This post is dedicated to Captain Underpants. Long may he live.
※The Untold Khatzumoto Story
So, I like to think of myself as a private man. I keep to myself. Wear overcoats…stare at people from a distance while eating Digestive Biscuits…wait, that sounds bad. You may know that I came to Japan in a blaze of self-taught glory (having blazed a bilingual career forum) and became an engineer at Sony over at the massive Tech Center right by the HQ building, working on the software that powers those things you had before a smartphone — cameras.
What you may not know is that I stopped liking leaving my house every day, so I left Sony and became not one but two things. An IT consultant (because people kept asking me to and kept forcing money on me 😉 ), and an at-home translator.
Later on, when leaving my house even once or twice a month for consulting meetings became too much of a bother, I quit consulting altogether and focussed exclusively on at-home translation. When it comes to translation, I’ve worked with names big and small — NAMCO, Honda, Toyota, SquareEnix, Sony, and many more. Stuff you’ve heard of. Almost all of it highly confidential work, protected by non-disclosure agreements, so I only say what I can 😉 …
※What’s the Difference Between At-Home Translation and Freelance Translation?
As far as I’m aware, they’re basically the same, but I never liked the word “freelance”. To me it always had connotations of “desperate”, “incompetent” and “wishes he had a ‘real’ job”. Not connotations I like. At the very least, people seem to use the term with derision. Besides, the Japanese term for it: “在宅翻訳” literally means “at-home translation” and that’s the whole point of this exercise — to work from home. Also, we’re talking about getting into the Japanese translation industry specifically, so it makes sense to use a Japanese or Japanese-ish term for the matter in question.
※Maybe You Can Do This, But You’re Khatzumoto, Internet Sensation
Oh, please.
I’m uglier and dumber and lazier than you. I was born in one Third World country and grew up in another. I didn’t grow up in Japan or speaking Japanese yet Japanese companies started asking me translate technical material into Japanese (presumably not for their amusement, because they were paying me quite handsomely for it) from both English and Chinese. I slur when I speak and routinely misspell words like “medecine” (see what I mean?). If I could do it, anyone can.
※Why is At-Home Translation A Good Line of Work 1?
Because you’re free. It’s the furthest thing from wage slavery that isn’t owning your own business. You get to work on what you want, from where you want, when you want to. You can literally work from home in your pajamas, your leg hair growing, Dorito stains in your teeth. And no one will care. Because all anyone cares about in the Japanese translation industry is results. It’s perhaps the closest thing on this Earth to a pure meritocracy that doesn’t include killing people or Robert Heinlein. Starship Troopers reference for ya there. No extra charge 😉 .
※But Don’t I Need A Degree and Certifications?
No, you don’t. For starters, I made my first forays into the industry before even graduating college, and it was never an issue 2. Now, of course, I have a degree, but had and have no certifications whatsoever. At-home translation is a pure, black box meritocracy. That means that if you can deliver the goods (i.e. words), correctly and on time, then you get work and you get paid. No doubt many houses have been burned too often by credentialism to be swayed by that any more. Some places do require silly things like certifications (test scores, etc.) and five years of experience: ignore them; they’re silly.
In the world of at-home translations, silly exceptions aside, nobody cares who you are, where you are, where you’re from or what you did. All that matters is what you can do now — your raw ability. They give you Japanese text and out comes English text. That’s all that matters.
※What Skills and Tools Do I Need?
Skills:
- Native-level English with impeccable writing mechanics (spelling, grammar, punctuation, style)
- Being a foreigner and a native speaker of English is what will make you unique; it’s your unique selling point. Most Japanese-English translation is done by people who are not good at English and aren’t native speakers.
- Large English vocabulary
- Solid writing mechanics.
- The ability to read Japanese
- The ability to speak Japanese on the phone
Tools:
- Laptop
- Internet connection
- Bank account in your home country/country of residence (Japanese bank account not necessary)
※If At-Home Translation is So Lucrative, Why Aren’t You Doing It Any More? Why Did You Retire from the Industry?
Easy. Two reasons
- I’m a lazy bastard.
- No royalties.
Like I said, at-home translation is awesome. It’s fun. It’s lucrative. You work at home. You go where you want. You do what you want. You dress how you want (if at all).
