Once again the translation warrior is baffled by attitudes about quality of English. The Japanese give the judgement of other Japanese unquestioned credence. When the translation warrior asks one of his clients how his judgement of Japanese quality would be received, he gets the "now that you put it that way" routine. This doesn't occur to anyone?
And how many times has he run across arrogant "English specialists", who are committed to lowering English quality with direct translation, enhanced wordiness, and even by insisting on incorrect usage of "a" and "the." All this along with their own peculiar misunderstandings that are so universal they must be taught in school. This plus the intellectual laziness not to look up correct usage when in doubt. Any "little" problems in their own work can be fixed by "native check," that is, having a native speaker of English go over it. But what does that mean? The translation warrior knows what that means. Somebody hired off of the street looks at the translation and tries to fix it so that it reads normally, usually without reference to the original Japanese. Proofing? No. Editing? No. "Native check"? Yes.
Customers readily fall for the same line over and over: "We provide, accurate, fast, and cheap translation." Sure they do. Fast and cheap? Possible. Quality, too? If you believe that, I have a house for you, built fast and cheap. I'm sure it'll still be a fine building in a few years. Otherwise savvy consumers BELIEVE. Why? I don't know. Perhaps this suspension of belief arises from confidence in the ability of non-native speakers to judge their own translation quality: "My writing is good because I say it is." Heard that before? Like those people who tell you they write only good songs, which you stop listening to after the first 15 seconds.
Monday, November 1, 2010
Thursday, October 28, 2010
The translation warrior establishes a new routine
Mornings are not the translation warrior's favorite time of day, but the first cup of coffee makes up for it. Lately he has been having that cup at McDonald's, where he can get it for 120 yen. This satisfies his initial craving to gulp down a bunch, making it easier to slowly sip the next one at Starbucks, where he will spend some time with his portable office, his Toshiba laptop. Starbucks offers a single refill for 100 yen. He enjoys that one after lunch at his favorite yakitori place that serves mackerel in season, broiled over a brazier, and whose master lets him charge up his office. Then it's back to Starbucks for the 100 yen refill, maybe a chocolate chunk scone, and some more work.
Sunday, March 14, 2010
The translation warrior strikes again
Starting Tuesday night at 10pm, returned call to customer, who, of course, was still at the office. Half of job has been cancelled. Set up meeting for next morning to go over questions for remaining part of job. Aversion to crowded trains keeps him from early morning appointments, so make this one for 11am.
After struggling awake, get to station half hour before train time, enough to enjoy a cup of coffee and to go over the questions, none of which he remembers. Quickly reminded of them.
On the train, and the translation warrior is off to Tokyo. Took the express, fairly confident it won't get packed at that time. Just barely right. Get to Roppongi 10 minutes early. Dive into Starbucks for an espresso. A fine break before the meeting.
After checking in at reception, manned by pretty, well made up, and cheerfully polite as only Japanese can be receptionists, head to third floor "waiting corner", which is a corner of a large room with tables in the middle and meeting areas in the perimeter. We get a small partitioned spot, the only place available at 10pm the night before.
Meeting goes as expected. Lots of problems in the Japanese. And the translation warrior's reading comprehension. But gratified that one of his questions was also asked by a FF customer, so it's not just the translation warrior. Take a lunch break, eating at a Vietnamese place on the first floor gourmet floor. Quite good. The girls are Vietnamese with accents and adequate Japanese.
Resume meeting after half hour break. Discuss how translation is priced, and possible future work. Good for translation warrior.
After meeting, go back to Starbucks, but, as usual, it's full. But there's another on the corner, also full, but he luckily gets a table on the second floor. Call friend whose little office is nearby. He joins him, and they bitch about the agent that takes a cut while doing nothing, absolutely nothing except get in the way.
This "meeting" over, off the translation warrior goes back to Minami Rinkan. He changes, gets ready to go to gym, and takes off again.
