Japanese to English translators: How's it going? Thread poster: Ivan Rorick
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Ivan Rorick 
Америка Құрама Штаттары
Local time: 04:11
Japanese to English
Hi everyone,
I'm a Japanese to English translator. I just wrapped a huge project for another client that lasted several years and took up the bulk of my work time. I also have other clients that send me smaller jobs here and there and combined with the big job I was making a comfortable living. I've been in this arrangement for years, just comfortably living off this big job plus medical, legal, and occasional "general" jobs here and there from the other clients.
I've b... See more Hi everyone,
I'm a Japanese to English translator. I just wrapped a huge project for another client that lasted several years and took up the bulk of my work time. I also have other clients that send me smaller jobs here and there and combined with the big job I was making a comfortable living. I've been in this arrangement for years, just comfortably living off this big job plus medical, legal, and occasional "general" jobs here and there from the other clients.
I've been pretty insulated from the changes in technology over the past few years, but those days are over it seems. In addition to the big job ending, I have received very little work from my other already-existing clients since the beginning of March. April was especially bad; I only made $1500. Is this just a cyclical downturn, or is AI being deployed everywhere for J2E translation and taking jobs away? Are the medical and legal fields being affected? Have your work volumes changed any for you over the past few years?
I've been looking around the internet for discussions on this matter but everything I can find has to do with European languages. Would appreciate some insights into the present-day situation for Japanese to English.
So far I've applied to 100 agencies, all in Japan, plus a handful outside Japan who posted to JAT, ProZ, etc. I've passed 10 tests so far since the beginning of April and have hand a handful of small jobs from new clients. Was also considering applying to American agencies. So far I've always worked for Japanese companies unless a company outside America recruits me as I've always assumed that's where the market is. Are there American (or European, or UK) companies that handle large volumes of J2E?
Any insights, advice, etc. would be appreciated. Please refrain from commenting if you aren't a J2E translator. ▲ Collapse
| | | | Dan Lucas
Біріккен Корольдік
Local time: 09:11
Member (2014)
Japanese to English
Terrible to start a reply with such a banal question, but really, who can say? I'm active in finance and I'm not seeing an obvious decline in work. On the other hand, when new clients approach me and I tell them my rates they nearly always decline to take it further, so may be that I operate in a very narrow market. I get the feeling that if I were to lower my rates by two or three yen I would have almost infinite work in my particular niche. However, I personally don't want to be adding signifi... See more Terrible to start a reply with such a banal question, but really, who can say? I'm active in finance and I'm not seeing an obvious decline in work. On the other hand, when new clients approach me and I tell them my rates they nearly always decline to take it further, so may be that I operate in a very narrow market. I get the feeling that if I were to lower my rates by two or three yen I would have almost infinite work in my particular niche. However, I personally don't want to be adding significant numbers of hours for much lower rates of pay, at least not yet.
My experience is not representative of the market as a whole. Going by various comments and hints in mailing lists and on forums like this one it does seem to be the case that many people in JA-EN are struggling. I interpret this as meaning that this language pair is not immune to the broader problem of machine translation and AI.
In my view, this combination is disintermediating or has already disintermediated those translators who didn't/don't have some kind of special sauce (specialist knowledge, speed of turnaround, quality - whatever). Translators who are competent but have nothing that really makes them stand out are probably struggling. I'm guessing there was an era in which differentiation wasn't that difficult, and those in the middle of the market could make a living, but maybe that's coming to an end.
You mention "general" jobs, but I'm not offered these and I don't see how I could possibly charge the rates I currently charge for, I don't know, a project consisting of an internal newsletter or something. I think the "general" jobs are precisely what are being eaten by MT. Other areas, such as those where consistency with precedent is considered vital, seem not to have succumbed to MT so far...
Then you get areas where people seem to be into it for the love of what they do, like manga and anime, and that seems to be extremely badly paid. That may not be surprising if you think of it as an offshoot of literature, which in itself is notoriously poorly remunerated.