But residual (=royalty=passive) income doesn’t even come into the picture unless you’re translating actual books (not articles, not magazines, not manga either, at least not the ones I was involved with — regular books). As you’ll learn when you get this package, I translated things like manuals, that were as big and books, and video game scripts, that were as big as many books, but they weren’t books, so, no royalties.
Now, this is fine insofar as — much as it pains me to say this — most people in the world don’t earn royalty income.
But one thing you’ll discover once you — thanks to this program — break into the Japanese translation industry is that translating between English and Japanese is more like rewriting than translation. Writer-level skill and creativity is called for. There you are, literally, a writer, but not getting paid to write.
Is translation fun? Dude, you don’t even know the half of it. When I translated video games (including many extremely well-known ones by people like SquareEnix and NAMCO), I got paid to play games. Not to test games. To play them. For fun (and familiarization). My gameplay hours were billable, at $20~$40/hour. It was like “here, play this game for 40 hours first and then call us”. Of course, the game itself and the manual were supplied for free (I did have to rent out my own PS3 though — boohoo).
Owning a business is just even more lazy and lucrative. Case in point — the woman who owns one of the translation houses I worked with doesn’t speak or read any foreign languages. At all. Like, at all.
Having said that, I’m guessing that you have skills, and you’re tired of — or eager to avoid — wageslavery, but still don’t quite yet have the guts, motivation or “idea spark” you feel necessary to own your own business yet; you’re still afraid of that step; you’re still intimidated.
And that’s exactly why at-home translation is such a good idea. It’s the most benefits of owning a business — multiple customers, multiple streams of income (you don’t have one job and one employer: you have many jobs and many employers), freedom to work with people you like (and not work with people you don’t like — I “fired” an abusive, misbehaving client or two), freedom of time and place and even (to a certain extent) the option of outsourcing — all without the set-up part. You even get to practice marketing, but in a safe, simple, controlled way. Finally, since you get to translate so many documents, many of them highly confidential, you get to read and learn about the inner workings of many different kinds of businesses and industries.
If you feel like it (I usually didn’t but sometimes I did), and if your location allows it, you’ll even get to meet movers and shakers in person. Translation is a window on the cooler, tastier side of society. You get to see things that normal people don’t — again, you’re often working with secret back-end/internal documentation that major corporations lack the skilled manpower to translate themselves.
※Why Me, Though? Don’t They Already Have People for This? Like Bilingual Japanese Kids?
Because Engrish. And Engrish is only getting worse. So, no, “they” don’t have people for this. There is a massive shortage of people who can write real English and read real Japanese. Too often, so-called returnee children, and other “Bilingual” Japanese kids are equally uncomfortable in both languages when it comes to text — they have poor writing skills in English and poor reading skills in Japanese. Hapa (mixed ethnic heritage) kids are very often monolingual –because, science fiction aliens in Stargate SG-1 be damned, human language is not inherited by blood.
And as for “translation schools” and people who major in languages at college? Give me a break.
On top of that, the rise in the use of email and the web — replacing even fax — means that more and more translators work at home; it saves on office space, electricity, commuting, clothing, physical (you don’t have to leave home if you don’t want to — all you need is a laptop) and psychological (it’s hard — although not impossible — to have office politics when there’s no office) for everyone.
The Japanese translation industry was and is forced to work with what it has — Japanese people with shady English — because so few native English speakers can even read basic Japanese aloud, let alone write it. As someone benefitting from exposure to the Japanese literacy-producing AJATT method, you are set to be a sighted person in the land of the blind.
Translators are money machines for Japanese companies. Translators can earn great money because they make a lot of money for the people they work with (“for”). Japan’s is an export-based economy, and using correct English in documents and hardware/software user interfaces can mean the difference between millions of dollars in profits for Japanese companies…and years of endless online mockery and Internet meme fodder (not to mention a general perception of incompetence). This is even more true now than it was before. You didn’t need native-level English when the only words in the interface were monosyllabically laconic — “stop”, “rewind” and “game over” — but thanks to Moore’s Law, interfaces are now festooned with longform text.
And, no, actual machines are not going to be able to do this kind of work any time soon — go on, try using Google Translate between English and Japanese and see how far it gets you. Automated translation has long been the wet dream of AI research, science fiction authors and laymen alike, particularly in famously monolingual countries like the America and the Japan. Here in Japan, incompetent and unscrupulous “professional” translators often resort to it (they think that that and spellcheck work like magic); I know: I’ve had to redo their work.
