A Survey of Computer Usage in Japanese Translation
James BREEN
Monash University
Clayton 3800, Australia
jimbreen@gmail.com
June 2007
Abstract
This report contains a summary of the results of a survey of 171 translators working with theJapanese language. The survey was carried out in May 2007, and investigated aspects of theusage of computer and communications technology in their work.
1. Introduction
In preparation for a presentation on Japanese Translation and the Computer to theInternational Japanese English Translation (IJET) Conference in Bath (UK) in June 2007, theauthor carried out a survey of translators working with Japanese to determine the usage ofcomputers, communications and online services in their work, the changes in that usage overtime, and their opinions on various aspects of the interaction of computers and related
technology with their work.
The survey was carried out over a three-week period in May 2007 using a WWW-based
system developed by the author. (The questionnaire can be seen at:
http://www.csse.monash.edu.au/~jwb/cgi-bin/enquete.) Invitations were issued on the
Honyaku mailing list, which is a major discussion forum for people working in Japanesetranslation, with the request that the invitation be passed on to other related mailing lists
within national translation associations, such as JAT (Japan), ATA/JLD (USA) and ITI/JNET (UK).
171 usable responses were received to the questionnaire. This report summarizes theinformation provided in those responses.
2. Profile of Respondents
The initial questions were to determine a broad profile of the respondents; their nationality,
country of residence, length of time translating, etc. The results are summarized in thefollowing tables.

Country

USA Britain Japan Australia

New
Canada Germany Other
ZealandNationality 84

28

20

14

5

5

3

7

Country of
Residence

20

74

9

3

2

1

9

49

Table 1: Nationality and Country of Residence

1

Time
translating(%)

0-2 years

3-5 years

6-10 years> 10 years

13.6

13.1

19.3

54.0

Table 2a: Period earning income as a translator

Working Mode(%)

In-house

Freelance

Mix of in-house/freelance

17.6

72.2

10.2

Table 2b: Working Mode: in-house/freelance
Translation
Direction(%)

from Japanese

into Japanese

a mix

75.6

4.5

19.9

Table 2c: Translation Direction
Of the 36 respondents who reported translating in both directions, 13 were Japanese nationals
for whom the average proportion of translation into English was 46%. The other 23 reported
translating into English an average of 81% of the time.
Translation as
an Occupation(%)

Sole Occupation

Main
Occupation

SecondOccupation

65.3

22.7

11.9

Table 3: Translation as an Occupation
A wide range of other occupations were reported, among which teaching (Japanese and otherlanguages), editing/proof-reading, and consulting were the most common.
3. Computer Usage and Expenditure
Respondents were asked for the Operating System they used, the age of the computer they
while translating, and the average expenditure on computer-related facilities in recent years.
Operating
System (Primary Windows
Computer)
(%)

80.7

Macintosh

Linux/Unix

19.3

0.0

Table 4a: Primary Operating System

2Operating
System(SecondaryComputer)

None

Windows

Macintosh

Linux/Unix

(%)

78.9

10.5

8.8

1.8

Table 4b: Secondary Operating System
ComputerrelatedExpenditure

Electronic
Internet
Other
Dictionaries Connection

Hardware Software

Number of
147
Respondents

139

80

150

78

AverageAnnualExpenditure
($US)

844

393

730

501

1967

Table 5: Computer-related Expenditure
4. Document Delivery from Clients
Respondents were asked for the approximate percentages of documents they received invarious forms and media, and for comments on any changes in the patterns of format andmedia in recent years.
Deliverymethodmedia

Hardcopy mailHardElectronic
Electronic copy Other
copy copy disk/CDROM/etc.
facsimile email

Respondents 83

73

166

45

15

All
respondents
(%)

7.6

3.5

82.5

4.7

1.6

Respondents
for media
15.8
type (%)

8.5

85.7

17.8

18.6

Table 6a: Document-delivery method and media

3

Electronic
Documents- file types

WordWWW Plain
PDF Spreadsheet Database Presentation
Other
processing
page
text

Respondents 166

140

130

2

113

39

26

22

All
Respondents 49.8
(%)

29.6

10.1

0.2

5.7

2.0

0.9

1.7

Respondents
for file type 58.8
(%)

41.5

15.2

15.0

9.8

10.2

6.5

15.3

Table 6b: Electronic Document file type
Comments from respondents included:••••

remarks on the significant decline in the use of hard-copy. Several said they refused
work unless it was in electronic form.
there is an increase in downloading of documents, e.g. from clients' document
management systems, the Patent Office, etc.
many commented on the increase in the use of PDF files, although a few commented
that they saw PDFs declining in favour of Word documents
several comments that requests to translate Powerpoint documents were increasing.

