Rankings

Apprentice -- Brown Belt

Apprentice/Brown Belt, First Degree

You've completed your formal studies, and now you're ready to prepare yourself for a career in translation, and that's what your apprenticeship is all about.

Most likely, while you were still a novice, you were doing some of the things that you will need to do as an apprentice, but while your time as a novice was all about learning Japanese, your time as an apprentice is all about preparing yourself to become a professional translator.

There are many things you can do for your apprenticeship, but the very first thing is to take a series you like and translate it.

Remember, the only thing you can do to become good at something is to practice.

It doesn't matter that you don't have a machine to put subtitles on video or that your computer isn't powerful enough to handle the image files to do really detailed scanslation work, subtitles and manga lettering aren't your job. Translating is, and all that really takes is a computer that can do word processing. (Actually, all it really takes is a pencil, paper, and some dictionaries, but computer word processing is much more convenient.)

Here are the tools you will need:

• Something to translate (manga, anime, TV dramas, movies, etc.)
• Something to translate on (word processor)
• Something to translate with (dictionaries -- book, electronic, or web, and a Japanese friend.)

The Japanese friend doesn't need to be with you as you translate (but it helps), but I suggest you make notes of everything you don't understand, and make a ready list of questions for him or her. (I use those stick-on pointers that lawyers use to show you where to sign your contract to mark the page and location of each of my questions.) If you don't have a Japanese friend, go out and be more sociable.

Sensei's recommendations for dictionaries are:

Kenkyusha's New Japanese-English Dictionary: This is the biggie. Some call it the Green Goddess. At nearly 500,000 entries, it may not have all of the words in the Japanese language, but it has most of the ones you'll need to translate.

New Japanese-English Character Dictionary: Also called Nelson's, this is necessary for any student who is trying to translate Japanese that has no furigana. It will be something of a chore to learn how to look up kanji by radical, but there's no way around it. None of the other character dictionaries come close to this one. (If you're putting off buying this figuring that you'll only translate books that have furigana, wake up! You don't get the choice of what to translate when you work professionally, so you need to be prepared for anything. You need this book, and you need experience with this book in order to do your translations effectively.)

Canon Wordtank: There are other electronic dictionaries, but nearly every translator and interpreter I've met uses the Wordtank. It is quick, easy to learn, includes dictionaries for Japanese-Japanese, English-English, English-Japanese, Japanese-English, Katakana dictionary, and a Nelson's style kanji dictionary. It's meant for Japanese users, but it works well for Japanese translators.

Jim Breen's WWWJDIC Japanese-English Dictionary Server: Although there are other web-based Japanese dictionaries, this one seems to be the best. It's an invaluable tool for those who are lucky enough to get Japanese materials in electronic form. It's great for cut-and-paste translation.

Note: With Regard to Translation Programs.

I don't use them, so I can't say if they are a time saver or not. I've often thought that having the program make a pass, then going in and rewriting it myself might be a good strategy. But first, I've never bothered to buy a translation program because of the price and the unsatisfactory results of those programs I've seen so far. And secondly because nearly everything I translate comes, not in electronic form but in printed form. Electronic translation doesn't work unless the original's in electronic form.

Activities

You have to translate. You should translate something you enjoy; take as much time as you need; figure out ways to show your translation to friends and hear what they have to say. (Mostly they'll say that it's great. But you are going to hear criticism, and if you get some, this will be good practice for the future.)

Don't sell your translations to bootleggers. It might make getting a legitimate job more difficult later.

If you have other friends who are about the same Japanese level as you with similar interests, translate with them as a team. This will later help you realize just how much room for interpretation there is in a translation, and give you information on how to work well with others in a translation environment. (There is a certain degree of possessiveness that comes with translating. If somebody disagrees with your translation, you'll be surprised at how defensive you can become. You will need to be able to deal with this emotion when your client overrules your decisions later.)

Apprentice/Brown Belt, Second Degree

After about a year or two (maybe even longer) of your first degree of apprenticeship, you will want to start laying the groundwork for your professional career. This has little to do with how much Japanese you know and everything to do with how well you get along with others and how professional your attitude seems to be.

You will have to be competent and confident that you will be able to somehow figure out anything that the client sends you before you start approaching clients. Once you have handed over your card and said that you hope they have work, you may get work pretty quickly afterwards. (Of course, you may not either. They may not have any work for you even months after you have introduced yourself.) You don't say no to a client -- especially at first -- so you will need to be prepared to take any work they offer you.

But before you do, you will have to start finding out about the industry. Here's how:

• Read a book or two on the nuts and bolts of day-to-day living as a professional free-lance writer.
• Search the company websites and other sites that professionals go to.
• Start to look at the credits pages on books and find out the names of the editors.
• Have a business card.
• Go to conventions with a big industry presence.
• Go to industry panels at conventions.
• Make a special trip to the San Diego Comic Con and attend the Lost in Translation Panel.
• Go to booths at conventions and shake hands with anyone you can. Engage them in conversation if you have good social skills. Even if they are not your "contact," if they work in the company's office, they may have good information on your contact. (If they work for Blockbuster or are only hired to work at the con, then they may not be of much help to you.)
• Know the output of every company you are interested in working for. The employees of all of the companies are proud of their products, and you can shoot yourself in the foot by degrading one of their products, or praising one of their competitor's products too much.
• Don't bring a huge handout to give to editors at the convention. The editors will have too much to carry home, and your handout will probably get thrown away. Give them your card and ask for their card (or if they are hesitant, ask for a contact point like an e-mail address), and afterwards send your samples by mail or e-mail in a politely worded message.

Your best bet for getting a job is to have an editor as a friend or at least a sympathetic acquaintance. And editor pushing to give you work is the best way to get work. No one is going to read your translation and realize what a genius you are. No one is going to "discover" you.

If you want a job in the industry, you're going to have to go out there and get it yourself.

I'm going to say that again.

If you want a job in the industry, you're going to have to go out there and get it yourself.

So go to it.

Your apprenticeship will end when the first legitimately licensed and nationally distributed work that you translated hits the shelves. That is when you go from a hobbyist to a published (distributed) professional. That is when you go from an apprentice to a journeyman.

And as a journeyman, it's time to start to figure out all of the sh*t that you don't know!

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