At gym, playing squash, a couple of unfamiliar young women with racquets show up. The translation warrior and friends have the court for the next hour, so he feels sorry for them. But something tells him they are pretty good. Racquets are in cloth sacks instead of the manufacturer's vinyl case. One of the guys offers to let them play. A vague response meaning no thanks. Afterwards, watching them, the translation warrior figures maybe a guy's strength and speed could make up for their skills, as they look and play like real squash players, not amateur clods like them. Another guy shows up, one with contacts throughout the squash community. Do you know them? the translation warrior asks. Yes, one's the current Japan National Champion, he says, rescuing the translation warrior from a potentially embarrassing ass-kicking. And conception of being able to take them goes out the window.
After struggling awake, get to station half hour before train time, enough to enjoy a cup of coffee and to go over the questions, none of which he remembers. Quickly reminded of them.
On the train, and the translation warrior is off to Tokyo. Took the express, fairly confident it won't get packed at that time. Just barely right. Get to Roppongi 10 minutes early. Dive into Starbucks for an espresso. A fine break before the meeting.
After checking in at reception, manned by pretty, well made up, and cheerfully polite as only Japanese can be receptionists, head to third floor "waiting corner", which is a corner of a large room with tables in the middle and meeting areas in the perimeter. We get a small partitioned spot, the only place available at 10pm the night before.
Meeting goes as expected. Lots of problems in the Japanese. And the translation warrior's reading comprehension. But gratified that one of his questions was also asked by a FF customer, so it's not just the translation warrior. Take a lunch break, eating at a Vietnamese place on the first floor gourmet floor. Quite good. The girls are Vietnamese with accents and adequate Japanese.
Resume meeting after half hour break. Discuss how translation is priced, and possible future work. Good for translation warrior.
After meeting, go back to Starbucks, but, as usual, it's full. But there's another on the corner, also full, but he luckily gets a table on the second floor. Call friend whose little office is nearby. He joins him, and they bitch about the agent that takes a cut while doing nothing, absolutely nothing except get in the way.
This "meeting" over, off the translation warrior goes back to Minami Rinkan. He changes, gets ready to go to gym, and takes off again.
At gym, playing squash, a couple of unfamiliar young women with racquets show up. The translation warrior and friends have the court for the next hour, so he feels sorry for them. But something tells him they are pretty good. Racquets are in cloth sacks instead of the manufacturer's vinyl case. One of the guys offers to let them play. A vague response meaning no thanks. Afterwards, watching them, the translation warrior figures maybe a guy's strength and speed could make up for their skills, as they look and play like real squash players, not amateur clods like them. Another guy shows up, one with contacts throughout the squash community. Do you know them? the translation warrior asks. Yes, one's the current Japan National Champion, he says, rescuing the translation warrior from a potentially embarrassing ass-kicking. And conception of being able to take them goes out the window.
Tuesday, March 9, 2010
Going Back
When I first set out for Japan at the age of twenty-four, my final landing was at Itami airport in Osaka. Japanese friends I had made in college lived in that area, leading to the, in retrospect, monumental decision to make Osaka my final destination instead of famous Tokyo. They picked me up in the dark winter evening of my arrival, and thus I embarked on the adventure of my life. My first stay was at a friend's house in the hills around Nara, where I woke up the next morning on a cold winter day, looked out the window, and saw a frost coated rice field tucked in between a road and a hill, and scattered with oriental-shaped bundles of hay. This was my first view of Japan.
For the next four and a half years, I lived an intense new life. Finally isolated from family influence (AKA interference), everything I accomplished there was mine. And there was much to accomplish. Language, culture, customs, stimulating new friends; all this plus my determination to relate to the Japanese on their terms, a pursuit that, I humbly add, put me a step ahead and served me well in the future. So to my great fortune, I wound up spending my latter twenties in an environment of virtually minute-by-minute reward after reward. Every time I spoke, I felt satisfaction at having communicated in an exotic language. Every time I made a new friend in Japanese, I gloried in having done so without pandering to the "I-speak-English" mentality common among foreigners. I could go on and on. Then, I left. A job opportunity: off to Tokyo. The beginning of my next life. New adventure took over and Osaka was gone. But it wasn't gone, not really.