5. Dictionaries and Glossaries
Respondents were asked about their use of dictionaries and glossaries, including usage
patterns of paper dictionaries, electronic dictionaries and online dictionaries.
Paper
RarelyDictionary
use
usage
(%)

60.9

Use butless than
beforeUse just
as muchas before

Use isincreasing

Only use

30.2

7.1

0.6

1.2

Table 7: Paper dictionary usage
Paper dictionaries mentioned by respondents included: Kenkyusha JE - 4th and 5th editions(45 mentions), Nelson (28), Daijirin (9), Kojien (6), The Kanji Dictionary (5). In additionsome domain-specific dictionaries were mentioned several times, such as Blacks (law) andStedman (medicine).
Electronic
dictionary
usage

Rarelyuse

Use butless than
beforeUse just
as muchas before

Use isincreasing

Only use

(%)

34.3

16.6

10.7

10.1

28.4

Table 8: Electronic dictionary usage

4

The local-file-based electronic dictionaries which were mentioned most often included theKenkyusha JE 5th edition (24 mentions), Eijiro (17), EDICT (16), Kôjien (11) and Daijirin(5). The Jamming package was mentioned quite often as a client for searching dictionaries.
Most popular among the hand-held dictionaries were models by Seiko (13 mentions), Canon(11) and Sharp (3).
Onlinedictionary
usage
(%)

Rarely use

Use but lessthan before

Use just as
much asbeforeUse isincreasing

14.8

4.7

24.3

55.2

Table 9: Online dictionary usage
The dictionary server which was mentioned most often was Eijiro/ALC with 81 mentions, i.e.
almost half the respondents. The other sites which were often mentioned were WWWJDIC(41), Glova (34), Kenkyusha (16), Goo (8), Jeffrey's (8) and Yahoo (6). A wide range ofsubject-specific online glossaries were mentioned, although no single glossary dominated.
Finally, respondents were asked to assess their overall use of dictionaries (as opposed to othersources of information).
Overalldictionary usage(%)

Declining

Staying muchthe same

Increasing

35.5

52.1

12.4

Table 10: Overall dictionary usage
6. WWW/Archive/Corpora Searching
A series of questions were asked to determine the use of WWW searches, mailing-listarchives, etc. as an aide to translation.
Use ofWWW
searchengines

Never

Occasionally Often

Veryregularly

Manytimes a
day

(%)

1.8

2.3

22.8

63.2

9.9

Table 11a: Use of WWW Search Engines
Usefulness
of WWW
No useintranslation
(%)

2.3

LimitedQuite
usefulVery
usefulIndispensable

0.0

10.5

17.0

70.2

Table 11b: Usefulness of WWW Search Engines

5

WWW usage
over time(%)

Decreasing

Same level

Increasing

3.5

35.7

60.8

Table 11c: Trend in WWW Search Engine Usage
Mailinglistarchive
usage

Never

Occasionally Often

Veryregularly

Manytimes a
day

(%)

26.3

56.7

4.7

1.8

10.5

Table 12a: Use of Mailing List Archives
Mailinglist
No usearchiveusefulness
(%)

18.1

LimitedQuite
usefulVery
usefulIndispensable

38.0

26.3

11.7

5.8

Table 12b: Usefulness of Mailing List Archives
Respondents were asked if they searched any other corpora. Less than a third nominated suchcorpora, with searches of prior translations being the most commonly mentioned, followed by
Wikipedia.
7. Translation Memory Systems
A series of questions was targetted at the use of Translation Memory Systems, including
patterns of usage, reasons for use, productivity gains, and issues of exchange of memory
contents.

