5 Secrets No One Tells You About Being a Translator
By: Jason Muell
Tags: Books, Manga, Language, Translation, Japanese

This is how you will feel much of the time. But don’t worry: that’s normal.

So you’ve hit the books, studied hard, “mastered” your target language (more on that later), and finally got a job in your dream profession as a translator. Now it’s time for you to go out there, make waves, and help bring these foreign masterpieces to all new audiences.

… or, at least that’s how the translation profession is seen from the outside looking in.

Today I’d like to share a few things about the art of translation that no one really discusses. For those of you out there who aren’t pursuing a career in translation but still partake in translated media (movies, TV shows, books, etc.), this may help give you a better understanding for where some of the odd inconsistencies come from

Without further ado, let's get started!

(Note that as a Japanese→English translator, all of my examples will be referring to these languages. However, I imagine the following applies to most language pairs.)

And by compromise, I kind of mean “minimize your losses”

1. It’s All About Compromise

Like any good relationship, translation is all about compromise: the delicate balance between remaining faithful to the nuance of the source text and the readability of your translation.

Machine translation is a good example of achieving exactly neither of these conflicting goals. Not only does it fail to capture the nuance of language, but it provides a stilted translation that sounds off to a native speaker of the target language.

Even for a human translator, however, it’s extremely difficult to strike a balance here since these two objectives are often competing against one another.

Let’s take a simple example: 十数枚 (juusuumai)

Google would like to translate this as “ten several sheets.” I’m not even going to talk about that.

Strictly speaking, this word means that we have over 10 sheets [of paper]. The number cannot be 10 and is less than 20. You could render this in any number of ways:

around a dozen;

10 or so;

11 or more;

etc.

There are flaws with all of these. The first implies a number in the low teens (though, depending on the nuance, this is often correct). The second falsely implies that the number could be 10 or even fewer. The third reads poorly in a work of fiction.

This is where the translator’s job is most important: deciding what nuance is actually relevant for a given work and audience, and balancing what should be rendered faithfully (at the expense of readability) and what can be glossed over.

The editing process, in a nutshell

2. You Don’t Get the Final Say

So you spend months crafting your masterpiece, taking a work of top-quality Japanese literature and expertly bringing it over into your native language. The cultural nuances are on point and your manuscript reads beautifully, almost as if it were written in English from the very start.

All that’s left is to unleash this work of art upon the world, right?

Not so fast, my over-eager friend.

You see, what a lot of people don’t realize is that translations — like any other written work — often go through an editor before seeing the light of day. And if they don’t, they absolutely should.

Depending on what you’re translating (contracts, games, books, TV shows, etc.) as well as who you’re translating for, the type and extent of editing will vary. However, typically editing is done for 1) translation accuracy and/or 2) readability.

Editing for translation accuracy can always be troublesome, as you and the editor may have very different opinions on what makes a good translation (see the discussion on compromise above). Readability can also be tricky because sometimes the assigned editor doesn’t actually know Japanese, so their “cleanup” edits may actually make for a less accurate translation.

That’s not to say that editing isn’t an important or essential step — I’ve even implemented a checking process in the translation teams I’ve worked on. But I think it’s important for translators and fans alike to understand that the final product may sometimes be very different from the original translation. For better or for worse.

“Would you like to hammer in a bolt, or wrench in a nail? Kthx, we’d like it by Thursday.”

3. You Rarely Get to Choose Your Work

Like almost every other job out there, the simple fact of the matter is that a translator rarely gets to pick the job that she’s going to work on. This is even more true if you’re working in-house, since your job assignments include literally translating anything that ends up on your desk.

Freelancers have a bit more leeway with this, but only in-so-far as that you can turn down jobs that don’t interest you. That, of course, is assuming that this is a financially viable decision for you at the time.

This isn’t all doom and gloom, of course! Across my career both as a full-time and freelance translator, I’ve been lucky enough to work on some immensely interesting projects, including:

multinational lawsuits

press releases about my favorite game franchises

kidnapping and ransom plots (who writes this stuff in emails???)

exciting manga series

and many, many more

That said, I’ve also had my share of immensely taxing busy work that would make your soul glaze over. 60+ page J-REIT (Japan Real Estate Investment Trust) purchase/sale agreements get pretty dull the 15th time around and there are some manga that have come across my desk that I can’t possibly imagine why anyone would ever buy them.

As a freelancer, things start looking up once you build a relationship with your clients and they learn to trust you as a reliable and quality translator. It’s not uncommon for publishers (or other clients of yours) to reach out and give you first dibs on projects.

So while you may not have total control of the projects you work on, there’s still a lot of potential out there to be involved in some of your favorite works, or to even discover your new favorites as you work on a previously unknown series!

“The translator failed to translate ‘shikata ga nai ‘ as ‘it can’t be helped.’ ★★☆☆☆”

4. Everyone’s a Critic

Remember how when you first started learning your second language and would look at some subtitled dialogue, scoff, and talk about how you could do it better?

Now imagine that there are hundreds of those people out there, all very passionate about the project you just worked on.

In today’s high-paced world of social media, YouTube, and blogs, it’s pretty much a given that your translations are going to meet criticism, and both the volume and ferocity of said criticism is generally proportional to the popularity of what your translating.

Contracts? Probably no one will care. Press releases? Maybe a snarky screenshot on Twitter. Major top-selling manga? May God have mercy on your soul.

What’s worse, some of these perceived “faults” may not have even been your doing (see the editing phase discussed above), or could even be due to the fans having a poor understanding of the source material.

However, not every criticism is necessarily bad. Being human, it’s natural that you make mistakes. I’ve made tons of them over the course of my career and have been called out on them many times over. But sometimes there’s a nugget of useful information in even in the harshest of criticism, so it’s worth always keeping your mind open to how you can improve.

Sometimes all you can do is stand back and watch

5. It’s a Thankless… But Immensely Rewarding Job

Crediting the translator is still not yet the norm in many industries. In games and movies/TV, you may get your name somewhere in the credits. Books and manga, you’ll likely get a credit on the back page. It’s pretty unlikely that people will ever know who you are. Anything else and I wouldn’t hold out much hope.

Of course, credit and accolades aren’t all there is to life — not by a long shot. But if you intend on building this up into a career and becoming known for the quality and style of your translations, it may be worthwhile to strike a balance between credited and uncredited work or even negotiate that as a part of your contract.

While I won’t go so far as to say that a job well done is its own reward, no matter how many different projects I work on, I still find the art of translating to be an incredibly rewarding task.

The act of taking something in one language and transforming it into something readable to a whole new audience provides you with a fantastic sense of accomplishment. And for all the critics out there, they truly are just a vocal minority.

The fact of the matter is that there are many, many more fans out there who are simply happy to have a way to immerse themselves in their favorite stories without having to go through the struggle of learning a new language. It’s a great feeling knowing that you’re the one to make that happen.

Not untrue

In Closing

I hope this was at least somewhat informative for all your inspiring translators out there and provided a little bit of insight into how the industry works for those of you who are consumers of translated works.

If you’re looking into the field and haven’t quite made the jump yet, I would definitely encourage you to take heart, have faith in yourself, and jump in feet first at the earliest chance. You’re going to learn a lot more about translation by doing than you ever will in a book.

Regardless of what language pair (or pairs) you work in, there are dozens of communities out there of like-minded people, so I highly encourage you to get out there and network. You never know who you’ll meet!