My focus outside of actual translation over the past few months has been on improving quality. That seems to have worked well in the sense that I'm finding issues that I didn't find before.
The next step is to achieve improvements in efficiency to enable myself to maintain a similar income even if I have to cut my rates by 20% or 30%. That's my project for the remainder of this year. Whether initiatives like these will be effective or not I don't know - and in any case, define "effective"! - but one has to try, and it would be foolish to wait until I am already in trouble. So I am cautious, and moving defensively.
Having said all that, I think the precise area of specialization/niche is going to have a significant impact on demand and rates. I can only see my part of the elephant (finance) while you appear to be focused mostly on legal. Both are large fields, with lots of variation.
Finally, the usual caveat obtains: There is almost no data we can use to back up or refute our arguments. I would also point out that the kind of fears being expressed by freelance translators are being mirrored by participants in dozens of other industries, including software development. There are very few places that are not being affected by technology.
Regards,
Dan
PS I don't think you're going to be successful in dissuading those outside our pair from commenting: this is a chatty forum ▲ Collapse
| | | | Ivan Rorick
Америка Құрама Штаттары
Local time: 04:11
Japanese to English
TOPIC STARTER
I'm actually not super picky about rates as my productivity level is very high (that's something I've always been good at, high productivity while not sacrificing quality).
WRT financial translation, I'm told that there is now a ton of work in investor relations because such materials now have to be bilingual in English and Japanese, or something to that effect.
Maybe "general" wasn't the right term for the jobs I'm referring to. They are things like elaborate printer... See more I'm actually not super picky about rates as my productivity level is very high (that's something I've always been good at, high productivity while not sacrificing quality).
WRT financial translation, I'm told that there is now a ton of work in investor relations because such materials now have to be bilingual in English and Japanese, or something to that effect.
Maybe "general" wasn't the right term for the jobs I'm referring to. They are things like elaborate printer manuals that require terminological and stylistic consistency, and have a ton of formatting tags. However, they do not require any special technical knowledge (i.e., one does not have to have a degree in, I dunno, printer engineering to understand their content), so I think of them as "general" work.
However, the one really huge client was an online retailer and the work was just MTPE of product listings. It was great, very good rates even though it was MTPE, with huge svolumes. Alas, it seems to have dried up abruptly. The MT output I worked on wasn't very good at all but I suspect they have figured out how to automate it with LLMs or something. Of course they're not going to tell me what happened.
So my work was perhaps 60% these "general" jobs with 20% each in legal and medical. I am now attempting to pivot to focusing on legal and medical, while continuing to do the "general" jobs as they come in.
You're right about anime etc. being poorly paid. The one video game job I applied to is pretty low pay at .04 USD per character. Believe it or not, that's not that bad for the field!
I'm doing the same quality leveling-up as you are, or at least trying to. I've also incorporated AI into my workflow substantially and talk about how I've adapted to the new technologies in my 自己PR type materials.
Thank you for your feedback.
[Edited at 2025-05-23 20:28 GMT]
[Edited at 2025-05-23 20:30 GMT] ▲ Collapse
| | | | Dan Lucas
Біріккен Корольдік
Local time: 09:11
Member (2014)
Japanese to English
| On the subject of AI... | May 23 |
Ivan Rorick wrote:
I've also incorporated AI into my workflow substantially and talk about how I've adapted to the new technologies in my 自己PR type materials.
I would be cautious about mentioning that to Japanese clients in financial or even legal.
All of my clients have explicit blanket bans on the use of MT and AI. The most I occasionally use AI for in any sense that directly touches the text is as a kind of supercharged thesaurus, and even that is used for individual (and anonymous) words or terms copied and pasted away from the CAT tool. I use LLMs in other parts of my life, but never for translation.
If they think (rightly or wrongly) you are a big user of these technologies and might be dependent on them for either efficiency or effectiveness, they may be wary of you. Other clients may not care.