TM Usageneveroccasionallyquite often

almost every
job

(%)

57.2

16.8

8.1

17.9

Table 13: Use of Translation Memory Systems
Years of TM
Use

0-2 years

3-5 years

6-10 years

more than
10 years% (of TMusing
respondents)

45.9

33.8

17.6

2.7

Table 14: Translation Memory Systems - Years of Use
Respondents were asked which TM systems they used, ranking from most commonly-used.
Most used only one system.

6

TM
System

TradosSDLX

Wordfast OmegaT

Deja
Vu

TransAssist

System
1.

31

5

24

5

3

4

System
2.

5

2

1

1

2

-

System
3.

1

-

1

1

1

1

Table 15: Translation Memory Systems Used
Other TM systems mentioned included Metatexis, Wordfisher, Heartsome and StarTransit.
Reasons
for TM
Use

Required Expect
Experiment Buildbyproductivity to see if it
memoryClientimprovement helps
for topic

No.
38
responding

45

20

35

Alwaysuse aTM
21

Table 16: Reasons for Translation Memory System Use
Observedless than
productivity
10%
improvement
(%)

31.1

10-25%

25-50%

over 50%

41.9

16.2

10.8

Table 17: Productivity Improvement with Translation Memory System Use
Clientsupplied TM
memory(%)

noassistancesomeassistancemoderate
assistancesignificant
assistance

37.8

27.0

23.0

12.2

Table 18: Translation Memory Provision by ClientsTM
Portability aware ofstandards
development(%)

not at allvaguelyaware

recall theoccasional
articlefollowingwithconsiderable
interest

73.4

11.6

9.8

5.2

Table 19: Translation Memory Portability – Awareness7

TM
Portability will assist?
(%)

not at all

to a small
extentquite a bitvery
significantly

65.9

13.9

13.3

6.9

Table 20: Translation Memory Portability - Assistance
Respondents were asked to list features they felt would significantly improve Translation
Memory systems. Many listed basic aspects of TM packages, such as:
•
•
•
•
•
•

lower prices and more transparent pricing structures;
removing bugs;
greater reliability;
less complex user interface;
Macintosh versions;better support for Microsoft's recent file types.

Desirable features mentioned included:
•
•
•
•
•
•

easy generation of high-quality memories from existing translations;better glossary generation and term extraction;
integration of online resources, including dictionaries and corpora;interchange of memories and glossaries;
improvement of the "sentence" focus, to include working at both the phrase andparagraph level;
improved collaborative working and server based memories.

8. Machine Translation Systems
The degree to which respondents were using MT systems, or working at editing machinetranslations was examined, along with perceptions of MT quality.
Use MT systems

Never

Occasionally

Regularly

(%)

91.7

7.1

1.2

Table 21: Use of Machine Translation Systems
Edit machinetranslations
(%)

Never

Occasionally

Regularly

83.4

15.4

1.2

Table 22: Edit Machine Translation System Output
Current MT
quality(%)

Don't know

Very poor

Marginal

quite good

29.0

58.0

13.0

0.0

Table 22: Current Machine Translation System Quality

8Improved inrecentyears?
(%)

Don't know

Getting
No signs of
Slightsignificantly
improvement improvement
better

40.8

27.8

27.8

3.6

Table 23: Perception of Improved Machine Translation System Quality

Is MT afuture threat
to humantranslators?
(%)

