Rankings

Journeman -- Black Belt

Journeyman/Black Belt, First Degree

You've finally managed to get yourself an assignment from one of the nationally distributed manga or anime companies and get that work published and on the shelf. Hopefully you also have more assignments in the pipeline, and are busy at work.

The reason why the black belt level requires you to have that work published nationally is a translator can then use that credit to get work from other companies. Once your work is accepted as professional by one company, it is easier for other companies to give you the benefit of the doubt, and let you have your chance.

At this point, your main job is to do as much work on translating as you can. Experience is the only thing that will make you into a better and more trusted translator. But let's go over a few things that you may not yet know.

1.) The editor is your boss, and until you know how your boss will react, don't argue too much. The company determines whether honorifics are used or not; whether sound effects are touched up, subtitled, or left alone; whether they want "untranslatable" words such as "sempai" to be left in Japanese or if some work around must be found. These aren't your decisions, and you cannot insist that the editor ignore their company's style guide simply because you don't agree with it.

2.) At this stage, you do not have your choice in what you translate. When the company needs a translation done, if they think of you, then be thankful. If you refuse that one title, it may be "one too many," and from then on, they might offer all the work to people who are more interested in getting any work. The only exceptions are when you find a work too morally unacceptable to work on, or if you feel the work is so far over your head that you're afraid your reputation would suffer if you took on the job.

3.) Don't quit your day job. At this stage, you won't be able to make more than a "beginner's" salary -- and that means that a 180-page graphic novel will get you less than $1000 (and in some cases, even less than $500), and that really isn't enough to live on. You won't be able to translate fast enough to make enough to make rent, utilities and food.

4.) Ask when you can expect a raise. If the publishing company is offering you work at a very low price "because they're testing you," then make sure you get an estimate of when you are allowed to press for more money. If they say that what they are offering you is their top rate, it probably is (some companies pay very poorly to everyone). At that point you should get out and introduce yourself to editors of other, better paying companies at conventions and such.

5.) Always make your deadlines. This is key. Editors are willing to accept a certain amount of negatives when the work comes in on time. You can't be incompetent. You can't shoot your mouth off. But if you are reasonably competent and aren't sabotaging the title or publishing company with ill-advised criticism, you will get far more leeway for your eventual mistakes if your work comes in on time. People who send their work in consistently late are usually on the verge of being fired in favor of someone easier to work with.

6.) Keep a low profile with regard to the fans. Officially, you don't represent the publishing company, but you do anyway. Fans who read what you have to say will attach their attitude toward you to the work. Keep all disagreements with the companies private. Keep your bad opinions of the titles you are working on to yourself. You don't have to cheerlead something you dislike, but don't bash it either. I'm not saying this to restrict your free speech. The reason you don't do such things is that everyone notices a public disagreement -- especially potential clients in other companies. Public arguments will poison you as a freelancer. That leads to the next item…

7.) Find something to like about each title you work on. It could be that doing some of the character dialog is fun. It could be that the author is good at surprising you. It doesn't matter what -- what matters is that you don't approach the translation with dread. If you have some enthusiasm for the work, you will do a better job on it. And all it needs is one translation that you rushed through because you hated it, to have the glaring errors that will ruin your reputation. Love each work, and you'll spend enough time on it to make it a good translation.

That's some advice to get you farther up the Journeyman scale. I'll have more advice on this level, and advice on the higher levels in later posts. But for now, let's look at the next few levels.

Journeyman/Black Belt 2nd degree

Once you are assigned an A-list title, you leave the 1st degree level of the obscure, low-paid translator, and enter the slightly more privileged level of a translator of a hit manga or anime. This can be marketed to other companies to get yourself some higher-paid work. But it also has the pitfall of generating an amount of hubris in the translator that can make being around you very irritating. At some point you will realize that the success of the manga isn't a tribute to your genius, and that your getting the A-list title in the first place was simply dumb luck, and that will lead you to the 3rd degree.

Journeyman/Black Belt 3rd degree

You've shed your big head from the second degree, and you finally see some of your flaws as a translator. The 2nd degree was all about learning one big lesson -- that the translation doesn't sell a title. That is isn't all about you. But the 3rd degree is about learning a load of small lessons (and one big one). You have to improve, and now is the time to improve yourself. Do you need to somehow immerse yourself in Japanese? Do you need to read Shakespeare and the Bible to understand the things you're translating? Do you need to learn how to write natural-sounding dialog? Do you need to fix your daily routine to get your work in on deadline? Do you need to start living during the daytime again? But the one big lesson that gets you to the 4th degree is perhaps the most difficult and most useful skill in translation: You need to learn what it feels like to "know when you don't know the answer."

Journeyman/Black Belt 4rd degree

You've gotten enough translation work under your belt so that you now know when you don't know what the Japanese means. As a prospect, novice, apprentice and early journeyman, you never really did "know." You've been making guesses all along. You've been making good, high-percentage guesses, but up until this point, they have always been guesses. And since they were all guesses, you didn't know when your guess was on the mark or somewhere off base. But now, you actually know some Japanese deep down. There are big parts of the language where you have no doubt that you understand it. So when you see a Japanese word or phrase that you don't know has a different feeling, and you can use that feeling to perfect your translation abilities. You can ask a Japanese person what something means. You can do more research. You can work at it until you know. Or, if it comes down to it, you make your guess. But at least you knew you were guessing this time. A 4th degree black belt still has to improve, but all those years of work (for me it took nearly 6 years of journeyman work to get to this point) can pay off.

Journeyman/Black Belt 5th degree? Master?

As far as I can tell, I haven't passed any large breakthroughs since I made it to Journeyman 4th level. All the previous levels, I'm sure of. They were all very important breakthroughs in my career, and from casual conversations with other translators, those breakthroughs have more or less happened to others as well. Perhaps more experienced translators in other fields (translating manga into English for publication has only been around for just a little short of 20 years) can fill me in as to what breakthroughs come afterwards... Please use the "Contact Sensei" page to do so. I'd be very interested in hearing thoughts and insights. In the meantime, I'll try to do what I can to bring people up to this level. It sure is worth it when you get here.

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