Dan
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Ivan Rorick
Америка Құрама Штаттары
Local time: 04:11
Japanese to English
TOPIC STARTER
Dan Lucas wrote:
I would be cautious about mentioning that to Japanese clients in financial or even legal.
All of my clients have explicit blanket bans on the use of MT and AI. The most I occasionally use AI for in any sense that directly touches the text is as a kind of supercharged thesaurus, and even that is used for individual (and anonymous) words or terms copied and pasted away from the CAT tool. I use LLMs in other parts of my life, but never for translation.
If they think (rightly or wrongly) you are a big user of these technologies and might be dependent on them for either efficiency or effectiveness, they may be wary of you. Other clients may not care.
Interesting. I don't use it to translate directly either; rather, I use it in ways similar to what you describe here. Seems most of the Japanese agencies I've interacted with are pretty into the "possibilities" of these new technologies and I have updated my materials accordingly. I was under the impression that Japanese agencies are mostly shifting to MTPE? That's why I bring it up, to let them know that I'm on board with the new tech.
I did apply to ~100 companies and only got registered with 10. Is that a poor rate of success? If so, maybe I'm scaring them away with the technology stuff.
I hadn't applied to work in ages. I was directly recruited by both of my main clients and that was a long time ago. So here I am.
[Edited at 2025-05-23 21:22 GMT]
| | | | Ivan Rorick
Америка Құрама Штаттары
Local time: 04:11
Japanese to English
TOPIC STARTER
[duplicate post]
[Edited at 2025-05-24 02:33 GMT]
| | | | Dan Lucas
Біріккен Корольдік
Local time: 09:11
Member (2014)
Japanese to English
| Not mutually exclusive | May 24 |
Ivan Rorick wrote:
I was under the impression that Japanese agencies are mostly shifting to MTPE? That's why I bring it up, to let them know that I'm on board with the new tech.
I think it is possible both for clients to use freelancers to operate MTPE workflows and for them to simultaneously insist that freelancers who are not involved in those workflows do not use MT or AI for their translation. Indeed, I would be surprised if none of my agencies, most of whom are Japanese, offered such services to their clients.
When marketing yourself, I would focus more on a kind of "experienced in MTPE, but scrupulously avoid MT/AI for clients who require that" approach. But then maybe that would be counterproductive. There are so many variables.
As for whether the ratio you mention is reasonable or not, I think ultimately what matters is whether the clients with whom you have registered send you work or not. If you're getting work at rates you can bear then that is a kind of success.
Dan
| | | | Ivan Rorick
Америка Құрама Штаттары
Local time: 04:11
Japanese to English
TOPIC STARTER
Dan Lucas wrote:
I think it is possible both for clients to use freelancers to operate MTPE workflows and for them to simultaneously insist that freelancers who are not involved in those workflows do not use MT or AI for their translation. Indeed, I would be surprised if none of my agencies, most of whom are Japanese, offered such services to their clients.
One of my new agencies is like that. They offer MTPE to end clients and may yet have me work on it, but had me read a zero-tolerance policy statement with regard to my own use.
It's kind of hard to articulate, but what I mainly use LLMs for is when I run into a "dead end" in researching something. It's surprising how often they can point me in the right direction when I'm having trouble figuring something out.
When marketing yourself, I would focus more on a kind of "experienced in MTPE, but scrupulously avoid MT/AI for clients who require that" approach. But then maybe that would be counterproductive. There are so many variables.
The statement on my 履歴書 talks about how I'm capable of leveraging their productivity enhancement potential while dealing with the many problems they can create so I hope to become a "真の「21 世紀の翻訳者」". The thing about avoiding it if proscribed is definitely something I should add, so thank you for the suggestion. I'll update it before firing off any more applications.
I'm at least passing all the tests I'm taking, which is a good sign. A couple of them were characterized as "perfect" by the reviewers, which is nice to hear. I've been translating forever, but haven't had to take a test in a long time.
Thanks again for your insights and advice.
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