During all the succeeding years working in Tokyo and living in nearby Yokohama, I hardly ever considered visiting Osaka. Thoughts of friends and memories of my "place" in the Osaka scene visited me now and then, but, in the same way I have no interest in high school reunions, I saw no point in going back. I had gone on. But I guess the time had come, because during my stay in Japan last year, hitherto vague notions coalesced into an idea to be acted on. It would be nice, I thought, to make a pilgrimage there, a sort of homecoming. I initiated a preliminary search for old friends, trying old phone numbers with odd results. (I didn't know that ten years ago an extra digit had been added to Osaka phone numbers.) Then I found one on the Internet, who knew another. A few minutes later I had talked to them both over the phone for the first time in twenty years. This sealed the deal and I set the dates for the trip.
I took the shinkansen (bullet train) the two hours and fifteen minutes from Yokohama to Osaka, a remarkably smooth ride. At the Osaka station, I set foot on the platform in the humid heat of the Osaka summer and took in the distinctive Osaka air. Familiarity came rushing back to me. Two subway stops and a short walk later and I was at my lodgings. The guy at the front desk: good gosh, his deep Osaka dialect. And that accent! I could now hear the Osaka accent, and finally realized how startled my first Tokyo acquaintances must have been at my Osaka-inspired Japanese. (Its particularities started insinuating themselves back into my Japanese, too, especially under the influence of beer.) From check in, my time in Osaka was packed with "experiencing". I wandered the streets, gazed at new and old buildings, and met up with five people I hadn't seen in twenty years, some Japanese, some American. The more I caught up, the more I saw how much my life there had meant to me. And I was back! I fit right back in. Inexplicably, my Tokyo life—despite having been much longer—receded to the status of mere footnote to Osaka's major narrative.
Some things had changed. The Higashi-Umeda branch of Berlitz, where I used to teach English (a job I detested), was no longer, my previous apartment building was crumbling away and, according to a neighbor woman, unlivable, owner not to be found (a rather unusual circumstance, I should add), and the Osaka apartments where an ex-girlfriend used to live had turned into a...
...gay club :(. Before I figured this out, the guys working in the ramen shop on the first floor had to have seen me standing outside across the street, staring up at the floors above with melancholy longing.
While at an "izakaya" (a typical eating/drinking place) with my two Japanese friends, I asked if they had ever searched for me on the Internet, as I had for them. Nope, never had. True, sometimes they had wondered what had ever happened to me, as I had simply dropped out of sight after leaving. One reason (excuse) they gave for never trying was that they didn't know how to spell my last name. They had me there.
I arrived in Osaka on a Thursday and left the next Sunday. But those few days reconnected me with a past that, in the glow of an exciting new future in Tokyo, I had thoughtlessly shoved onto a back shelf in a dark closet. Yet, the time was ripe for it to come out again and restore its place in my life, reminding me of where I had been and, more importantly to me, from what direction I had since come. It was as if all this time I had been trailing a ribbon whose other end I had lost sight of. Now I had traced it back and found where it was tied.
For several days afterwards, Tokyo/Yokohama seemed so pale. Osaka is, after all, thick with character. And a friendliness pervades it that sets it apart from reserved Tokyo. I got used to Tokyo again, but was more than a little pleased that I had dug up my Japanese roots and reincorporated them into my life.
So that's what I am these days, a guy with five lives so far: up to college, college, Osaka Japan, Tokyo Japan, and US repatriate. Kind of wonder what's next.
