All Content Deleted (July 12, 2025)The end of Japanese-to-English
freelance translation is here.No amount of denial and delusion can stop it, and I have stopped feeding the delusions and misplaced hopes of freelancers and would-be freelancers.
IMPORTANT
Students learning Japanese should discard plans to freelance translate as a career. Such planning is reckless, and will prevent more promising career choices.
Given this reality, I will no longer engage in any activity that would lead people to believe freelance translation is a promising career. That means:
- removal of legacy content that I had written for freelancers, and
- abandonment of any plans to write further such content.
Translation Notes
This content will not reappear.
- Note N001:
- Confusion of the Whole with its Parts in Japanese (June 28, 2025)
Presentations
IJET Conference Presentations
These are presentations Lise has made at IJET (International Japanese/English Translation) Conferences held by Japan Association of Translators, which have alternated between Japan and overseas venues.
Because they cannot be found on the JAT website, having been lost or deleted, I have preserved these presentations on this website. Along with a now deleted or long-lost scanned copy of the Proceedings from the first IJET Conference, held in Hakone in 1990, also not available on the JAT website, is also linked to below.
- 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
The content of this presentation, long lost or misplaced on the Japan Association of Translators, is closest to hitting the mark about the reasons freelance translating is dead, but the advice I gave in this presentation cannot be applied by more than a tiny number of translators. Others will meet the end shortly, if they haven't already left translation. - IJET-19 (Okinawa, Japan April 12-13, 2008, organized by Japan Association of Translators)
- Lise, Japanese Patent Translation
Even patent firms, which also profit from their translation business activities, are moving to AI. Nothing to see here. - IJET-16 (Chicago, US June 4-5, 1997, 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
Relevant at the time, but totally irrelevant and usable by only a very small number of freelancers. - IJET-8 (Sheffield, UK June 19-21, 1997, organized by Japan Association of Translators)
- Lise, Symbols, Abbreviations and Layout Issues in J-E Translation>
Discussion of things they don't teach you when you are learning Japanese in university. Irrelevant now, because the target translator demographic is experiencing the quick demise of freelance translation as a career. - 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
As noted above, this translation sector is quickly disappearing. - IJET-1 Proceedings (The First IJET Conference, held in Hakone (JP), May 26-27, 1991, organized by Japan Association of Translators)
- Read
I retain a copy of this Proceedings, JAT apparently does not. Not a problem; freelance translating is coming to an end.
Other Presentations
- JET Programme Career Presentation (Tokyo, 2004; updated June 28, 2025 to bring it up to date with the new normal in the world of translation)
- Lise, Introduction to Translation and Interpreting Careers
The advice I would give these people now is very different: Don't bother, because it's ending.