But the fact remains that machine translation only helps in situations where accuracy doesn’t matter. Lives and profits are at stake and machines currently still lack common sense (not to mention nuance). Important, which is to say lucrative, documents cannot and will not be entrusted to them for the foreseeable future; reliable machine translation was 10 years away 60 years ago; Moon by 1969, Mars by 1985 — that was the plan. It’s gonna be a while. Until then (and I would argue, long after), you are very much needed.
※”Work From Home!”…This Sounds Like One of Those Shady Internet Scams
I know, right!? You don’t think I know? I know! It upsets me how lame it sounds. But I also know that this is awesome information that, if you’re good enough, you deserve to have. Tim Ferriss’ seminal book The Four Hour Workweek suffered from the same problem.
And that’s why I’m offering…
※The Pays-For-Itself PFI Guarantee
If JTQ doesn’t pay for itself after 365 days have elapsed since its purchase, you get all your money back. Every last penny. No questions asked.
Not only that but PayPal (our current payment processor) and your credit card company are backing you up as well, so you and your money are protected in triplicate from anything going wrong. Think of it as a three-way guarantee. We’re cooperating in a triumvirate, a menage a trois of awesomeness, to protect and satisfy you 😉 .
…That was awkward.
You know what? I hate disclaimers. So let me just come at you straight. Your income as a translator will ultimately depend on your speed and persistence of action. Speed (of translation) and persistence (in contacting people) matter the most, actual skill is obviously helpful but also secondary — people can’t experience your skill if they can’t see it, and they can’t see it if you don’t contact them and show them your stuff. I can guarantee that you can succeed, though not necessarily that you will, if only because I cannot control you. But I can guarantee that I’ll do my best for you, with and through JTQ. And if it doesn’t work out after a year or so, hey, take your money back. No blood, no foul.
※Wait, JTQ? You Kinda Sprung That On Me There! What’s JTQ?
JTQ is the codename for this awe-inspiring package: How To Get Into The Japanese Translation Industry, Survive and Thrive as a Gaijin Right From Home, In Any Country, In Your Underpants. “HTG” (How To Get…) didn’t have as cool of a ring to it — decidedly uninspiring, and “JTI” (Japanese Translation Industry) is visually undistinguished, so we went with “JTQ”.
Wait, why am I even telling you this?
So What’s The Deal?
Here’s a sampling of just some of the generous lashings of priceless knowledge you’ll get within JTQ.
- How to write a Japanese resume (you won’t need an English one) that’ll wow people…
- …and looks just like a “proper” Japanese person’s 😉
- …but also takes into account your presumably foreign upbringing and experience
- How to write a Japanese cover letter
- How to be persistent without being annoying — there’s a method to it! — and turn “no” into “yes”, rejection into acceptance
- How to tell the difference between a good lead (a translation house worth contacting), a bad one, and a so-so one
- How to tell apart and avoid shady translation companies
- How to get and keep jerks out of your translation life forever
- How to choose the most lucrative markets (subject matter) and locations
- Why you don’t need to bother negotiating anything except (sometimes) dates
- How to write translation-related Japanese business emails that impress, seem like a competent Japanese person wrote them, and communicate clearly and unambiguously whatever you need to communicate.
- Including: Plug-and-chug email templates that you can use right off the bat!
※Who Should Get This?
Let me tell you a secret I’ve never revealed on AJATT (and to only a handful of people IRL). It’s the secret to all the actions I’ve taken in the past 10 years or so. It was passed on to me by a man named Fred G. (not kidding). And it is this: I believe in getting paid for your hobbies. Of course there’s the initial outlay, there’s stuff that you want and need to buy — books and other information, media, video games, trips, tools, accommodation — all that good stuff. And early on, it’s definitely going to be a one-way street as far as monetary action is concerned. But it’s fun and very much possible to flip the script on that and also get paid to pursue your hobbies. Think about it: Sony paid me and paid for me to come to Japan. Translation companies paid me to keep reading and learning Japanese. And then I purchase even more books, information…all that good stuff.
