(August 1, 2026)I have rethought the advisability and ethical aspects of publishing content for freelance Japanese-to-English translators, beyond telling them the obvious, which is that translating for a living has essentially ended for almost all of them.
Accordingly, I have decided not to actively or tacitly encourage delusions, and am pulling most, if not all, of my writings and presentations intended for colleague translators from this website.
Continuing to publish things aimed at agency-dependent freelance translators, most of whom are facing the inevitable demise of their translating careers, is arguably disingenuous, deceptive, and delusional. Doing so falls right in line with translation organizations that, desperate to maintain the appearance of relevance for themselves and the people running them, either play fast and loose with the facts or remain silent, thereby actively encouraging or tacitly allowing members to believe a number of totally batshit crazy delusions, the most seriously wrong of which is that freelance translators will survive the AI transformation. Almost none will survive. I can no longer be part of such deceptive and disingenuous behavior.
I will write more about this decision shortly, but for the time being, since Japan Association of Translators apparently has no plan, no intention, and no ability to restore old IJET Proceedings to its website, I had retained eight (8) presentations I have made at IJET Conferences (From IJET-5 in 1994 through IJET-30 in 2019) and one entire scanned Proceedings (IJET-1 in 1990), but have removed them from this website.
The only one of these IJET presentations that might retain some practical relevance is the very last one I did (IJET-30 in Cairns in 2019), in which I made an attempt to counsel colleagues on how to break out of tier two, which is the essentially captive labor pool serving agencies and enabling the MTPE business model. That feat is achievable by only a tiny portion of the currently agency-dependent translators, and expounding on what is necessary to do that serves no purpose other than to emphasize the futility of even trying.
That said, people who are still interested might want to contact me, but I will not be placing the presentations in the open on this website.
I will discuss the disposition of other translator-directed content (several web articles and one publication) in the coming days, but these IJET presentations have already been removed from the website as the first step.