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Resources for Japanese-to-English Translators

    

Although the introduction of AI by the clients of most freelancers is bringing freelance translation by humans to a quick end, I have preserved here some writings that might be of interest to the small subset of surviving translator and those who are to leave, at least for historical interest. In addition, some of what I write or restore here might be of use to former translators who have been enlisted to post-edit AI, a task which is clearly not translation and pays very poorly, but one that increasing numbers of former translators are now engaged in.

Articles

These are just the articles that have been on this website in the last few years. There are many more that exist, and many of those will be restored, time permitting. These include articles of potential interest to both translation consumers and translation professionals.

Confessions of a Professional Japanese-to-English Translator (Last updated October 2, 2025)
Many aspects of the development of professional translators and their work lives are unknown to, generally unknowable by, and potentially surprising to fellow translators, and even more so to clients. Here are some for one particular translator.
Translating Japanese Names (Last updated August 26, 2025)
One troublesome characteristic of the Japanese language is the uncertainty of how Japanese personal names are pronounced. Many names can be pronounced in numerous ways, the pronunciation options sometimes being totally different. The problems involved are more more troublesome than Green or Greene.
One Japanese-to-English Translator's Path into the World of Translation (Last updated May 26, 2025
Just one of myriad ways people enter the field of translation.

Presentations

For Language Professionals

Japan Association of Translators stopped publishing the IJET Proceedings after its conferences years ago. Those publications provided useful and detailed documentation of the presentations, but are a thing of the past and are very unlikely to reappear. Some recent presentations are videorecorded, but the video quality is spotty, and the readability of presentation screens is poor.

Another distressing development is that previous issues of the Proceedings have disappeared from the JAT website. They might be just lost, but I strongly suspect that, contrary to expectations and predictions of restoration, they were not scanned and uploaded. It is unlikely that they will reappear, considering the things happening recently, both in the profession as a whole and JAT as an organization.

Being a horder, however, I had copies of most of my own presentations and also a full scan of the Proceedings for IJET-1, held back in 1990. The latter does not include a presentation by me, but the others are all my presentations, but without the other content produced for each IJET, since, as noted above, they appear to be lost forever. I and others expected the Proceedings to be scanned and made available, but that evidently has not been done and will likely never be done at this point in the evolution of JAT and the translation world.
IJET-30 (Cairns, AU June 29-30, 2019, organized by Japan Association of Translators)
Lise, Getting from Tier Two to Tier One in Japanese-to-English Translation
IJET-19 (Okinawa, Japan April 12-13, 2008, organized by Japan Association of Translators)
Lise, Japanese Patent Translation
IJET-16 (Chicago, US June 4-5, 2005, organized by Japan Association of Translators)
Lise, Japanese/English Deposition Interpreting (Presented on Lise's behalf by Manako Ihaya)
IJET-9 (Yokohama, Japan May 23-24, 1998, organized by Japan Association of Translators)
Lise panel discussion comments Taking More Money for Your Translations
IJET-8 (Sheffield, UK June 19-21, 1997, organized by Japan Association of Translators)
Lise, Symbols, Abbreviations and Layout Issues in J-E Translation
IJET-7 (Yokohama, Japan May 18-19, 1996, organized by Japan Association of Translators)
Lise, Japanese-English Translation of Patent Documents for Filing in the US
IJET-5 (Urayasu, Japan May 24-29, 1994, organized by Japan Association of Translators)
Lise, An Investigation of Terminology and Syntax in Japanese and US Patents and the Implications for the Patent Translator
IJET-1 (Hakone, Japan May 26-27, 1990, organized by Japan Association of Translators)
This does not include a Lise presentation, but was scanned in its entirety and uploaded, as it marks the beginning of a proud tradition of conferences and cannot be found on the website of Japan Association of Translators.

Publications

For Both Users and Language Professionals

Morita Ed, ATA Japanese Translation Handbook (1997, last edit October 14, 2022)
Chapter 5: Japanese-to-English Translation of Patent Documents for Filing in the US. Both the original version and an edited version are available, the latter reflected some changes made in availability of information.