I think it would be entirely irresponsible for you to take on translation jobs right now.