It’s possible for your hobby to pay for itself. And the great thing about modern communications technology and something like at-home translation is that your life doesn’t have to be uprooted or tied to one place (or, for that matter, any place at all) on order to make that happen.
Isn’t it time you got paid to pursue a hobby?
※Who Shouldn’t — Should NOT — Get JTQ
- People interested in translation in general, but not Japanese — this is about the Japanese translation industry specifically
- People who are interested in interpretation (that’s where one uses one’s mouth to deliver/output the goods); “translation”, strictly speaking, refers to text — textual output only; translating scripts, voiceovers and subtitles counts as text and therefore as translation because, well, the output is text; text is the deliverable)
- It goes without saying that, Skype notwithstanding, interpretation generally requires a physical presence at a specific place and time, and may even require certain dress codes, which I personally hate; I love my hoodies. So the freedom aspect is gone right there. Not cool. Not our thing.
- Having said that, translation and interpretation are basically the same industry, even though they are not the same thing. Doing one will almost inevitably lead to offers to do the other; I turned them all down, every last one.
- People who know less than 1000 kanji — I certainly think it’s a good idea to get JTQ before you’re fully ready and before the price goes up, but at less than 1000 kanji, I don’t know if you’re really serious about this Japanese thing or not.
- People who need whiz-bang graphics — this is none of that. This isn’t TV. This is real, raw, valuable information that the hoi polloi do not have. It has led many to success already (AJATTeers have used it to break into the Japanese translation industry and get that paper (usually it’s wire transfer, but…whatever)) and will lead you there, too.
- JTQ is not pretty — it’s just powerful. All killer, no filler. It’s all about powerful information, valuable knowledge, not mindless entertainment and Facebooks and Twitters and whatever the kids are into these days.
- People who don’t want a leg-up and the inside scoop on how the Japanese translation system works, what few things matter and are worth caring about (and doing well) and what don’t and aren’t.
- People who don’t want an unfair advantage over Japanese people, let alone other foreigners; a great many Japanese spend upwards of $10,000~$20,000 on “translation schools” and “translation academies” (separate from and in addition to university, by the way) where their time and money time gets wasted and they apparently learn jack all because their translations still suck.
※If Everyone Gets This, Won’t That Spoil the Specialness of the Information?
No, I don’t think so, because so few people act on what they know. But just in case, I’ve priced JTQ in such a way a way that it’s basically free (it costs far less than college and far less than it’ll bring back) but also discouraging to casual, low quality, post-it-on-a-free-forum people. And I control the supply like a hawk; I want only quality people to have access to this quality product per unit time — I don’t want to flood the market with bad people armed with good information.
Honestly, though, there is enough pie for everybody. Japanese organizations need to produce more English text now than ever before. Japanese people in general, still suck at English and still dislike it — it feels like a chore to them and they would rather avoid it.
Don’t believe me? Then step outside the bubble of internationally-oriented Japanese people who naturally gravitate to gaijin and go meet some regular salt of the earth folks. If Japanese people feel obligated to learn English, it’s in the same way that so many Americans feel obligated to lose weight 😀 — lip service and vague guilt with little or no action.
And that’s fine. I like Japan; I like Japanese. And I think languages should be a joy, a toy, a game, not an obligation. And the fact that most Japanese people are, frankly, unmotivated to really learn English (beyond a desire to occasionally show off to fellow Japanese people) works to your advantage. Your amazing, native English combined with your amazing, AJATT/RTK/SRS-produced Japanese literacy make for literal and figurative gold.
※Lemme At It! I Want Mine! I Want In On JTQ!
Slow down. Are you sure you’re a good fit? Scroll back up there to make sure, because I want you to be sure.
Ya done? OK, then. JTQ comes in three flavors. There’s deluxe, platinum, ultimate, depending on how you roll. Take your pick. If you’re not sure, I’d say deluxe is good enough for most purposes.
JTQ Deluxe
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JTQ Platinum
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JTQ Ultimate
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JTQ Basic
Wait! Hold on! Slow your roll! Because there’s one more flavor! If you prefer to keep things nice and easy, there’s also the “Basic” plan — a simple, no-frills installment plan. For just a few easy payments you can get your hands on the JTQ core and supplements. Basic also has its own special set of freebies, but you’ll have to enroll to find out what they are 😉 .