For the next four and a half years, I lived an intense new life. Finally isolated from family influence (AKA interference), everything I accomplished there was mine. And there was much to accomplish. Language, culture, customs, stimulating new friends; all this plus my determination to relate to the Japanese on their terms, a pursuit that, I humbly add, put me a step ahead and served me well in the future. So to my great fortune, I wound up spending my latter twenties in an environment of virtually minute-by-minute reward after reward. Every time I spoke, I felt satisfaction at having communicated in an exotic language. Every time I made a new friend in Japanese, I gloried in having done so without pandering to the "I-speak-English" mentality common among foreigners. I could go on and on. Then, I left. A job opportunity: off to Tokyo. The beginning of my next life. New adventure took over and Osaka was gone. But it wasn't gone, not really.
During all the succeeding years working in Tokyo and living in nearby Yokohama, I hardly ever considered visiting Osaka. Thoughts of friends and memories of my "place" in the Osaka scene visited me now and then, but, in the same way I have no interest in high school reunions, I saw no point in going back. I had gone on. But I guess the time had come, because during my stay in Japan last year, hitherto vague notions coalesced into an idea to be acted on. It would be nice, I thought, to make a pilgrimage there, a sort of homecoming. I initiated a preliminary search for old friends, trying old phone numbers with odd results. (I didn't know that ten years ago an extra digit had been added to Osaka phone numbers.) Then I found one on the Internet, who knew another. A few minutes later I had talked to them both over the phone for the first time in twenty years. This sealed the deal and I set the dates for the trip.
I took the shinkansen (bullet train) the two hours and fifteen minutes from Yokohama to Osaka, a remarkably smooth ride. At the Osaka station, I set foot on the platform in the humid heat of the Osaka summer and took in the distinctive Osaka air. Familiarity came rushing back to me. Two subway stops and a short walk later and I was at my lodgings. The guy at the front desk: good gosh, his deep Osaka dialect. And that accent! I could now hear the Osaka accent, and finally realized how startled my first Tokyo acquaintances must have been at my Osaka-inspired Japanese. (Its particularities started insinuating themselves back into my Japanese, too, especially under the influence of beer.) From check in, my time in Osaka was packed with "experiencing". I wandered the streets, gazed at new and old buildings, and met up with five people I hadn't seen in twenty years, some Japanese, some American. The more I caught up, the more I saw how much my life there had meant to me. And I was back! I fit right back in. Inexplicably, my Tokyo life—despite having been much longer—receded to the status of mere footnote to Osaka's major narrative.
Some things had changed. The Higashi-Umeda branch of Berlitz, where I used to teach English (a job I detested), was no longer, my previous apartment building was crumbling away and, according to a neighbor woman, unlivable, owner not to be found (a rather unusual circumstance, I should add), and the Osaka apartments where an ex-girlfriend used to live had turned into a...
...gay club :(. Before I figured this out, the guys working in the ramen shop on the first floor had to have seen me standing outside across the street, staring up at the floors above with melancholy longing.
While at an "izakaya" (a typical eating/drinking place) with my two Japanese friends, I asked if they had ever searched for me on the Internet, as I had for them. Nope, never had. True, sometimes they had wondered what had ever happened to me, as I had simply dropped out of sight after leaving. One reason (excuse) they gave for never trying was that they didn't know how to spell my last name. They had me there.
I arrived in Osaka on a Thursday and left the next Sunday. But those few days reconnected me with a past that, in the glow of an exciting new future in Tokyo, I had thoughtlessly shoved onto a back shelf in a dark closet. Yet, the time was ripe for it to come out again and restore its place in my life, reminding me of where I had been and, more importantly to me, from what direction I had since come. It was as if all this time I had been trailing a ribbon whose other end I had lost sight of. Now I had traced it back and found where it was tied.
For several days afterwards, Tokyo/Yokohama seemed so pale. Osaka is, after all, thick with character. And a friendliness pervades it that sets it apart from reserved Tokyo. I got used to Tokyo again, but was more than a little pleased that I had dug up my Japanese roots and reincorporated them into my life.
So that's what I am these days, a guy with five lives so far: up to college, college, Osaka Japan, Tokyo Japan, and US repatriate. Kind of wonder what's next.
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