2004 JET Programme Career PresentationRevised in 2025 to reflect the current drastically worsened outlook for Japanese-to-English Translators
I was twice asked to give and did give a career presentation for JET Programme personnel who were at the end of their terms and might be looking at careers in translation. Since then, the outlook for prospective translators has drastically changed, and not for the good, mostly attributable to the use of AI by agencies, the historically overwhelmingly dominant client demogaphic for freelancers.
Many of the things I suggested back in 2004 make no sense today and would be terrible and even arguably unethical to suggest to people hoping to become translators.
Accordingly, I have revised the original presentation, clearly marking what I have deleted and what I have added to bring the presentation up to date.