never

in a few
restrictedareas

generally,
but quality
andrewritingstill needed

we will all
be displaced
eventually

16.0

55.6

24.9

3.6

Table 24: Threat from Machine Translation Systems
Respondents were also asked to name up to three machine translation systems which worked
into or out of Japanese. The names given were indicative of the issues of brand identity incommercial translation software. Babelfish was named 14 times, Alta Vista 4 times andSystran 4 times - in fact all of these use the same translation system (Systran), as did Google's
translation function (6 mentions) until recently. The Fujitsu ATLAS system was mentioned
10 times, but no other commercial translation packages each received more than a single
mention.
9. General Respondent Opinions and Expectations
Respondents were given the opportunity to express their opinions and expectations on various
aspects of computers and translation. The categories in which view were sought were:
technologies which have had the greatest impact on work as a translator; technologies whichhave not lived up to expectations; developments which could have a significant impact ontranslation work; and developments which could threaten work as a translator.
a. technologies which have had the greatest impact on work as a translator.
A wide range of responses was received. Many reflected the particular circumstancesof the respondent, with the more senior translators nominating "the computer", adding
such things as "I started out using a typewriter". Clearly the Internet and related
applications have had a huge impact on many aspects of translators' work.
The most frequently-mentioned technologies are summarized in the following table.
(* Note that for many people the terms "WWW" and "Internet" are interchangeable.)

9

Technology/
Internet(*) WWW(*) Emailfacility

WWW
SearchEngines

Onlinedictionaries Computers/ TMPCsystems&
glossaries

No. ofresponses

47

28

86

38

55

Technology/ Wordfacility
processors

Voice
input

No. ofresponses

10

13

23

19

Onlinedocuments
Wikipedia OCR&
databases

GUI OS
interfaces

FTP

8

4

4

4

4

Table 25: Technologies having an impact on translationb. technologies which have not lived up to expectations.
Not surprisingly, responses in this section largely focussed on machine/onlinetranslation (36 mentions) and translation memory/computer aided translation systems(29 and 7 respectively.) Views on translation memory systems are varied, with some
respondents thinking they are improving, and others thinking they are not.
Of the remainder, voice input/recognition (8) and electronic dictionaries (7) were thehighest, the latter receiving comments about lack of flexibility and integration. Others
included collaborative translation management software (3) and Japanese OCR (3).
c. developments which could have a significant impact on translation work.
A wide spread of responses was made in this section:
i.
ii.
iii.

iv.
v.

translators expect to see faster and more ubiquitous communications facilities(14 mentions), and greater mobility in the working environment (9);improvements in translation memory systems are expected and sought (25),with more use of artificial intelligence and statistical techniques being made;machine translation systems are expected to improve (15), particularly in
restricted areas such as patents. Several respondents expected to be working
more in proof-reading/editing;collaborative translation-support systems are expected to have an impact (13);speech input/voice recognition systems are expected to improve and be used
more (9).

Other topics mentioned included: improved OCR, better online searching, more
useful databases such as Eijiro and Wikipedia, more online texts, better online
dictionaries, and greater English-language skill in client areas.
d. developments which could threaten work as a translator.

10

Approximately half the respondents did not see any particular threat to their work. Of
the listed threats, the most-mentioned was the rise of low-price competition,
especially from India and China (32 mentions), although 3 respondents doubted its
impact. Increased use of MT (18) and better TM systems (10) were the othercommonly mentioned threats. Others mentioned included: global crisis/war (6),relative decline of Japan, a rise in English skills, more restrictive IP laws, and theft ofintellectual property such as glossaries and memories.
10. Discussion
While the survey reported in this document cannot be regarded as wholly representative of thecommunity of translators working with Japanese, as its distribution was primarily to thosealready working in online communities, it does provide valuable insights into the positions
and opinions of a relatively large group of "computer savvy" translators.
In many ways the results confirm and reinforce the impressions formed by practitioners andobservers of the translation profession that the impact of computer and communication
technology has been dramatic over the last 15 years, with virtually every aspect of theindustry seeing some change.
The author of the survey was mildly surprised at the relatively low level of translation
memory usage reported, which when combined with the critical comments made by many
respondents, indicates that for many translators either the benefits of translation memories areoften overstated, or the hurdles to their use (price, training, complexity of interface, document
interface problems, etc.) outweigh the advantages.
The comments made by the respondents throughout the survey are valuable, and indicate thatthe community surveyed is very alive to the issues associated with the business andtechnological environment of translation.
Acknowledgements
The author expresses his gratitude to the many translators who took the time to complete thequestionnaire so frankly, and to Marc Adler, Ryan Ginstrom and James Sparks who reviewed
the questionnaire prior to its release.

11